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Just been reading about them - they haven’t taken venture funding - so I expect they don’t have the same pressure to 10X every 6 months. From their site: Kagi
by jonplackett 1y ago
Just been reading about them - they haven’t taken venture funding - so I expect they don’t have the same pressure to 10X every 6 months.
From their site:
Kagi was bootstrapped from 2018 to 2023 with ~$3M initial funding from the founder. In 2023, Kagi raised $670K from Kagi users in its first external fundraise, followed by $1.88M raised in 2024, again from our users, bringing the number of users-investors to 93.
Kagi launched in June 2022 and we maintain a public page tracking real-time Kagi growth and usage statistics at kagi.com/stats.
In early 2024, Kagi became a Public Benefit Corporation (PBC).
- spacechild1 1y agoThis sounds great! I'm sceptical of every company that takes VC money, so it's great to see that they didn't.
- carlosjobim 1y agoWell they did, they took venture funding from their users.
- jonplackett 1y agoThat’s not venture funding. Key difference: They didn’t take any funding from anyone whose values are misaligned with their own
- carlosjobim 1y agoVenture funding is a financial and legal term with a defined meaning. Unfortunately the real world does not care whatever idea the hacker "community" has regarding what the words mean.
- CL_ergo 1y agoActually the real world does care. Words have meanings in the context that they're spoken, and often times whether you want to or not, dictionaries have to update their meanings because they changed over time.
- carlosjobim 1y agoA dictionary has no bearing on the law and what is defined in a business contract. That would be like me claiming that I own a share of Apple Inc because I purchased an Apple in the supermarket. Sure, maybe I can get the entire HN comment section to agree with me, but that doesn't change reality.
- deleted 1y ago[deleted]
- spacechild1 1y agoThat's not what most people understand as "VC money" (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Venture_capital https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Venture_capital).
- carlosjobim 1y agoWhat "most people" (Arch Linux enthusiasts I presume) think about it has no influence on the contracts between Kagi and their investors, and the laws the parties have to abide to.
- spacechild1 1y agoWhen I used the term "VC money" I obviously meant VC firms. It's not about the laws, it's about the underlying motivations.
- carlosjobim 1y agoAnd how do you suppose that Kagi receives the money invested by their users? If you guessed by function of a VC firm, then you guessed right. These are legal and contractual proceedings, with strict definitions of terms by law, not by popular opinion in the hacker community. "Underlying motivations" of the investors is never a legal factor in any kind of investment deal. That's not something that can be accounted for by any kind of contract.
- spacechild1 1y agoWe're talking about behavior, not legal factors. Just because something is legally equivalent does not mean it is the same in all other aspects.
- spacechild1 1y ago> If you guessed by function of a VC firm, then you guessed right. I would not have guessed that. Why would I need a VC firm to invest a few thousand dollars into a company?