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AI sales startup 11x claims customers it doesn’t have for software that doesn’t work
(pivot-to-ai.com)
Short version: alleged sales and investor fraud + AI.
this post was submitted on 25 Mar 2025
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Big brain tech dude got yet another clueless take over at HackerNews etc? Here's the place to vent. Orange site, VC foolishness, all welcome.
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claiming to have customers you don't actually have so vocally that they have to sue you to get their names out of your mouth should be a death knell on its own, but the whole "pretending their already-expired three-month trial contract is still in effect for the full year" is a great way to find yourself pulling a Sam Bankman-Fried, except that you don't have a side company to pull $$$ from to cover your tracks
The investors read "11x, the company's, revenue is 10 million" but what they missed was that the correct reading was "11 x [the company's revenue] is 10 million", so the actual revenue is less than a million. Easy mistake to make! Better luck next time investors!
Hilarious. How much do you want to bet they vibe-coded the whole app.
Surely not, their whole dev team is made of 11x programmers!
actual lol
I'd bet good money they vibe-coded the whole thing. Its AI, the whole point is to enable laziness, grifts and laziness in grifts.
I'm hoping (but it might've been juuuust a bit too early for it to be all-parts applicable)
(and as in: this kind of recurring fraudy misrepresentation is very personal - takes a human to lie like that)
((maybe if the promptfans showed me a prompt lying like this I could take them even slightly seriously? alas))
this headline though... awful grammar
Nah, that's regular English. Plain sometimes hard to read English.
random guess, but: "11x” is the name of the company, that's not "eleven times"
You are correct, and a company with this kind of name should NOT have its name reported in the headline because it's confusing and not well-known enough to avoid that confusion.
Substitute that for "AI start-up" and the headline is immediately more clear
Al sales startup AI start-up claims...
much better :3
Oh hey, a classic troll farm comment. Did you just wake from cryosleep? Facebook is thataway ->
what
Am I having a stroke or does that title just not make sense?
The headline is a bit of a crash blossom, but if you read the article, the comments in this thread, or even the title itself carefully enough, you should be able to parse it. If not, I'll help:
A startup company named "11x", whose business model is AI sales, claims to have customers for its software (which incidentally doesn't work), who in fact are not their customers.
don't worry, you're probably just thick
True but this time I was just tired and drunk hahaha. Reading it now makes sense
No, that title is orthographically wrong, besides using some very non-standard phrasing: the name of the startup, 11x, should have been between commas.
Breaking: Reply Guy Baffled By Headlinese Complains About Punctuation, Tortures Comma, Semicolon
,ahahaha, what,
AI sales startup Never claims customers it doesn’t have for software that doesn’t work
See how that risks getting really confusing without commas or quotes?
They're called appositive commas and they surround "not essential" add-on information. The name of the startup here is not truly essential, it's added just for color (pretty sure nobody'd think, "oh, a typo" if they wrote "12x").
[Guy who just learned what an appositive comma is]: "Hey, this could really benefit from some appositive commas"
The name of the company is actually important information in a news story about a company.
And yes, if you change the headline to one that is confusing, then it becomes confusing.
wow! imagine if this post was funny, informative, or even fucking correct at all
I notice you didn’t give an example of the title with appositive commas though. maybe because it flows like shit?
or alternatively, and hear me out here
lecture me on fucking grammar again like a mediocre grade school teacher and get banned
I'm assuming you're a mod or admin here? I'm surprised you took my explanation as lecturing... I was merely explaining in what way that title is wrong when you mocked my comment. No offense meant.
Stand up straight when I'm talking to you!
I never knew you were a person who wielded a lot of power here. I'm glad you mentioned that, as anyone with confidence in themselves should.
If I catch you missing another capital letter or punctuation mark, you're off to the principal, you hear me?
Please accept my apologies and hope that we can overlook this momentary lapse on my part. Please, no ban?
Wow, look at that sass. Are you doing anything later tonight? 'Cause I doubt you'll be posting here.
Hey, your reply earlier was pretty sassy and funny too. I upvoted!
hahaha yeah nah this ain’t it
but while you’re briefly still here, you know what really helped me when I was 13 and still an absolute shithead about what I was led to believe was the one true proper english, to the detriment of my ability to write with tone and feeling?
I read achewood and I finally understood how to write with texture
anyway you won’t take this advice because you’re the type who gets off on incorrecting someone else’s writing, but for a better audience than you: read achewood and finally understand
Cool. Do Oxford comma next!