Fireflies.ai founders impersonated AI – now their startup is worth $1 billion

Fireflies.ai co-founder and CTO Sam Udotong told on LinkedIn how he and his partner built a company that is now valued at $1 billion after six failed attempts and months of surviving on pizza.

It all started when they promised customers an AI that would join calls and take notes for $100. In fact, instead of a bot called "Fred from Fireflies.ai," Udotong and his friend joined the meetings manually. They listened in silence, wrote down notes by hand, and sent them in 10 minutes.

They handled over 100 calls until they were able to raise $750 to rent a small room in San Francisco. Then, in 2017, they decided it was time to automate everything.

Currently, Fireflies.ai is a voice-activated AI assistant that automatically records, transcribes, and summarizes online meetings in Zoom, Google Meet, Webex, and Teams. It also creates summaries and allows you to search for key passages in recordings.

As a reminder, Grammarly has changed its name to Superhuman. Netpeak Group has changed its name to Fractal and unveiled a new logo.