{"id":293320,"date":"2025-11-15T14:12:37","date_gmt":"2025-11-15T14:12:37","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/293320\/"},"modified":"2025-11-15T14:12:37","modified_gmt":"2025-11-15T14:12:37","slug":"1-billion-ai-company-co-founder-admits-that-its-100-a-month-transcription-service-was-originally-two-guys-surviving-on-pizza-and-typing-out-notes-by-hand","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/293320\/","title":{"rendered":"$1 billion AI company co-founder admits that its $100 a month transcription service was originally ‘two guys surviving on pizza’ and typing out notes by hand"},"content":{"rendered":"

AI note-taking startup Fireflies<\/a> received a $1 billion valuation<\/a> earlier this year, after the launch of its “Talk to Fireflies” AI meeting companion app. It’s an impressive feat for a company started by “two broke guys”\u2014especially as one of its co-founders recently revealed that its AI transcription service was originally powered by both founders typing the notes out by hand.<\/p>\n

“We charged $100 a month for an AI that was really just two guys surviving on pizza,” Firefly co-founder Sam Udotong proudly declared in a LinkedIn post<\/a> earlier this week (via Futurism<\/a>).<\/p>\n

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“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.”<\/p>\n

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“We’d manually dial in as ‘Fred from Fireflies.ai'”, Udotong continues. “We’d sit there silently, take detailed notes, and send them 10 minutes later.”<\/p>\n

By using this method, Udotong says that they were able to make enough money to pay for their $750 rent in “a tiny SF living room”, which was the point where they decided to “stop and automate everything.”<\/p>\n

\n

\"Man\n<\/p>\n

(Image credit: Malte Mueller via Getty Images)<\/p>\n

Or, y’know, provide the AI service they promised their clients they would receive. And while it’s tempting to cheer on the success of two young hopefuls doing their darndest to take the principle of “fake it ’til you make it” to the extreme, a scroll through the comments reveals the potential pitfalls of declaring such a scheme.<\/p>\n

“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.”<\/p>\n

Keep up to date with the most important stories and the best deals, as picked by the PC Gamer team.<\/p>\n

“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.”<\/p>\n

As Udotong’s post is now beginning to be widely<\/a> reported<\/a> across the interwebs, I can’t imagine it’ll be long before one of Fireflies’ original customers reads about their now-public hoodwinking, and I doubt they’ll be particularly pleased. However, some LinkedIn commenters seem to see very little wrong with Fireflies’ dubious early business practices.<\/p>\n

“Super inspirational story,” says another co-founder and CEO. “Haters will always hate. And most others won’t understand what it takes to build from 0-1 while trying to survive as humans. In the end, your grit paid off immensely\u2014and you have changed the world.”<\/p>\n

Hmm, I’m not so sure about that one. Still, it’s certainly got people talking, at the very least. Is there really no such thing as bad publicity? I guess we’ll just have to wait and see.<\/p>\n

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