
Firedrop: A website builder that does everything for you - spking
https://firedrop.ai/
======
seibelj
This is exactly like The Grid, even down to their landing page marketing. The
grid was such an obvious fuck-up I wrote an article about it several months
ago [0]. I have never seen such a difference between hype ("AI Will design
your web page - Never hire an engineer again!") and reality ("Everything looks
like shit and takes forever, get your refund fast before we go broke").

[0] [https://medium.com/@seibelj/the-grid-over-promise-under-
deli...](https://medium.com/@seibelj/the-grid-over-promise-under-deliver-and-
the-lies-told-by-ai-startups-40aa98415d8e#.4p5ehfv5d)

~~~
reitzensteinm
I thought it _was_ The Grid.

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marc_firedrop
Hey guys, Marc from Firedrop here. I completely understand the negative
comments here about The Grid. I was super excited when The Grid came out and
paid up the $90 like a lot of people, only to be hugely disappointed when I
actually used it. They're pioneers in this space and they've done a lot of
really interesting and cool work... but they've misunderstood their users
hugely and made too many assumptions about them regarding design decisions.
We're taking a different approach where our platform listens and learns more
closely from the users rather than whatever broad abstract data set they're
using. It'll lead to less "out there" designs that people will be happy with.

~~~
metafunctor
Kudos for going for it!

What, in particular, would you say you're doing better than The Grid? Which
design assumptions are you not doing, and how is your approach different in
terms of learning and listening to the users?

~~~
marc_firedrop
Thanks for the kudos! Hopefully we can deliver where The Grid couldn't. We
actually paid close attention to what they did and think we've learned a few
things.

The main difference is that we are spending more time learning what the user
likes first before offering design options. Options being a key word here,
because The Grid doesn't really have much of a feedback system and even their
latest V2 alpha resorts largely to guesswork, whereas our system will give you
choices and ask questions like "Do you like this?" at the appropriate points.

The experience we're going for is the one you get from working with a human
web designer: at first it's a two-way discovery process and then, over time,
the web designer gets to know and understand you and therefore becomes better
at nailing what you want straight away. Simultaneously, the platform will
learn from anonymised behaviours from its other users, mixed with analytics
monitoring, to discover recommendations that it can pass on to you as a user.
For example, imagine you're a restaurant owner and you have a button that
links to your booking engine which is labelled "Reserve a table". Our platform
learns, from other restaurant sites on the network, that "Book a table" has a
higher conversion rate, so it can pass that recommendation automatically on to
your site. That kind of thing.

------
iverjo
Designing websites with the help of AI methods is hard. thegrid.io is
competing in this space, and I'm not impressed with what they have achieved so
far. Initially they stated that they would launch some time in the spring last
year. It's been over a year now, and they still haven't given all the beta
users access. Yesterday, The Grid featured a website [0] created with their
tool. That website takes around 25 seconds to load, even with my speedy
internet connection. Also, I wasn't impressed by the menu, which was merely a
hamburger button. I think they need to focus more on UX and faster loading
times and less on fancy image processing and color matching algorithms. I wish
Firedrop luck going forward, and hope that they learn from The Grid's
mistakes.

[0] [http://curlqueen.salon/](http://curlqueen.salon/)

~~~
rbinv
Wow. That page loads 41 MB.

~~~
heyts
Including one 18.9Mb gif and no less than 6 jpgs clocking between 1.9 and 5.9
Mb. Looks like counter-optimization at this stage.

~~~
rhizome
At least you can assume that all of your images will always be full-
resolution.

------
Nadya
So [https://thegrid.io/](https://thegrid.io/) ? Without the big names behind
it?

I gave "The Grid" a spin myself but haven't really used or updated my site due
to lack of time. I browsed the directories of other peoples' sites [0]
manually and only 1-2 were "alright" with most of them being rather bad. I'd
be disappointed if my expectations for it weren't near rock bottom to begin
with.

Due to it being A.I-based the only thing I can really say is "It's been tried
before. Best of luck on doing it better."

[0] [https://github.com/the-domains](https://github.com/the-domains)

~~~
tensor
I don't see any reason to believe that just because the idea failed in
implementation once that it will forever. In all likelihood, if we try at the
problem long enough someone will eventually figure out algorithms that work
fairly well.

Perhaps "AI design" competitions or benchmarks would help this line of work.
But people trying multiple times can only be a good thing, even if the early
attempts are not great.

~~~
Nadya
_> Due to it being A.I-based the only thing I can really say is "It's been
tried before. Best of luck on doing it better."_

I'm sincere in saying that. But unless you somehow draw up some marketing hype
- it becomes increasingly unlikely to receive funding for an idea that's
failed in the past unless you have some tangible evidence about how you're
avoiding running into the same problems.

If (/when) they have an actual product we'll see if they managed to do it
better. But there have already been enough failed attempts (TheGrid wasn't the
first or only one since) to not be hyped because "AI codes my site".

So with nothing else to go off of other than "This is attempt #x by some new
people (or person)" I can't say I'm excited or have high expectations. I'd be
lying.

------
mgberlin
The logo is really, really close to that of Lightspeed,
[https://www.lightspeedhq.com/](https://www.lightspeedhq.com/)

~~~
fizx
Lightspeed was probably in the training set ;)

------
seanwilson
I'm really not seeing how you can just take content from a client and
algorithmically design a website that will make them happy. It's hard enough
doing it manually with lots of feedback and iterations. This sounds well
beyond what current AI can deal with from first impressions but I'm willing to
be convinced.

~~~
marc_firedrop
It's a case of sensible compromise and balance between offering suggestions,
taking feedback in frictionless ways, and learning. I've learned from running
digital agencies over the years that a lot of the processes that you go
through in a web project can be distilled down to heuristic choices and that's
what we started with. The rest us refinement through machine learning
techniques.

------
comex
If this works, I think the technology is exactly what's needed for the tool to
become incredibly popular... but the marketing is slightly off.

The message is that the AI will do _all_ the work for you, make _all_ of the
choices for you. But people like to design things! Not the precise work of
arranging layouts, colors palettes, images, etc., probably, maybe not building
things from scratch when they don't know the tricks needed to achieve that
intangible feeling of professionalism - and certainly not the coding that most
people have no idea how to do. But being involved at the last step, things
like being given a choice of layouts and asked to render an aesthetic
judgement on which is best, which needs no training* - in my experience, most
people love that. It gives a sense of control, personalization,
accomplishment. And on the flipside, the feeling that one has _no_ control can
be quite negative and frustrating.

But in many cases, choice is something an AI designer can offer as an
_advantage_ over traditional methods. After all, if you don't want to shell
out the money for a professional custom design, you're typically stuck copying
other people's templates with at most minor changes. In theory, an AI can let
you make more meaningful permutations to the design to make it feel more
personalized. Heck, I think even just the perception that a design is "from
scratch" rather than "copied from someone else" would be valuable, even if
your "AI" is dumb enough that in reality it amounts to the same thing.

If you do want to shell out the money, well, I don't expect a site builder to
be able to compete with the results of that - but it's worth noting that you
can spend as much time as you want nitpicking an AI design without worrying
about wasting the designer's time.

I can't really tell from the video how many actual customization options the
tool will have, but I think it should have as many as possible - all optional,
of course, and probably most trivial - and be marketed like "anyone can design
a website in a few clicks", _not_ "we'll do it all for you".

*well, experience is probably required to actually pick the best one, but if all the choices are good then it doesn't matter much :)

~~~
marc_firedrop
That's actually spot on. I ran digital agencies for the past few years and it
was always important that the client had some kind of input to the process,
regardless of how good the design concept was. It's a simple pyschological
need for a person to feel some kind of ownership and connection with their
site, which is where I really feel The Grid has gone wrong because their
designs are so far off what people want or are used to.

We're updating the site in the coming days to demonstrate better how we
involve the user, and presenting different layouts is actually one of the ways
in which we do it. Firedrop is more of an A.I. web designer than a tool: you
interact with it in a much more engaging and human way.

~~~
panic
Yeah, I think "collaborating with an AI designer" would be a compelling way to
explain it! It's helping you design your site the way you want, not doing it
for you.

------
spiderfarmer
Same idea as the horrific trainwreck known as The Grid.

~~~
mikejarema
I've heard about The Grid and paid attention for a little while with some
excitement, however lost track of them.

What do you mean by a "horrific trainwreck"? What happened... nothing?

~~~
spiderfarmer
See (the links in) this thread:
[https://www.designernews.co/stories/65265-the-first-
gridio-s...](https://www.designernews.co/stories/65265-the-first-gridio-sites-
have-surfaced-and-theyre-kinda-terrible)

------
ricardobeat
"The grid" all over again? I still feel robbed of my $90...

~~~
mrfusion
Explain

~~~
napworth
The grid.io was an AI version of something like squarespace. The premise was
you wrote the content and uploaded the images, and it would select the best
design for you.

Unfortunately, it didn't work well in practice. This was only discovered a
year after tens of thousands of people signed up, when it was finally
released.

Big impact for the announcement video. Small impact for the release.

------
xkcd-sucks
Without seeing any example work on the page it's difficult to tell what's
going on, but maybe they're going to

(1) Raise a bunch of VC money

(2) Farm out website design to Fiverr/Bangladesh at cost

(3) Raise some more VC money

...

(?) Maybe plop some stuff into a RNN model and see what comes out

------
personjerry
It's Unbounce with a gimmick. Is the gimmick a 10x innovation? Unlikely, since
it seems likely the designer would have to go in and do their own edits
anyway.

------
andreyk
The GIF on their site makes it seem barely more impressive than using a basic
'make this in half an hour in a hackathon' template. But the bit about
continuous improvement is interesting:

"Our learning algorithms monitor your visitors' behaviour, perform automatic
A/B testing and make continuous incremental improvements to your site in order
to improve conversion rates and help your website to grow."

Consider me skeptical.

~~~
xkcd-sucks
Continuous improvement through machine learning seems like fodder for a really
fun 4/8chan thread

------
danblick
I'm curious about the relevant economics here.

A fully automated system for designing websites could make it easier to design
good-looking websites without hiring a designer.

If your system works perfectly, that allows someone who wants a website to
save: (1) the transaction cost of hiring a designer, and (2) the cost of the
designer's labor (wages). Additionally this person has to "pay" the cost of
learning to use the automated system.

Which of factors (1) or (2) is larger? I imagine it's probably (1) -- the
hassle of hiring and managing a designer is large relative to the actual cost
of labor. Does that sound right?

------
fiatjaf
I wish there was something less fancy, less automated, less AI, but that just
displayed content we dumped into it in a more-or-less sane way.

Write anything, upload files, anything, and all will be there in the website
somewhere.

~~~
sriku
Probably not quite what you have in mind, but I use Camlistore like that ...
though not for a public site.

~~~
fiatjaf
I've tried Camlistore in the past, just because of that ideal I have in mind
(if I remember well).

------
sriku
TheGrid's cool contribution has been GSS - "grid CSS" \- where the style sheet
is resolved using a constraint solver.

From there to claiming "AI" is probably the mistaken view of the original AI
wave.

------
kepano
Oh god. Not again.

------
king_magic
It almost feels like this piece would be a far more compelling product by
itself:

 _" Our learning algorithms monitor your visitors' behaviour, perform
automatic A/B testing and make continuous incremental improvements to your
site in order to improve conversion rates and help your website to grow."_

I'm fairly "meh" on the main concept of an AI-designed website (though good
luck!), but the piece I highlighted above? I'd be way more interested in that,
personally.

------
lopatin
So much negativity in here. I personally think that A.I. website builders are
the future. I haven't used Firedrop, and can't tell too much from the landing
page, but anyone exploring the space is worth following I think.

------
huula
@marc_firedrop Mind if you can share what your training set is?

~~~
marc_firedrop
I can't share the set itself but can tell you a portion of it was made up of
scans of open-source website template that we've hand picked based on
popularity and quality and then labelled using Crowd Flower. The minimum we
are looking to achieve is websites that can compete with anything you might
find on Themeforest or Wordpress.

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sqba
"Is it just me, or do all websites look the same?" This site looks so
different that it must have been built by an AI:)

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ohstopitu
a while back, I interviewed at a company that wanted to use ML (tesorflow was
mentioned in passing) to create something similar (they were trying to create
Shopify + this).

I was extremely interested in the project, but sadly I was told that my skills
didn't align to their new pivoting vision.

------
yegorz
Meh

~~~
dotscott
Yup

------
CharlesW
Yay

(Wait, is enthusiasm for people trying something new bad here? If so, "Meh".)

~~~
napworth
Don't try to copy whatever you think the accepted response on HN is. Make your
own opinions and stick with them.

~~~
CharlesW
It was a (failed) joke in reference to a flurry of initial negative/content-
free responses. I was trying to be gentle about it, but I'd have done better
by being as straightforward as your response. As an HN n00b, I appreciate the
feedback.

From a designoper POV, the idea is sound (visual and information design isn't
magick) and I wish them all the luck in the world. A good solution will fill a
real need.

The comments about "The Grid" are irrelevant, except as (surely known) lessons
to the Firedrop creators. Anyone with industry experience understands that
attempts will fail, until they don't.

