11x and the AI-SDR space..Time to get real?
A case for invisible AI?
11x - the much celebrated AI SDR startup’s real story is out.
They faked it.
Apart from faking customer logos, they even used weird calculations to inflate ARR.
11x was “adamant” that prospects wishing to conduct pilot programs sign a one-year contract.
Instead, 11x offered customers a break clause, typically at three months, that made it easy for customers to break the contract. This worked essentially as a trial period, these former employees and potential customer said.
But when reporting annual recurring revenue (ARR), the company didn’t differentiate between trial periods and long-term customers, former and current employees said. The company would calculate ARR based on the full year / via
A critical aspect of 11x's purported success was its impressive roster of clients, prominently displayed on its website.However, investigations have uncovered that several of these endorsements were fabricated. For instance, ZoomInfo, a well-known sales data and automation tools provider, stated unequivocally:
“We did not give them permission to use our logo in any manner, and we are not a customer. During the pilot, 11x’s product performed significantly worse than our SDR employees, and we did not move forward afterward – ZoomInfo spokesperson
ZoomInfo clarified that their interaction with 11x was limited to a brief, one-month trial from mid-January to mid-February. During this period, 11x's product reportedly underperformed compared to ZoomInfo's internal SDR team, leading them to discontinue the engagement. Despite this, 11x continued to misrepresent ZoomInfo as a client across various platforms.
Investor a16z is even considering legal action against the company.
The big question
We are seeing a plethora of ‘AI can replace your entire sales team, your engineering team, your marketing team’ claims by companies, but the reality is somewhere in between (actually not even close to the claims made by AI companies).
We are actually in a vibe mode - trying to feel good talking about new innovations, new products, pathbreaking ideas - even though we know that these don’t live up to the hype.
For e.g. most of the AI coding tools that claim ‘idea to app’ hardly work with complex ideas / or even image generation tools hardly meet our requirements for ‘real work’ (works well for hobby purpose)
Make AI Invisible ?
Against VC’s wishes, I believe that AI shouldn’t even try to replace humans - we are very early in this game.
Instead, the entire effort should be to make humans more productive, 10x better in their personal as well as professional lives.
Right now, the entire AI community is focused on pushing AI to the forefront, but instead I’d say - let’s put AI in the backend, make it invisible and instead, empower humans to do their best work.
What says?