AI note-taking startup Fireflies was really two guys typing notes by hand
36 comments
·November 15, 2025xwowsersx
I think what PG meant by "do things that don't scale" is earnest effort in service of building a real product: talking to users, manually onboarding, hand-holding early customers so you can learn fast and iterate toward something that eventually does scale.
What this startup did isn't that, AFAICT. It wasn't manual work in service of learning...it was just fraud as a business model, no? Like, they were pretending the technology existed before it actually did. There's a bright line between unscalable hustle and misleading customers about what your product actually is.
Doing unscalable things is about being scrappy and close to the problem. Pretending humans are AI is just straight up deceiving people.
cbracketdash
Totally agree with this point. There are several advice that pg and similar roles give which are not universally true. I reiterate your point that "doing things that don't scale" is meant specifically for searching for 1-1 user experience advice.
A similar exmaple is "Make something people want". This is generally true advice in focusing your efforts on solving customer's problems. Yet, this is disastrous advice if taking literally to the fullest extent (you can only imagine).
anonymousiam
Reminds me a lot of Theranos, but without the jail time (yet).
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elizabeth_Holmes
Also, there was this, which also originally claimed to be AI:
https://spectrum.ieee.org/untold-history-of-ai-mechanical-tu...
charles_f
Isn't that something the startup people always advocate, to do things by hand till you proved there's a market? Sounds like they did
deepfriedbits
Not sure if this is what PG had in mind, but yes, the famous "do things that don't scale at first" advice to startups
henry2023
Yeah imo this is a success story.
mmcdermott
If it was a digital transcript service alone, yes, it is a success.
Claiming that the transcripts were generated by a nonexistant AI is fraud and should be treated as such.
davidgaw
This is fraud. Their exposure here is not just being sued by clients, though there's that as well, but being charged with one or more crimes, convicted, and going to prison. This was an incredibly stupid scheme, made even more stupid by publicly confessing to it.
parpfish
lots of people joke about how their jobs is "just attending a bunch of meetings", but can you imagine how horrific your job would be if you were this guy and your job actually was just "attend a bunch of meetings"?
AND you didn't have context or interest in the content?
AND you were required to write an essay at the end proving that you paid attention?!
0manrho
AND you got a billion dollar valuation out of it?
Wait...
jordanb
On the other hand you can make goofy stuff up and people will think it was "the AI".
ctxc
How isn't this just fraud?
Expectation is that sensitive meetings run through a pipeline without being exposed to actual people (and if it is for very specific reasons, there are audit trails).
Here, they literally listen to sensitive information and can act on it.
How do you trust they won't do it again to "enhance summaries" or something in the future?
shrubble
The joke that AI stands for “Actually, Indians” and the co-founder annd presumably the other guy typing is Indian is crazy.
1659447091
> "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 and tone-deaf posts I've seen in a while."
> "We told our customers there's an 'AI that'll join a meeting'," said Udotong. "In reality it was just me and my co-founder calling in to the meeting sitting there silently and taking notes by hand."
They charged $100/month for this. If it were free then whatever, but lying to paying customers about the service is not okay.
jacquesm
It's a lot worse than that. This is a breach, from the perspective of the customers. They now have to explain to whoever was there how they disclosed their confidential information. That's going to become a nice boomerang.
bpodgursky
Unless there was a violated promise of an on-prem notetaker app, there's absolutely no difference between having a third-party AI and third-party contractor listening to your meetings. You should ALWAYS assume their engineers have access to stored data for maintenance and debugging.
mips_avatar
Except they were pretty transparent about there being a human in the loop. They were essentially selling an MIT engineering grad as your note taker for $100/mo, which is a steal. Google hires associate product managers from MIT to be note takers for $20k/mo
1659447091
The quote taken from the article is: "We told our customers there's an 'AI that'll join a meeting'," said Udotong.
How do you get from 'AI that'll join a meeting' to 'an MIT engineering grad as your note taker'?
The rest about note takers is irrelevant when the problem is lying about the "note taker" as that could be the deciding factor for choosing a service, not price
dustingetz
sounds fake, founders these days make up all sorts of edgy stories to PG signal to investors
ngruhn
Why even cheat here? Sounds like this is almost trivial with current AI systems.
loloquwowndueo
Maybe it wasn’t when they started the company?
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!!