I was at an AI meetup today and was quite surprised by a few of the hardcore techies, to include VC investor types and a couple of founders that have bought into the scam narrative. These guys are just buying into the negative narrative, hook, line and sinker. And these guys aren’t dumb, so I’m surprised by how bought in they are to what is being wielded out there. Some work from the PR team is probably needed in the tech circles around what Rabbit is trying to accomplish out there.
Yes. We have some work to do, but to my mind it’s simply about persistence, and buckling down to keep making r1 better all the time as we have been doing. Each update brings new uses cases, new improvements, and counters that narrative a little bit. And with each batch that ships, more people get, most love it, and a small percentage return it.
These people may not be dumb, but they certainly aren’t thinking logically about this.
A scam wouldn’t ship devices and keep a constant pace of updates.
The claims simply don’t stand up to scrutiny. First people try and say LAM is not real. Then we point out that LAM is already operating on the device with things like Spotify and Midjourney. Then they say “oh well, a real LAM wouldn’t work like this” - but we invented LAM, so who are they to say how it should or shouldn’t work? So at that point it’s a subjective personal opinion. Next they’ll say Teach Mode isn’t real. And later this year, we’ll prove without a shadow of a doubt that it is.
Eventually, all their claims will be proven wrong, and they have nowhere to go at that point.
I can’t wait to see y’all prove the haters wrong. That being said, they’ll absolutely come up with something else to cope about once you do.
Don’t get me wrong Simon, I’m not buying into it. My only point in sharing was that it is a datapoint that the targeted propaganda has some reach. These are the points in time when you have to go on the offensive, regardless of the facts. I put some facts in there myself to help counter. But then it didn’t help that my recording session didn’t work, so it was kind of a wash.
Yep, it definitely does and we’ll do what we can, I agree we should go on the offensive and we will.
One thing we’ve realised very quickly is that with the scrutiny, the attacks, etc… we’re not getting treated like what we are, which is a new and small startup with a gen 1 product.
We’re getting treated like a much bigger and more established company. Which is really quite strange when you think about it.
I think that’s the way to be, really. Head down, keep getting it to where it needs to be.
IMO the whole ‘scam’ claim already fell through with a shippable product, already in peoples’ hands, that receives constant updates. Did it have a bit rougher start than I think customers and rabbit would have liked? Sure, we all know it did, but I’d like to see most of those people try and open a business, create a product, etc, and not deal with a rocky launch or the inevitable problem. So many things that happen that you can’t always adjust or plan for right away.
I’m not saying use being a small startup as an excuse, but I also think it’s crazy they hold a small team on the same level as Samsung, Apple, or whatever.
At the end of the day, people don’t care about the company size, or honestly whether you guys do well or not, they want the attention negativity gets them of jumping on that bandwagon. And for the consumers, it’s easier to buy into a negative review then a positive one. For every negative comment/review you need like 10x positive just to even it out, and even then it takes time.
I mean heck, I’ve been using the Plaud AI recorder for all of this year, and back in Jan/Feb you couldn’t find a single positive thing online about it - people called it a scam, support was overwhelmed and took forever to get back to people, shipping was delayed, etc etc - you name it. People were even harassing the CEO on linkedin. The problem was, they A) shipped too early so a lot of features weren’t there or fleshed out yet, and B) had way more interest than they expected, causing a huge shipping backup. They kept their head down and pushed on.
I got mine pretty early on, and it had its issues, but it worked and was in hand, so I was hopeful - fast track 5 months later, tons of updates, new app, beta group they talk to people in every day, etc. People are posting positive things online, and it’s not getting slammed online anymore. To me, a good example of making the best of a (very) bad launch and turning it around.
So while I absolutely agree there’s still a lot of negativity that is a bit hammered on by certain people out there, I def think for now head down and persistence is going to do so much to help change peoples’ minds.