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AI note-taking startup Fireflies was really two guys typing notes by hand

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Re: AI note-taking startup Fireflies was really two guys typing notes by hand

#41

Post by ChrisMarshallNY »

jacquesm wrote: post #34
icepush wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"Actually, Indians" is not meant as a joke.

And it's not rare at all. It is also not rare to see such efforts funded.

> However, some LinkedIn commenters seem to see very little wrong with Fireflies' dubious early business practices.

Seems to be a good example of today’s zeitgeist.

Many of the comments on this very post, seem to take the same position.

I’m not horrified about what they did. This kind of shysterism is pretty common, these days.

What does disturb me, though, is an “end justifies the means” acceptance of these practices.

In law (and law enforcement), they have a “fruit of the poisoned tree” doctrine, where starting something wrong, immediately nullifies everything after that, even if it solves the case.

Coming from a perspective of wanting a lot more ethics and integrity in technology, I think we might be well-served to consider something like this. I’m deeply disturbed by the blatant moral decay in tech. I keep flashing on Dr. Malcolm, taking about “could,” and “should.”

Re: AI note-taking startup Fireflies was really two guys typing notes by hand

#42

Post by echelon »

bix6 wrote: post #37

From LI > this was for our first few beta customers from 2017 and we made it clear that there was a human in the loop of the service. LLMs didn't exist yet. It was like offering an EA for $100/mo - several other startups did that as well, but obviously it doesn't scale. So not necessarily fraud unless they deceived investors. Or he’s covering up his mistake. Getting the popcorn!!

1. It's not fraud. They were proving the market at an early stage while living on a pizza diet.

2. Their startup now does what it says on the tin. And it's now a unicorn.

3. To those claiming this was "unethical" - a large company providing this service would still record calls and have QA / engineers listening to calls to improve the service.

Re: AI note-taking startup Fireflies was really two guys typing notes by hand

#43

Post by pinkmuffinere »

echelon wrote: post #42
bix6 wrote: post #37

From LI > this was for our first few beta customers from 2017 and we made it clear that there was a human in the loop of the service. LLMs didn't exist yet. It was like offering an EA for $100/mo - several other startups did that as well, but obviously it doesn't scale. So not necessarily fraud unless they deceived investors. Or he’s covering up his mistake. Getting the popcorn!!

1. It's not fraud. They were proving the market at an early stage while living on a pizza diet. 2. Their startup now does what it says on the tin. And it's now a unicorn. 3. To those claiming this was "unethical" - a large company providing this service would still record calls and have QA / engineers listening to calls to improve the service.

+1, this strategy is often called a "concierge" MVP. You deliver the service you claim, but behind the scenes everything is actually incredible manual. Once you proved people like the service, you then go make the process less manual. Zappos and Amazon are both famous for doing this.

Re: AI note-taking startup Fireflies was really two guys typing notes by hand

#44

Post by pinkmuffinere »

This strategy is often called a "concierge" MVP. You deliver the service you claim, but behind the scenes everything is incredibly manual. Once you've proved people like the service, you then go make the process less manual. Zappos and Amazon are both famous for doing this.

p.s. -- I already put this in a chain, but the majority of comments are just claiming this is fraud. Thought it might be worth posting something slightly more visible.

Re: AI note-taking startup Fireflies was really two guys typing notes by hand

#46

Post by bsder »

1659447091 wrote: post #3

> "Sitting in someone's meeting uninvited is violation of privacy. They wanted a bot in the meeting, not an uninvited person," said automation expert Umar Aftab. "This way you sabotage trust and could incur legal implications." > "Good luck with all the lawsuits," added another. "This might read like a gritty founder hustle story," said software engineer Mauricio Idarraga. "But it's actually one of the most reckless…

> They charged $100/month for this. If it were free then whatever, but lying to paying customers about the service is not okay.

Erm, to the customer, what is the difference between a bunch of humans transcribing your meetings or an AI doing it? If I'm paying $100/month to get my meetings transcribed, why do I care whether it's the founder, an AI, or magic pixie dust (but I repeat myself)?

Misleading investors is a different problem.

Re: AI note-taking startup Fireflies was really two guys typing notes by hand

#47

Post by 8f2ab37a-ed6c »

pinkmuffinere wrote: post #44

This strategy is often called a "concierge" MVP. You deliver the service you claim, but behind the scenes everything is incredibly manual. Once you've proved people like the service, you then go make the process less manual. Zappos and Amazon are both famous for doing this. p.s. -- I already put this in a chain, but the majority of comments are just claiming this is fraud. Thought it might be worth posting something…

Even better, its subclass the Wizard of Oz MVP: https://www.rabitsolutions.com/blog/examples-of-mvp/

Re: AI note-taking startup Fireflies was really two guys typing notes by hand

#49

Post by dragonwriter »

bix6 wrote: post #37

From LI > this was for our first few beta customers from 2017 and we made it clear that there was a human in the loop of the service. LLMs didn't exist yet. It was like offering an EA for $100/mo - several other startups did that as well, but obviously it doesn't scale. So not necessarily fraud unless they deceived investors. Or he’s covering up his mistake. Getting the popcorn!!

That's not from the LI post from the CTO that the story (or the Futurism story the linked story is apparently rereporting) is based on [0], which has the same straight-up fraud description as appears in both stories: “We told our customers there's an "AI that'll join a meeting.” In reality it was just me and my co-founder calling in to the meeting sitting there silently and taking notes by hand.”

Your quote seems likely to be from an after-the-fact damage control “clarification” post by the CEO [1] describing that the early users as close friends, who knew that it was human assisted and not machine transcription (I say seems likely to be because it expresses something similar to what you claim but slightly more distant from the original story, and doesn't have the quote you present, but it is marked as edited so it seems plausible that it at one point had your quote but decided that it needed even a stronger rewrite of the narrative for PR reasons.)

[0] https://www.linkedin.com/posts/sudotong_we-charged-100month-...

[1] https://www.linkedin.com/posts/krishramineni_we-charged-100m...

Re: AI note-taking startup Fireflies was really two guys typing notes by hand

#50

Post by throwaway5465 »

echelon wrote: post #42
bix6 wrote: post #37

From LI > this was for our first few beta customers from 2017 and we made it clear that there was a human in the loop of the service. LLMs didn't exist yet. It was like offering an EA for $100/mo - several other startups did that as well, but obviously it doesn't scale. So not necessarily fraud unless they deceived investors. Or he’s covering up his mistake. Getting the popcorn!!

1. It's not fraud. They were proving the market at an early stage while living on a pizza diet. 2. Their startup now does what it says on the tin. And it's now a unicorn. 3. To those claiming this was "unethical" - a large company providing this service would still record calls and have QA / engineers listening to calls to improve the service.

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