There is an all out war for search supremacy right now between two trillion dollar companies, with one having everything to win and the other everything to lose. In those circumstances a standard VC model of buying growth does not work even if you have a huge war chest, as you will be outspent no matter how big your investors are. As a founder of a startup in the same space (Kagi) we feel these challenges. We face di…
Neeva failed because they didn’t understand distribution. Sundar became a rising star and ultimately CEO of Google because he directly managed more paid distribution and user acquisition for Google search than anyone else. Not a coincidence. Google promotes the narrative that they organically grew to dominate the search market when in fact they spent many billions of dollars on user acquisition (while also, for most…
We will be shutting down neeva.com
131–140 of 301 posts
Re: We will be shutting down neeva.com
#132Earlier quoted context omitted.
The buggy wip maker couldn't have stopped Ford
A strangely mixed metaphor, and incorrect, the buggy manufacturer did well enough... for a while at least. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Studebaker
Note buggy WHIP makers, not buggy makers.
Re: We will be shutting down neeva.com
#133There is an all out war for search supremacy right now between two trillion dollar companies, with one having everything to win and the other everything to lose. In those circumstances a standard VC model of buying growth does not work even if you have a huge war chest, as you will be outspent no matter how big your investors are. As a founder of a startup in the same space (Kagi) we feel these challenges. We face di…
I am a big fan of Kagi and a happy paying customer for more than year already. Thank you for such a great product and pleas keep going and growing!
Briefly got a bit concerned with the recent billing tweaks but that's all worked out fine too.
Re: We will be shutting down neeva.com
#134I used Ecosia (of planting trees fame) to find the list of failed search engines. The first result is a Wikipedia category page that lists 81 of them [1]. Fair to say that people have tried. Hard. If feels unlikely that there will ever be another search engine. That product category is basically done. There is obviously much excitement about the potentially disruptive role of LLM. Its a powerful alternative algorithm…
Re: We will be shutting down neeva.com
#135Earlier quoted context omitted.
Bing doesn't need to win — they just want Google to be a little less profitable.
At least on HN can we stop parroting this supposed open book strategy from 5D chess Nadella? Bing has failed to take away meaningful marketshare from Google by MSFT’s on admission https://www.theinformation.com/articles/microsoft-eyes-firef...
I still use Google, but sometimes I use ChatGPT where I may have used Google.
But having said that we are still early. If ChatGPT gets access to current information and can quote sources, pull out pertinent parts of web pages, etc then I might stop using Google.
That would be like a restaurant that lets you eat then leave with your weekly shop but at costco prices.
Re: We will be shutting down neeva.com
#136"It is one thing to build a search engine, and an entirely different thing to convince regular users of the need to switch to a better choice."
This line in post doesn't seem intellectually honest about why I think Neeva failed: it was never a 10X better experience. e.g. ChatGPT isn't complaining about acquiring users.
I believe Google when they say competition is just one click away. A bunch of things I would have asked Google now go to ChatGPT.
Re: We will be shutting down neeva.com
#137There is an all out war for search supremacy right now between two trillion dollar companies, with one having everything to win and the other everything to lose. In those circumstances a standard VC model of buying growth does not work even if you have a huge war chest, as you will be outspent no matter how big your investors are. As a founder of a startup in the same space (Kagi) we feel these challenges. We face di…
Re: We will be shutting down neeva.com
#138I’ve been extremely happy with it as my switch from google so now I’m left wanting.
Thanks free market
Re: We will be shutting down neeva.com
#139Earlier quoted context omitted.
The buggy wip maker couldn't have stopped Ford
A strangely mixed metaphor, and incorrect, the buggy manufacturer did well enough... for a while at least. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Studebaker
Re: We will be shutting down neeva.com
#140After that, they had nothing and burned all their VC money.
[0] https://www.similarweb.com/blog/wp-content/uploads/2023/05/C...