4 ms·
The t-shirt debacle made me put off subscribing for good. I felt petty back then, but feel like it was the right decision now.
by tokai 11mo ago
The t-shirt debacle made me put off subscribing for good. I felt petty back then, but feel like it was the right decision now.
- scosman 11mo agoDebacle? They gave away some t shirts to paying customers. It probably had decent returns on both marketing and loyalty.
- wonger_ 11mo agohttps://blog.kagi.com/celebrating-20k https://blog.kagi.com/celebrating-20k > The process from here involves setting up a business entity in Germany, so we can import the t-shirts, store them in a warehouse, connect inventory logistics and ship them all over the world. This includes building a website and connecting it to a back-end database. So, we basically ended up owning a merch production operation end-to-end, just so that we could ensure premium quality of these t-shirts! > Now, you may ask, why did we go through all this trouble and allocate nearly a third of our investor-raised funds to produce and freely distribute 20,000 t-shirts?
- j_w 11mo ago> > Now, you may ask, why did we go through all this trouble and allocate nearly a third of our investor-raised funds to produce and freely distribute 20,000 t-shirts? Marketing.
- Semaphor 11mo agoI never understood how that t-shirt thing aggrevated people so much. It’s like the firefox issues taken to the next level.
- thoroughburro 11mo agoWhen you like something and want it to succeed, it’s discouraging to see that thing waste its resources. Especially if you contributed those resources. I never understood how this very simple position flies over certain heads.
- deleted 11mo ago[deleted]
- Semaphor 11mo agoThere’s a difference between disagreeing with a marketing stunt, and saying "I stopped using them because of that". But I guess that also flew over our heads, dumb as we are.
- deleted 11mo ago[deleted]
- deleted 11mo ago[deleted]
- dooglius 11mo agoIt sounds like the issue is that you see your payment as a donation, and don't believe the service in and of itself is worth what you pay?
- nerdponx 11mo agoSort of? You want the thing to exist long-term, so if they're using my monthly payment on bad business decisions then yeah I care because then it won't exist anymore, and I could have spent that money on a more responsible company in the meantime.
- pbronez 11mo agoYeah, same. I get that people worry about Kagi staying profitable and alive. But honestly the T-shirt thing and the hub align with my understanding of their brand: Hard Way. Kagi takes the hard road that nobody else will. They never cheap out. They keep quality really, really high even when they could drive better margins by lowering their standards to follow the herd. Now, if the company dies because of genuine financial mismanagement, I will be pissed. I rely on Kagi's search and AI offerings. For now, those core offerings keep getting better even with these side quests. For example, their Ki research assistant just left beta: https://blog.kagi.com/kagi-assistants https://blog.kagi.com/kagi-assistants
- 0x1ch 11mo agoFor what it's wroth, I didn't know anything about the tshirt situation and have been a happy paying customer for the better part of four months-ish now. Great search engine, although I do agree that this sort of stuff doesn't make a lot of sense.