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Kagi raises $670k

blog.kagi.com

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Re: Kagi raises $670k

#301

Post by hu3 »

gcanyon wrote: post #291

A bit of a non sequitur, but every time kagi comes up I get a twinge: "kagi.com" had a long, robust life in the earlier days of the internet as an e-commerce facilitator. They handled the credit card transactions for hundreds or thousands of small businesses in the '90s and '00s, including mine, and I somewhat knew the founder, Kee Nethery. The internet changed over time, of course, and Kagi changed with it. Then som…

I searched for "Kagi shut down" and found that it seems to be related with a ton of credit card chargebacks.

https://tidbits.com/2016/08/04/kagi-shuts-down-after-falling...

Re: Kagi raises $670k

#302

Post by JohnFen »

function_seven wrote: post #41

I had to read the headline twice. At first I read it as $670 million, and I was very sad. That’s “VCs gonna enshittify it in 3 years” money. But then I saw the “K” and grinned. This is proper bootstrap money, and makes me hopeful that Kagi will stay close to its original mission. Congrats. I am really pulling for you, Vlad.

This made me happy, too. I've been delaying becoming a paying customer because I wanted to see if they were going the VC route first. This is a signal to me that they aren't, so I've signed up.

Re: Kagi raises $670k

#303

Post by golemotron »

sunnybeetroot wrote: post #27
golemotron wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That $30 million might not have yielded a great search engine but it did produce Cuil Theory, a branch of mathematics with the potential to change the world: http://cuiltheory.wikidot.com/what-is-cuil-theory/

This is a joke about how bad the search results of Cuil were right?

Yes, but very amusing regardless of how it came to be.

Re: Kagi raises $670k

#304

Post by marginalia_nu »

fauigerzigerk wrote: post #297
marginalia_nu wrote: post #292

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's basically the safest position you could be in. An LLM to digest results of a classic search index is greater than the sum of its parts. An LLMs that is not permitted to brush up on the relevant literature before answering a question generally doesn't produce very good answers, is prone to hallucinations etc. A pure LLM design isn't even a serious contender in the answer engine space.

That would mean it's safe if "you" are Google or Microsoft+OpenAI as no one else has both a search index and an LLM.

You don't need to have both to sell search index access to anyone with an LLM, which seems like just about anyone these days.

Re: Kagi raises $670k

#305

Post by jjtheblunt »

Mashimo wrote: post #241
NikxDa wrote: post #230

Looks like they significantly missed their goal. From Kagi's investment round invitation email: - SAFE note round with a valuation cap of $40MM (pre-money) - 249 investors maximum - We are looking to raise around $2MM from our users in this way ($5MM max) - Minimum investment amount per investor is $5,000, and maximum is $500,000. So the $670k they now raised are only about a third of what they were aiming for.

What is MM?

it's "million" as in 10^6, but I don't know why that is not abbreviated just with a single M or m.

Re: Kagi raises $670k

#306

Post by dharmab »

pixeladed wrote: post #53

Neeva - cofounded by an ex-Google exec also provided a paid search experience with similar features. They have since shut down and in their blog post pointed out that the issue they faced was not convincing people that they should pay for search but rather the fact that distribution of their service is difficult (i.e. being browser defaults, at work, on people's phones). What's Kagi doing differently to be able to su…

On my work PC I use Kagi via the session link feature.

Re: Kagi raises $670k

#307

Post by dharmab »

drunkan wrote: post #274
pixeladed wrote: post #53

Neeva - cofounded by an ex-Google exec also provided a paid search experience with similar features. They have since shut down and in their blog post pointed out that the issue they faced was not convincing people that they should pay for search but rather the fact that distribution of their service is difficult (i.e. being browser defaults, at work, on people's phones). What's Kagi doing differently to be able to su…

They have their own browser, the Orion browser, to funnel people onto their search engine. Their search engine is also better than google for me for most use cases already, it has a clean and smart design with well thought out features that add value. I hate that Orion is not cross platform and limited to apple ecosystem. With that said it is native and my default choice for macOS and iOS. No telemetry, ad blocker bu…

I'm using Orion as my iOS browser and in the past few months I've not had to reach for Safari. Looking forward to a Linux and Windows release.

Re: Kagi raises $670k

#308

Post by carlosjobim »

joshstrange wrote: post #269
carlosjobim wrote: post #267

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There is no problem, except in your imagination. Each additional search costs a couple of cents, why would you worry about such a small amount? When you're driving a car you're using cents of fuel every minute, do you worry about that when you're driving, counting the cents? You've literally managed to find the most insignificant thing to worry about in existence. But if quality is not impressive to you there's no re…

Wow, not really sure where the hostility is coming from. I'm literally asking for suggestion/motivations/reasons to pay because I feel like it is something I want but I need help getting over the hump of paying for search. I also outlined that I didn't experience an increase in quality and posited that I might be using it wrong or not taking full advantage. > You've literally managed to find the most insignificant th…

I really didn't intend to be hostile in any way, and I apologize if that's how my comment looked.

We as humans tend to trick our own minds into worrying about insignificant things and sometimes need somebody to help us snap out of it. I was trying to help you with that, but instead you think I came across as a jerk. It's not worth your time to worry about a couple of cents for a search. I know many people have the same concern and worry as you, it is still not rational.

> I used the trial and I wasn't sold on it

Then there is no reason for you to use it - even if it was free. The only reason to use paid search is to get better quality results. There is no special maneuver to use with Kagi, it's just typing the query into the box like on Google.

Re: Kagi raises $670k

#309

Post by dean2432 »

i really liked their fastgpt in the beginning (it did hallucinate a bit but not as much as chatgpt). but gradually it has become worse and worse in my opinion. now i don't use it any longer.

Re: Kagi raises $670k

#310

Post by barbazoo »

EdwardDiego wrote: post #57
mattweinberg wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The “k” means “thousands”, meaning they raised $670,000 and not $670 million.

I genuinely read that thing about the K as being a reference to the K in Kagi. I'm going to go have a coffee.

We all have moments like that :)
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