My thoughts about 11x and the TechCrunch allegations
What happens when one of the most-hyped AI sales startups starts making headlines for all the wrong reasons?
Say what you want about 11x, but they’re one of the most talked-about players in AI sales. So whether you love them or doubt them, you can’t ignore the impact they’ve had.
As a competitor, 11x has regularly pushed us to up our game at AiSDR, which drove us to build better, move faster, and raise the bar for what AI can do in sales.
For that alone, they deserve credit.
But with great visibility comes greater scrutiny.
The recent TechCrunch article painted a worrying picture and sparked conversations that can’t be ignored. I don’t know if everything in the article is true or factually accurate, but many of the claims echo the conversations I’ve had with customers, prospects, and even former 11x team members.
As someone who’s been close to the market, I wanted to share my honest perspective.
What’s going on at 11x?
According to the TechCrunch article, 11x may have inflated its success by claiming over $10M in ARR while hiding serious product and churn issues.
In a nutshell, these are TechCrunch’s core claims:
- Most customers churn after 3 months (claims vary between 75% and 90%)
- Customers sign 1-2 year contracts with an opt-out at 3 months
- ARR counts full-year contracts even if clients churned in 3 months
- Real revenue is much lower
- Double-billing incidents
- Customer logos remained on the website long after they churned
- Possible legal trouble with a16z, which is a key investor
Another issue was the product’s performance itself, with hallucinations, poor loading, and an inability to generate good leads.
According to TechCrunch, ZoomInfo stated that 11x performed worse than their own SDRs, leading them to churn in February after using 11x for a month. Yet 11x continued to claim ZoomInfo as a customer for the majority of the next 12 months.
And beyond the product, there are troubling signs of a hostile work culture: long 60-hour work weeks, public call-outs over Slack, high turnover, high pressure, and concerns about timely salary payments if you make it known you’re going to leave. Many reviews on Glassdoor portray 11x in a negative light.
What’s the general sentiment about 11x?
As you can imagine, I only have a clear view of one side of the aisle, as happy customers and happy employees have never reached out to me or AiSDR.
But I still had the feeling that something was off.
General sentiment seems very split at the moment. Some claim this might be the death of AI SDRs, while others think this is more of a hiccup and 11x’s traction will keep it moving forward.
But everyone seems to agree that it’s a very tough position to be in.
My take is based on the Glassdoor reviews I read, as well as conversations with:
- Customers who switched from 11x to AiSDR
- Prospects who were considering 11x or AiSDR, or who signed up for a demo with AiSDR after 11x ghosted them
- Former 11x employees who asked about joining AiSDR
- ZoomInfo, Airtable, and other companies that went through an AiSDR demo even though they were listed as 11x customers on 11x’s website
Here are a few of the stories and statements that are publicly available:
The entire screenshot’s too long to share, but former 11x user Iliya Valchanov highlighted many of 11x’s pros, but he also said that they only scored 1 lead after 6 months of using 11x.
Given that 11x’s base tier costs ~$45K, this means Iliya paid $22.5K for 1 lead. His cost per lead is even steeper if he paid for the $72K or $300K tiers.
In contrast, AiSDR customers typically book 3 meetings for every $900 spent, which is significantly more cost-efficient with better results.
One customer review on Trustpilot also stated that they used 11x for six months, but they had 0 meetings to show for it. Making matters worse, they were struggling to exercise their break clause despite successfully negotiating a 6-month opt-out period.
A second review on Trustpilot says pretty much the same thing. No results in 6 months. They don’t use the product. And they aren’t able to cancel.
It’s difficult to publicly verify many reviews of 11x as they haven’t claimed their G2, and they’re not available for review on Capterra.
Still, these stories aren’t just one-offs. They’re consistent. And I’ve heard this same tale many times.
And they’re also part of what led us to double down on a different approach.
Joe Schmidt IV at a16z shared on LinkedIn that Andreessen Horowitz fully supports 11x’s team.
This aligns with TechCrunch’s article, which said that an a16z spokesperson had denied that the company would take legal action.
11x’s founder and CEO Hasan Sukkar also released his statement, which says TechCrunch’s claims are factually incorrect.
According to him, 11x’s only real mistake was not updating their website quickly enough and removing logos.
Our experience with 11x
We’ve had our share of interactions with 11x – some professional, and some less so.
- Some of our software engineers were contacted directly by 11x’s CEO with the intent of poaching them from AiSDR
- Current and former employees who ask if there are any opportunities or possibilities to join AiSDR’s team
- Potential customers shared emails with us where 11x badmouthed AiSDR, prompting them to ask us if it’s true
The screenshot above shows their attempt to differentiate themselves.
I get it. Competitiveness is part of the game. And it’s become normal for companies to tear each other down.
But if their best positioning relies on the amount they raised, it says a lot about their lack of confidence in their product.
And for the record, we have over 60 months of runway, and raised a $3M seed round, not $2M.
We’ve never been interested in maliciously tearing down competitors. We try to call things how they are.
But these actions felt pointed and personal. And we used it as motivation to keep building the market’s best AI sales solution.
Our approach at AiSDR
At AiSDR, we decided early on to build differently.
Here’s how.
We are transparent about our business and pricing
We offer simple month-to-month contracts that are paid upfront. Our pricing is public, easy to understand, and always up to date. What you see is what you get, and we try our best to make it crystal clear.
And because there are no long-term commitments and the entry price is lower, many customers choose AiSDR when they’re looking to test AI sales tools without taking on huge risk.
That way, if it works, then great – you scale. If not, you’re free to cancel your subscription and walk away.
This low cost of experimentation and smaller leap of faith is one of the top reasons customers choose AiSDR over teams like 11x.
We are transparent with investors
We don’t inflate ARR with clever contracting. Instead, we treat churn as a signal for us to improve fast, iterate often, and stay grounded about where the product stands.
Every month, we share exact churn figures with our investors, telling them the number of customers and percentage of ARR we gain and lose. Investors even have access to our Customer Health spreadsheet to see how the situation changes daily.
No surprises. No spin.
We own our tech imperfections and flaws
Our tech isn’t perfect. But experience has told us where it performs well, and where it won’t. And if it won’t perform for you, we’ll let you know. And if you decide to proceed with us anyways, we’ll do our best to deliver value.
We are honest with clients and prospects
We don’t oversell. We don’t promise a silver bullet that will fix sales or provide an immediate uplift. We tell you upfront what we expect. And we don’t lock users into expensive long-term contracts for multiple years.
We respect competitors
Sales doesn’t need to be a zero-sum game. We avoid bashing others to make ourselves look better. If another platform offers something we don’t, like 11x with voice calls, we say it plainly. Or if there’s a platform that might be a better fit, we refer you to them, which is something I’ve done several times with Will Allred from Lavender.
We aim to empower people, not replace
AiSDR tries to make reps more productive and able to pursue more deals. Because at the moment, people still buy from people. But AI can make it easier to set up the meeting.
What we’re building at AiSDR
Yes, we’re building a company on hard mode.
In the last 18 months, we’ve closed over 500 deals, but fewer than half are still customers. And if we used the same playbook as 11x, we could boast about an 8-figure ARR too.
But we’re not here for short-term applause and growth at all costs.
We’re here to build something real.
Our mission is simple: to create the best AI sales solution that actually delivers predictable results.
Not smoke and mirrors. Not overhyped promises. Not high-volume messaging that books meetings through sheer volume.
And we’re making progress toward our goal. We already see our cohort retention improving, and we see meetings booked each month consistently going up.
We considered offering a special discount to 11x customers or to those deciding between AiSDR and 11x.
But we ultimately decided against it because:
- AiSDR is already priced fairly – Compared to inflated pricing at 11x and similar providers, our lower price point is a built-in discount.
- We deliver a positive ROI faster – Customers book an average of 3 meetings per month. And they save a lot by consolidating multiple outreach tools into AiSDR.
- We invest more into each message – Our emails are already the most personalized and researched on the market. That quality comes with a cost though, and we’d rather sustain that level of performance than chase low-price positioning.
We won’t engage in a race to the bottom on pricing.
We’re here to win on outcomes.
