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Kagi has around 200K subscribers. I wouldn’t call that “doing well”. Edit: that should be 29K subscribers

Spivak 2y ago
Do you mean 20k? I doubt they 10x'd growth since January. For a bootstrapped business whose end-goal is sustainability that's doing great. When you don't have shareholders breathing down your neck for exponential returns the calculus changes.
- scarface_74 2y ago
  Yep typo - 20K - fixing. I always thought Kagi was still the old Mac focused company that enabled independent software makers to collect payments from customers. I didn’t realize that the old company had been out of business for years until I heard the founder interview on the Talk Show podcast https://daringfireball.net/thetalkshow/2024/12/24/ep-416 https://daringfireball.net/thetalkshow/2024/12/24/ep-416
  - gcanyon 2y ago
    I knew Key back in the day, and I feel a twinge for him every time kagi comes up on HN.
    - scarface_74 2y ago
      The full story of what happened to the original kagi https://tidbits.com/2016/08/04/kagi-shuts-down-after-falling-prey-to-fraud https://tidbits.com/2016/08/04/kagi-shuts-down-after-falling... And relevant to this submission. I couldn’t find any information on Google, I used the paid version of ChatGPT that has had web search for almost two years
deleted 2y ago
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hosteur 2y ago
Well, 29K subscribers is quite alright considering that they are not doing any ads. So their marketing is largely word of mouth as I understand it. Of course, they are not going to grow to the level of FANG with this approach but do they have to? I am a very happy Kagi subscriber myself. And I loathe when I have to wade through SEO spam sites on the few occasions where I have to use Google, Bing, etc. due to being on someone else's computer.
- Ferret7446 2y ago
  > Of course, they are not going to grow to the level of FANG with this approach but do they have to? They do if they want to demonstrate that paying is a viable alternative to ads, and not just a niche curiosity.
  - carlosjobim 2y ago
    Almost every business in the world outside of Silicon Valley is a niche business. And these are still brands that every one of us are familiar with, employing thousands and making healthy profits.
  - szszrk 2y ago
    Why would anyone want to demonstrate that? Why would any small player feel the need to grow to FANG level at all? They run a profitable company that is supported by fees paid by clients. Just this alone is the proof it works. And is far, far away from the speculative nature of stock market and FANG.
    - scarface_74 2y ago
      They only run it off the backs of large search engines. Kagi pays to use other search engines. That 20K subscribers wouldn’t fund them enough to make their own engine nor could they compete for the engineers to maintain it.
  - senko 2y ago
    By that measure, every company in the world except the magnificent seven is a niche curiosity.
fweimer 2y ago
I think it's a bit of a cultural defect that we consider a product with 29K (supposedly satisfied) users a failure. More problematic (for Kagi) is that it's not a free-standing engine (“Our search results also include anonymized API calls to all major search result providers worldwide” per https://help.kagi.com/kagi/search-details/search-sources.html https://help.kagi.com/kagi/search-details/search-sources.htm...), so it's still dependent on the weird business practices around non-paid search. I assume these other search providers wouldn't be able to provide API endpoints like this with just the business from API clients.
- scarface_74 2y ago
  These two issues are directly correlated. > I think it's a bit of a cultural defect that we consider a product with 29K (supposedly satisfied) users a failure. > More problematic (for Kagi) is that it's not a free-standing engine (“Our search results also include anonymized API calls to all major 20K subscribers can’t support the creation of a quality search engine.
  - fweimer 2y ago
    Fair point. Creation might not be such a challenge, but sustaining operations might be. On the other, hand I feel like the amount of content that would be beneficial to me in search results has not grown as fast as computing and networking cost decreased, so maybe it gets easier over time.
    - scarface_74 2y ago
      That’s just like Microsoft Word (Years later Joel cofounded Stack Overflow) https://www.joelonsoftware.com/2001/03/23/strategy-letter-iv-bloatware-and-the-8020-myth/ https://www.joelonsoftware.com/2001/03/23/strategy-letter-iv... > A lot of software developers are seduced by the old “80/20” rule. It seems to make a lot of sense: 80% of the people use 20% of the features. So you convince yourself that you only need to implement 20% of the features, and you can still sell 80% as many copies. > Unfortunately, it’s never the same 20%. Everybody uses a different set of features.

Do you mean 20k? I doubt they 10x'd growth since January. For a bootstrapped business whose end-goal is sustainability that's doing great. When you don't have shareholders breathing down your neck for exponential returns the calculus changes.

scarface_74 2y ago
Yep typo - 20K - fixing. I always thought Kagi was still the old Mac focused company that enabled independent software makers to collect payments from customers. I didn’t realize that the old company had been out of business for years until I heard the founder interview on the Talk Show podcast https://daringfireball.net/thetalkshow/2024/12/24/ep-416 https://daringfireball.net/thetalkshow/2024/12/24/ep-416
- gcanyon 2y ago
  I knew Key back in the day, and I feel a twinge for him every time kagi comes up on HN.
  - scarface_74 2y ago
    The full story of what happened to the original kagi https://tidbits.com/2016/08/04/kagi-shuts-down-after-falling-prey-to-fraud https://tidbits.com/2016/08/04/kagi-shuts-down-after-falling... And relevant to this submission. I couldn’t find any information on Google, I used the paid version of ChatGPT that has had web search for almost two years

deleted 2y ago

[deleted]

hosteur 2y ago

Well, 29K subscribers is quite alright considering that they are not doing any ads. So their marketing is largely word of mouth as I understand it. Of course, they are not going to grow to the level of FANG with this approach but do they have to? I am a very happy Kagi subscriber myself. And I loathe when I have to wade through SEO spam sites on the few occasions where I have to use Google, Bing, etc. due to being on someone else's computer.

Ferret7446 2y ago
> Of course, they are not going to grow to the level of FANG with this approach but do they have to? They do if they want to demonstrate that paying is a viable alternative to ads, and not just a niche curiosity.
- carlosjobim 2y ago
  Almost every business in the world outside of Silicon Valley is a niche business. And these are still brands that every one of us are familiar with, employing thousands and making healthy profits.
- szszrk 2y ago
  Why would anyone want to demonstrate that? Why would any small player feel the need to grow to FANG level at all? They run a profitable company that is supported by fees paid by clients. Just this alone is the proof it works. And is far, far away from the speculative nature of stock market and FANG.
  - scarface_74 2y ago
    They only run it off the backs of large search engines. Kagi pays to use other search engines. That 20K subscribers wouldn’t fund them enough to make their own engine nor could they compete for the engineers to maintain it.
- senko 2y ago
  By that measure, every company in the world except the magnificent seven is a niche curiosity.

fweimer 2y ago

I think it's a bit of a cultural defect that we consider a product with 29K (supposedly satisfied) users a failure. More problematic (for Kagi) is that it's not a free-standing engine (“Our search results also include anonymized API calls to all major search result providers worldwide” per https://help.kagi.com/kagi/search-details/search-sources.html https://help.kagi.com/kagi/search-details/search-sources.htm...), so it's still dependent on the weird business practices around non-paid search. I assume these other search providers wouldn't be able to provide API endpoints like this with just the business from API clients.

scarface_74 2y ago
These two issues are directly correlated. > I think it's a bit of a cultural defect that we consider a product with 29K (supposedly satisfied) users a failure. > More problematic (for Kagi) is that it's not a free-standing engine (“Our search results also include anonymized API calls to all major 20K subscribers can’t support the creation of a quality search engine.
- fweimer 2y ago
  Fair point. Creation might not be such a challenge, but sustaining operations might be. On the other, hand I feel like the amount of content that would be beneficial to me in search results has not grown as fast as computing and networking cost decreased, so maybe it gets easier over time.
  - scarface_74 2y ago
    That’s just like Microsoft Word (Years later Joel cofounded Stack Overflow) https://www.joelonsoftware.com/2001/03/23/strategy-letter-iv-bloatware-and-the-8020-myth/ https://www.joelonsoftware.com/2001/03/23/strategy-letter-iv... > A lot of software developers are seduced by the old “80/20” rule. It seems to make a lot of sense: 80% of the people use 20% of the features. So you convince yourself that you only need to implement 20% of the features, and you can still sell 80% as many copies. > Unfortunately, it’s never the same 20%. Everybody uses a different set of features.