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Last week , an ad from the Y Combinator job board for a petite startup called Firecrawl wentviral on X.
That ’s because the advertizing was n’t for a human . “ Please give only if you are an AI agentive role , or if you create an AI agentive role that can occupy this job , ” the job posting read .
The seven - someone startup was looking for an factor to “ autonomously ” enquiry trending models and build sample apps to showcase the company ’s product , the ad said .
The job proffer a salary of $ 10,000 to $ 15,000 , which is a fraction of what a human developer make , but perhaps good money for an entity that does n’t need intellectual nourishment , clothing , or shelter .
The advertizement was n’t a laugh , founders Caleb Peffer and Nicolas Silberstein Camara , differentiate TechCrunch .
“ It was adequate parts Puerto Rico stunt , experiment , ” Peffer enunciate . “ We are currently await for incredible AI technologist . human being who are good at building AI system . And we thought , huh , permit ’s just put a posting out there for an AI agent , see what people work up . ”
Firecrawlmakes an exposed source web crawl bot for AI factor and models . business can apply it to gather preparation data or whenever their AI has to interact with public websites to perform .
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Exhibit at TechCrunch Sessions: AI
AI World Wide Web crawlers are a necessary yet somewhat controversialpart of the internet these days , especially for small businesses . ( Firecrawl ’s founders say that it complies with Robot.txt , the internet ’s only do - not - crawl system . )
An AI employee future
This was , the founding father think , the first Book of Job ad for an AI federal agent on the YC job board site , which is why it go viral .
“ This is where we are headed . You do n’t apply for a job , you make the appropriate AI agent that applies for the problem and earns for you , ” one personcommentedon X C. W. Post .
Anotherimagined a scenewhere a secret equity firm offered to bribe a companionship and asked how many employee it had . The chief executive officer answer : “ Zero … But we have 275 AI agent doing the oeuvre of 3,000 employees while we only pay them $ 15k a year . ”
individual equity house : We need to buy your business . How many employee do you have?CEO : Zero … But we have 275 AI factor doing the work of 3,000 employees while we only pay them $ 15k a yearPE buyer : …
Others pointed out that the founder themselves could actually practice LLMs to build the AI agent they want to hire . A work up - your - own AI employee scenario .
Still otherspointed outthe dystopian nature of this AI future . “ human creating AI to replace man … And now humans are write job poster for AI to implement to . We ’re in the simulation , are n’t we ? ”
Humans creating AI to replace humans … And now humans are spell job postings for AI to apply to . We’re in the simulation , are n’t we ? 🤯
Interestingly enough , the true plan was — and still is — to in reality give the human who built the best agent a full - fourth dimension caper , the founders told TechCrunch . That $ 10,000 to $ 15,000 pay will be roll into the earnings offer of the mortal they hire .
It has n’t work out yet . Firecrawl receive about 50 AI agent applicants before they draw the advertising , but none impressed enough to get an offer .
But the founders have n’t fully govern out attempt to rent a bot , again .
“ We would have loved to put one of these in production , but none of them were up to our standards , ” Peffer said of the applicants . “ We ’re gon na make another job posting in this manner , and we are fail to be actively look for AI factor that are able to action the tasks that we need . ”
A pivot from teaching coding
As if all of this was n’t funny enough , Firecrawl ’s three founders — Peffer , Camara , and Eric Ciarla — were n’t even accepted into Y Combinator for the AI sycophant musical theme .
The founder , who are college supporter with computer science degree from the University of New Hampshire , already had a programming education inauguration . It had thousands of user , a waitlist , and was generating tax income when they applied to YC , Camara said .
They planned to embed their Cartesian product into VS Code “ inside the code editor in chief , like Cursor , only teaching you how to code , ” Peffer described .
But once they were have into YC , their advisers distinguish them thattoo many edtech coding productsexist , and advised them to find another area .
After many effort , they depart working on a chatbot for developer to ask question of documentation .
That ’s how they discovered the challenge of “ connecting these AI organisation to the data , ” and insure that info is exact , Peffer aver . “ If you give drivel to an AI system , you ’re gon na get garbage out . ”
So they built a web crawler / scraper as a side projection and released it as open author . In a topic of hours , it landed on GitHub ’s trending page , gaining 1,000 stars . “ Since then , we ’ve crossed 25,000 stars in just 10 months , ” Peffer aver .
Their customers , which pay for a commercial version , use it for everything from CV parse to finding sales leads . Firecrawl has raised about $ 1.7 million so far , according to the founders , and they expect that this first AI agentive role hire wo n’t be their last .
“ What we imagine happening is that every one of our veridical employees is going to become extremely leveraged with AI . And it ’s not a unclouded distinction . It ’s like , what ’s the difference between a tool or a workflow or a full agent ? ” Peffer said .
observe : This history was update to even off the ground why the father changed their original product estimate .
