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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
by function_seven 3y ago
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.
- EdwardDiego 3y agoYou're going to have to explain the relevance of the K man.
- blokey 3y agoK=thousands.... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kilo- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kilo-
- mattweinberg 3y agoThe “k” means “thousands”, meaning they raised $670,000 and not $670 million.
- EdwardDiego 3y agoI genuinely read that thing about the K as being a reference to the K in Kagi. I'm going to go have a coffee.
- barbazoo 3y agoWe all have moments like that :)
- Tostino 3y agoJust that it was a smaller number than would you are expected to sell your soul for with VC cash. Only raising what you need to grow "naturally" and retaining control is a good thing in my book, but that isn't what a lot of people want to do in that situation.
- tromp 3y agoWhat does Kramer have to do with it? https://www.reddit.com/r/seinfeld/comments/1mpeu5/the_kman/ https://www.reddit.com/r/seinfeld/comments/1mpeu5/the_kman/
- detourdog 3y agoThe K-man knows all.
- thejazzman 3y agoGiddy up! https://amphetamem.es/meme?id=seinfeld_06_01_191×tamp=0%3A7%3A5.250&text=Giddy+up.&dimensions=1920x1080&at=%2Fseinfeld%2F06%2F01%2F0-7-5-250&series=Seinfeld&season=06&episodeNumber=01&episodeTitle=The+Chaperone https://amphetamem.es/meme?id=seinfeld_06_01_191×tamp=0...
- weikju 3y agoand it seems like many actual users of Kagi (and Orion?) have contributed, so this isn't a (completely) a "big VC firm will enshitify this". This gives me hope. I wish I would qualify to invest in things like this...
- yieldcrv 3y agoYou can lie. That’s what “self-certify” means. If you have the money to participate and lie about having/earning more money then you qualify. There is no constitutional way to prevent you from investing based on net worth, so the law places consequences on the companies offering investments. And the only time this affects the company is if they were relying on a regulatory exemption that also allows unaccredited investors, in which case you should have just participated as an unaccredited investor and they were supposed to verify. Otherwise, the law says “self-certify”, which is the state sanctioned term for lying.
- JumpCrisscross 3y ago> no constitutional way to prevent you from investing based on net worth What? Of course there is. Low net worth isn’t a protected class. We don’t do it that way because the purpose of the law is to protect small investors.
- yieldcrv 3y agoIt doesn't need to be a protected class and is not how I would argue If a fine or sanction from the government was applied to the investor themselves based on net worth, I would argue 5th amendment and 14th amendment equal application of laws, and 1st amendment's freedom of speech citing the Citizen's United case where money movement is speech I think that would be resilient in most circuits and certainly scotus
- weego 3y ago$670k investment is not "bootstrap money". It's literally the opposite of bootstrapping. What is the value in this attempted narrative? Is it the entrepreneur equivalent of "I don't work with big data, only 500 billion row sets but..."
- tough 3y agoYou can pay a couple years software engineers for a year at SF rates
- ignoramous 3y agoOr pay 2 capable engs in India for 11 years. £670k is a lot in some parts of the world
- AdamN 3y agoThe typical formula is that it costs double a person's salary for the total budget. So really you're saying 5.5 years and 2 people is a low number so maybe you build a team of 4 and then the runway is an excruciatingly short 2.75 years.
- hcks 3y agoIf by « a couple » you literally mean 2 then sure
- nivertech 3y agoIt's "Kagi", not "Magi" ;)
- detourdog 3y agoKagi is such a funny company. I remember as an early internet payment provider. I subscribe to kagi search.
- Taniwha 3y agothis is a totally different company from Kagi the shareware recovery provider
- detourdog 3y agoD’oh had no idea.
- TeMPOraL 3y agoYou're one of today's lucky 10 000 :). https://xkcd.com/1053/ https://xkcd.com/1053/
- alwaysbeconsing 3y agoThat is right. There's a bit in their FAQ about this https://help.kagi.com/kagi/company/history.html?highlight=shareware#history https://help.kagi.com/kagi/company/history.html?highlight=sh... > We are not affiliated with the legendary Kagi - the shareware payments platform. … We liked the name and acquired it when we got the chance.
- sgt 3y agoIt's not $670 million, it's: They've raised a bunch of money! Now let's go and blow that money in Vegas. /s
- pindab0ter 3y agoIs there any specific reason for this take?
- sgt 3y agoSee fly.io's "bunch of money" story
- TradingPlaces 3y agoNice, Vlad. Keep up the good work!
- xcavier 3y agoI read that headline as precisely the opposite: oh, bugger, they are not doing well and that money won’t help
- yieldcrv 3y ago> “This was made possible with the participation of 42 accredited investors” Same impression here
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- redbell 3y ago> At first I read it as $670 million Same here! I think this is because our eyes-brain system is optimizing the read operation by scanning the words and maps them against a list of words we already familiar with, thus, sometimes it got the wrong meaning. This trick was used by some brands to mislead people to buy some products with a familiar brand name.. like “Adibas” and “Reedok”. > makes me hopeful that Kagi will stay close to its original mission I really hope so but no one can guarantee this would be the case if the company get bigger with more money being thrown there. In its first years, Google’s tagline was “don’t be evil“ but they couldn’t deliver the promise. OpenAI’s original mission evaporated as soon as ChatGPT became a thing.. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34979981 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34979981
- RGBCube 3y ago> “Reedok” Huh?
- JohnFen 3y agoThis 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.
- gumby 3y ago> This is proper bootstrap money, By the way, to "bootstrap" a business is short for "pulling yourself up by your own bootstraps" (yes, it's an old phrase) and means not raising any money. Just a to bootstrap a computer is to start it when it has no code loaded or running. Nowadays it's in ROM so the term is rather obscure but we used to toggle a little bootstrap program in from the front panel or, if you were lucky, load it in from paper tape. That program was very short, just enough to get some more code loaded and start it.
- freediver 3y ago> to "bootstrap" a business is short for "pulling yourself up by your own bootstraps" (yes, it's an old phrase) and means not raising any money. Today I learned! Technically Kagi was bootstrapped up to this point (I've invested $2MM+ of my own money to get us this far). This is the first external fundraise (as noted in the annoucement) and what makes it very special to me is that people participating in the round are Kagi users who were already a part of our journey.