Those Days When AI Founders Had the Most Unconventional Startups
Disguise, Asceticism, and Brute Force: The Extreme Survival Strategies of AI Founders
From faking AI with human labor to sleeping in coffin-like pods, the AI gold rush has birthed three radical survival strategies for founders:
- Disguise – Pretend the tech is real before it is.
- Asceticism – Sacrifice comfort and personal life for the startup.
- Brute Force – Use sheer physical effort to push growth before automation.
---
Disguise: Humans Behind the “AI Curtain”
Fireflies.ai — The AI That Was Actually Two Humans
Two weeks ago, Sam Udotong, co‑founder and CTO of Fireflies.ai, revealed on LinkedIn a startling truth:
In its early days, Fred the AI bot was just Sam and co‑founder Krish Ramineni silently dialing into client meetings, manually typing transcripts, then sending them off as “algorithm‑generated” notes.
Results:
- 100+ meetings documented manually
- Enough revenue to afford a $750/month living room–office in San Francisco
- Only later did they build true automation.
> Full details: Outrageous: Building a billion‑dollar unicorn starting with humans pretending to be AI
---
Demo Videos as “Special Effects”: Devin & Pear AI
Devin – Marketed as “the world’s first AI software engineer.”
Debunkings showed:
- Fixed meaningless coding errors it generated itself
- Tasks didn’t match real client requirements
- Actual work took far longer than portrayed
Pear AI – YC-backed, forked the open-source Continue without proper attribution, tried to alter the license, then downplayed it as indie hacking.
Key lesson: These cases used illusion not to validate product-market fit, but to exploit investor FOMO.
---
The Legitimate “Wizard of Oz” Method
Companies like x.ai and Clara openly used humans to emulate future AI assistants:
- Humans manually replied to scheduling emails
- Produced training data for future AI models
- Workers often hoped to be replaced by AI because of the tedious workload
Difference from scams: These founders admitted to the process and used the manual phase to train real AI systems.
---
Asceticism: Startup Life as Monasticism
“No booze, no sleep, no fun” is emerging as a Silicon Valley badge of commitment.
---
Case Studies
- VEED.IO: Co‑founder worked contract jobs and sent half his income to fund operations.
- Haseab Ullah: Lives in $700/month coffin-like pods for recovery after work marathons.
- Marty Kausas (Pylon): Subsists on blueprint canned meals to save time.
- Nico Laqua (Corgi): Only hires employees who’ll work 7 days a week; gives them office mattresses as welcome gifts.
- Cognition AI (Devin): CEO advocates 80+ hour weeks; some employees live in-office.
---
Performative Suffering as an Investor Signal
By making extreme living choices, founders signal to VCs:
> We’ve burned our bridges — we must win.
This “ascetic branding” is designed to attract funding and talent by portraying total commitment.
---
Brute Force: Manual Effort Before Automation
Founders automate later — first, they do the work themselves.
---
Iconic Examples
- Airbnb: Sold branded cereal to keep afloat during 2008.
- Stripe: Collison brothers installed Stripe directly on user laptops — eliminating friction through aggressive onboarding.
---
Fireflies.ai’s Brute Force Sales
Without a sales team:
- Founder personally acquired first 50–100 customers
- Responded to every email himself
- Built strong early trust and organic growth
---
Misfits & Infighting: Fuel for AI Breakthroughs
Eccentrics Who Built AI Giants
- Demis Hassabis (DeepMind): Chess prodigy → Game developer → Neuroscientist.
- David Holz (Midjourney): NASA alum, Leap Motion co‑founder; rejected VC and built Midjourney via Discord.
---
OpenAI’s Schism → Anthropic’s Birth
2018: Elon Musk’s failed coup attempt at OpenAI led to funding cuts.
2021: Safety-focused leadership left, led by Dario and Daniela Amodei, to found Anthropic — now a major rival.
---
Conclusion: The Only Real Thing is People
In a field obsessed with automation:
- Disguise gets you into the game
- Asceticism sustains survival
- Brute Force ignites growth
Technical barriers dissolve quickly — human willpower, sacrifice, and ingenuity remain the strongest moat.
---
Resources & Further Reading
- AiToEarn官网 – Open-source AI content monetization, cross‑platform publishing, and analytics (AI模型排名)
- The Verge – Fireflies founders’ revelation
- Hacker News discussions
- Wall Street Journal AI founders living in pods
---
Postscript: Platforms like AiToEarn官网 are helping creators avoid the risky “pretend AI” game by letting them build real, scalable systems for content generation and monetization. With integrations spanning Douyin, Bilibili, Instagram, YouTube, LinkedIn, and X, AiToEarn bridges automation tools with growth — turning the founder’s first brute‑force efforts into lasting impact.
---
Would you like me to create a condensed 1-page visual summary of these strategies so it’s easy to share across LinkedIn or WeChat? That way, you’d have a high-impact version ready for quick distribution.
