Just an interesting article about The Grid.io that I think would make an interesting read: https://www.benhorrix.com/Read/the-grid-is-a-scam?ref=webdesignernews.com
Pretty wordy but entertaining 
It is definitely a scam. Read there faq https://thegrid.io/faq/
Do you give refunds?
Payments, including Founding Memberships, are non-refundable.
So basically if they donāt deliver any product at all, you have paid for nothing. They have no obligation to give you anything.
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Now i know they are just baseless set of s@#%T.
Nothing is more than my Webflow 
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Yep. I havenāt signed up and donāt plan to but I really wish I knew someone who has so that I find out it the product is really in a beta. I would think we would be seeing more examples.
Always makes me nervous when I see so little documentation ā clean, concise documentation is great but theirs is just vague. And early on their are some grammar/spelling issues.
How does The Grid autodesign work?
When you post to your site, our engine measures and analyses your content and crafts a beautiful site driven by human-centered values, constraints and direction. Think of it as your own personal AI Designer.
You know. Some times itās a matter of faith and / or trust.
No one trusted Apple or Microsoft when they first started.
I knowā¦ because I was thereā¦ when Steve Jobs showed off an untested Appleā¦ that crashed.
and later when Bill Gate ran the first ālive / public demoā of DOSā¦ that crashed.
No one knew who either one of these idiots were.
But these idiots changed the world.
And your job probably wouldnāt even existā¦
- if someone years ago hadnāt taken a chance on some idiots.
Andā¦ with Webflowās beginningā¦
- Iām sure some people thought Webflow was a āpipe dreamā as well.
The guys at Webflow will probably - eventually ābecome richāā¦
- and I wonāt see a penny of it.
But at least I have the advantage of using their brainsā¦ in the form of web design tool.
As a āGrid Founding Memberā (I donāt really know what that gets me - if anything)ā¦
- I donāt know if they are a scam or not. I hope not. But again I donāt know.
I do hopeā¦ I will be able to use their brains as well.
And I do have faith.
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I was close to signing up and have continued to consider it. As a founding member, have you heard anything from them regarding updates or progress?
If there is some outward communication, Iād be interested. I emailed support sometime ago with a few questions about hosting and export. Never heard back.
Iāve received 3 emails from themā¦ basically 1 a month
- providing status updates as well as videos of them creating sites.
Theyāve hired more staff as well.
Maybe Iāll through the cash at it then. See what happens.
How can you state that it is definitely a scam? None of us know that for certain, but I have seen a working site made with it on YouTube. My problem is that they are way late and I am still waiting to gain access. I am getting very irritated with them.
Dude, Iād email them now and see if you can get your money back now.
The Grid is putting more than half their budget into advertising to get as many people to buy in as possible and then they are going to abandon it and cash out. Also, what they promised is impossible. Read the first article on this thread and youāll hear it right from an accomplished developer that what they are claiming is not possible with current technology and wonāt be for a very very long time.
Here is a post on another promising app that gained a lot of early adopters who never got their money back and got no product. This happens a lot.
Another recent example is TideKit:
TideKit is the only app development platform that lets you develop HTML5, hybrid and native apps for iOS, Android, Blackberry, Windows, Mac OS X, Linux and the Web ā all from a single source of code written in JavaScript. Create, manage and deploy apps that wow people and monetize everywhere.
I have been too one of the people who signed up for early bird access. After paying 100 USD I have been given a message stating something along the lines of āThank you for your support. We will contact you when it is your turn.ā That moment I realised that their entire purchase flow did not say explicitly that purchasing early bird access will give me access to the beta. I did not get a receipt either. I asked for a refund on the grounds that they are unable to provide the receipt (after repeated requests), they are unable to provide estimate when I will get access to the software and their entire purchase flow is misleading advertisement at its best.
However, TideKit soon released (5 months after I made a purchase) a progress page, which showed that some people are getting access to the beta and even included a progress bar showing completeness of the software (think, UI 90%, backend 95%). What do you think happened when the bar reached 100% Everyone got an email stating that due to bad PR the product is cancelled (here is the full email, tidekit - Is TideSDK defunct? - Stack Overflow). Of course, no one is that naive to believe this.
The think is that as a programmer, you can more or less estimate what is realistically possible in the current time. While TideKit is not absolutely impossible, it is not a task for one developer (which later turned out to be the case with TideKit). Furthermore, existing products in the market (think http://electron.atom.io/ and http://nwjs.io/) are a good indicator of the technical challenges. These programs have a lot smaller scope, have a lot bigger backing, and are struggling with the complexity of the codebase.
How does this relate to the Grid? Well, there is nothing near in the market that compares to what the Grid is promising. The components of which the Grid is supposed to consists (which are well described in the original post) do not exist either, or are at a very early stage of maturity. There are no certain deadlines. You cannot name/find a single person who has used it already. There is a huge PR around it (Do you think youād really need a huge PR for a fully AI web development software? lol, please.).
At its best, it is going to be drag-and-drop/answer standard set of questions, component driven web CMS. At its worst, it will be shut down in a similar way that TideKit has.
You can read more about the story:
http://stackoverflow.com/questions/24440371/is-tidesdk-defunct
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It might be a scam. Or, It might not be. I donāt knowā¦ and I donāt think you know either.
What I do know isā¦ I invest in stocks, small businesses, and ideas / concepts.
A golden rule in any type of investing isā¦ - investing is a gamble.
And you donāt gamble with the food on your childās dinner plate.
If you gambleā¦ use your own plate.
If donāt have a plate - or donāt have the stomach to accept a lossā¦
then maybe you shouldnāt be investing the first place.
Itās seem you are angryā¦ because you sense losing your gamble.
You took the risk. Why not ride it through and see if the gamble works out
- before criticizing your own (pre-assumed) mistake.
I personally hope itās not a scam. And I donāt think it is. But I am also not a fortune teller or a time traveler.
Simply because someone gets investors to ābuy-inā to an ideaā¦ and it fails
- doesnāt mean itās a scam.
Webflow went out and got investors. If the business model had failed (and it still could)ā¦
- are you calling them scammers ?
It would be cool to time travel though.
Well, I hope you arenāt right about them. Luckily for me, I received a membership for free in exchange for a promo. Iām a YouTuber and I highlight things from time to time so I reached out to them.
But hey, is it wrong to see the signs before making personal conclusions? Itās better people become cautious before diving into the UNKWOWN.
absolutely not.
but according this postā¦
- āGRID IS A SCAM NO IF ANDS OR BUTS ABOUT ITā and hereās proof showing a different unrelated scam ???
Whatās up with that. If Grid is a scam - then prove it.
If they are in fact a scamā¦ then quite a few people will be affected - including myself.
but simply because a company doesnāt delivery on a promise - doesnāt automatically make them a scam.
Scamming by nature is intensional. You have to purposely set out to scam someone / peopleā¦ in order to scam them.
I think it makes sense ?
The previous posts tend to point to āother supposed scamsā in order to prove that grid āis a scamā.
and as I saidā¦ I hope they are not (a scam).
So farā¦ if the Grid fails to deliverā¦ then I would say itās a failure to launch. Perhaps their bar was set to high.
Until provenā¦ itās not a scamā¦ no matter āwhat you think it may beā.
Nowā¦ warning people that it āmay be a scamā is different than whatās happened in this post.
As I started of withā¦
according this postā¦
- āGRID IS A SCAM NO IF ANDS OR BUTS ABOUT ITā and hereās proof showing a different unrelated scam ???
Howeverā¦ if the owner of this previous tidekit happens to be the same person that runs the Gridā¦ then there might some correlation there.
See what I mean ? Just show some real proof before you call someone a liar.
Some people (not saying who - just people in general) tend to historically jump the gun and call honest people - liarsā¦ without proof.
Btw, Iām not sure if The Grid has a real, live working website that they can show us so we can delve into the HTML/CSS source code generated by their AI, but their trailer and all their youtube āproduct demosā can be done in AfterEffects to stimulate a āreal liveā working demo, if you get what I mean.
I do get it.
So much soā¦ that I decided to look for myself.
The grid website says āIts first masterpiece is the website youāre looking at right now.ā
And in reviewing the grid sourceā¦ the source is garbage. About as non-search-engine-friendly as you can get.
Then I dug deeperā¦
Ever hear the termā¦ 6 degrees of separation ?
Well, it turns outā¦ after sending a few emailsā¦
- I know one of the investors. Not a āfounding memberā mind youā¦
- an actual investor.
I know himā¦ because I actually filled out the incorporation paperwork for him several years ago.
And heās done well.
He didnāt provide much details - and I didnāt ask for detailsā¦
- but he did mention he had 7 figures invested into the grid
- and if it was scamā¦ heād be up a very big creek.
Considering heās only 1 degree away from meā¦ which places the grid founder 2 degrees awayā¦
I think Iām done with this conversation.
Articleās author is mostly arguing with himself. Everything developers actually promised in their teaser video is 100% possible. In fact, theyāve never mentioned anything like āartificial intelligence which you interact with in the same way as you would a humanā or āmachine that exhibits general business intelligence and language skills enough to interpret requirements and incorporate them into a websiteā. Thatās just Benās fantasies, whoās heard familiar keyword āAIā.
I think we should expect some kind of blog with style, importancy, layout and other filters ā the more the better. If some would turn blog into internet-shop, landing page or whatever, itāll make perfect sense to me. You donāt need ācredible AI researcherā for managing content & layout rules.
And if I become founder member is means, what I invest actions in The Grid?
The problem with this entire post is that none of your examples asked for money upfront for nothing guaranteed in return at the time of purchase. That is exactly what the grid is doing. I could build a fake website selling whatever seems like it would sell and ask for people to be founding members in exchange for a yearly fee and then take the money and run. It just all does not seem legit. What makes you trust them? Because they have lots of ads on all kinds of media? Thats precisely what you would want to do if your point was to take peoples money. If what they are proposing is true, they wouldnāt need so much advertising. They would have articles constantly in mainstream media toting new AI will make your website for you. The real question is why are you defending them instead of asking the same questions?
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as a graphic designer when i first heard about The Grid my first thought was, āoh crap! i was hoping iād be retired before i had to worry about being replaced by robots.ā so iām kinda rooting for it being a scam, or at least not all itās cracked up to be.
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