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I Lost Faith in Kagi

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Re: I Lost Faith in Kagi

#361

Post by silviot »

kerkeslager wrote: post #338
recursivegirth wrote: post #264

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I work in CX, you should listen to your customers. Your gut got you this far, but to be a profitable company you are going to need to consider the advice and concerns of your stakeholders. Based on your current description, you have two stakeholders (yourself + customers). If the venture fails, you will ask yourself if you listened enough. Be proactive, address concerns, do not put yourself in a defensive position. E…

> I work in CX, you should listen to your customers. ...and to be clear, Hacker News is not a representative sample of their customers.

> ...and to be clear, Hacker News is not a representative sample of their customers.

I am a customer and I learned about Kagi here. I assume many people are on the same boat, so I wouldn't be so sure about that.

Re: I Lost Faith in Kagi

#362

Post by brewdad »

AuthError wrote: post #340
shepherdjerred wrote: post #302

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Keep going! Kagi is great. Years ago nobody thought Google could be challenged and that nobody would pay for search, yet here you are.

do they have a decent subscriber base? i thought it was still very niche

Somewhere between 20,000 (number of t-shirts sent out) and 50,000 (their stated next target). Not too bad for a startup but a drop in the proverbial ocean of search.

Re: I Lost Faith in Kagi

#363

Post by piafraus »

sumeno wrote: post #129
lolinder wrote: post #116

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't get the sense that Vlad is combative, just (over)confident. There are no personal attacks, no aggression, no flaming or flamebait. He just is very confident in his approach and doesn't slow down to listen to criticism. Not the best approach as a founder, but not combative.

If someone says "please don't email me about this anymore" and you continue to email them you are being combative

If your intention to stop communication - you can block someone.

Or if that's the words that would've been chosen - I would agree to you.

But if you mix those words with extra message, then no. A reply to this new message is warranted.

E.g. if you add a reason and that reason is unreasonable - it's warranted to address that and reply to you. Either do a request without attached strings, or block. Don't write extra conditions/reasoning and then complain that someone doesn't agree with you on those and kept messaging.

Re: I Lost Faith in Kagi

#364

Post by konschubert »

kerkeslager wrote: post #330
freediver wrote: post #258

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The t-shirts are weird and made me lose a lot of faith in their org. The way I look at it is instead of making their products better, they flushed a bunch of money down the drain for t-shirts and its offensive to paying customers who are paying because they enjoy the product and want it to become better, they don't want a t-shirt. Kagi founder here and I want to clarify the train of thoughts around Kagi printing an…

Please please please take Hacker News' opinions with a very large grain of salt. Many of Hacker News' users work at garbage AdTech companies and there are often people posting here who say things like "I for one enjoy targeted ads" (that's an actual quote). This place is not representative of your customer base. I love what you're doing and will continue to support you at your Professional tier as long as you continu…

For my own business (epaper calendars), HN has been a great source of feedback from potential customers. People here are both direct and kind with their feedback.

The thing you have to keep in mind is that HN is a very specific niche of the Internet. But for a slightly nerdy, not mass-market, product like mine (or Kagi) this niche is a great place to grow.

You just have to be mindful to see the feedback through the lens of the fact that you're talking to a niche audience and keep an eye on what a broader market might be looking for if that's where you're planning to go

Re: I Lost Faith in Kagi

#365

Post by carlosjobim »

recursivegirth wrote: post #264
freediver wrote: post #258

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The t-shirts are weird and made me lose a lot of faith in their org. The way I look at it is instead of making their products better, they flushed a bunch of money down the drain for t-shirts and its offensive to paying customers who are paying because they enjoy the product and want it to become better, they don't want a t-shirt. Kagi founder here and I want to clarify the train of thoughts around Kagi printing an…

I work in CX, you should listen to your customers. Your gut got you this far, but to be a profitable company you are going to need to consider the advice and concerns of your stakeholders. Based on your current description, you have two stakeholders (yourself + customers). If the venture fails, you will ask yourself if you listened enough. Be proactive, address concerns, do not put yourself in a defensive position. E…

>I work in CX, you should listen to your customers.

The only way a customer speaks is with money. If people like what you sell, you'll have more customers speaking with their wallet. If they don't then they tell you so by not purchasing what you sell. Internet commenters (such as myself) do not represent all customers or even a majority. People who are happy with a product usually see no reason to give feedback – especially when it's a small purchase. Likewise, people who hate your product wouldn't purchase it in the first place.

Re: I Lost Faith in Kagi

#366

Post by brewdad »

kerkeslager wrote: post #353
shaneoh wrote: post #344

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If HN is not representative of the customer base for a paid search engine, then what is?

That's a difficult question, but I think we can pretty clearly say that a user base with a high concentration of AdTech workers is probably a bit biased against a company that is pretty clearly anti-AdTech. The number of times I've heard people extol the virtues of targeted ads on this site is absurd. I've even heard folks here say that Google ads are more helpful than the search results as if that's a good thing . A…

I would think people in AdTech would be first in line to pay for a search engine that avoids AdTech. They understand how the sausage is made. They want the rest of us to use the AdTech products but they themselves are going to avoid them where possible.

How often do you think the CEO pf Delta Airlines flies in first class versus on a private jet? My guess is only often enough to gin up a little PR.

Re: I Lost Faith in Kagi

#367

Post by mac-attack »

barbazoo wrote: post #332
HWR_14 wrote: post #230

Earlier quoted context omitted.

People pay $0 to Google/Meta/Twitter/TikTok for their base level offerings, and their privacy policy is valid to discuss and criticize. Does it somehow become less important just because they are also getting paid money? People discuss Apple's commitment to privacy and if it is real or adequate.

> People pay $0 to Google/Meta/Twitter/TikTok for their base level offerings There are costs other than direct monetary. We're still "paying" for it, just via ads, sponsored results, etc.

And I think that the inability to explicitly confirm relationships w/ Stripe et al are ways that users cannot determine whether they are paying w/ their data on top of their monthly costs.

Re: I Lost Faith in Kagi

#368

Post by me_smith »

riversflow wrote: post #319
freediver wrote: post #258

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The t-shirts are weird and made me lose a lot of faith in their org. The way I look at it is instead of making their products better, they flushed a bunch of money down the drain for t-shirts and its offensive to paying customers who are paying because they enjoy the product and want it to become better, they don't want a t-shirt. Kagi founder here and I want to clarify the train of thoughts around Kagi printing an…

I prefer internet ads to Billboards. Billboards are disgusting.

I agree there should be less billboards in this world.

Re: I Lost Faith in Kagi

#369

Post by sph »

keiferski wrote: post #87

I am increasingly convinced that the successor/replacement to Google will not be a more clever, AI-powered search engine, but a hyper-curated collection of links, selected by people who understand what good content is. Sort of like Yahoo in the pre-Google days. I think this is only going to become more apparent once AI-generated content takes over the web.

I agree but we need to wait the next AI Winter, right now everybody is on the LLM hype train.

Re: I Lost Faith in Kagi

#370

Post by green_dragon »

kodarna wrote: post #270

Kagi Ultimate user here. This article comes across so unhinged it almost works as an advertisement, except for the founder dismissing privacy issues... I'm happy to hear Kagi are creating an e-mail service though, I've been looking to get away from Microsoft 365 since I'm not really using the meat of it. I hope they allow multiple aliases per users and perhaps add a masking service as well.

It absolutely does work as an advertisement. I hadn't heard of it and immediately signed up for it.
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