Since they are profitable, they are not that dependent of the initial investment anymore.
They did not expect to get this many users, and then send the shirts as thank you.
They money could have been used to hire new employees, but they decided to say thank you. I cannot criticize this since it does not seem to doom the company, while it might slow down a bit.
I think it's great that the CEO wants to respond to criticism. It's certainly not scalable, but I don't see anything wrong with this response.
If someone stood in a public square shouting falsehoods about you and people gathered around to listen, you'd want to defend yourself too. The CEO could have written a public post about this blogger's personal attacks, but instead he tried to address them privately; the blogger pulled a 5th grader move and basically put his fingers in his ears and started singing "lalalalaala I can't hear you lalalalalaa".
Except I don't see many falsehoods there, and CEO's "defense" actually confirms things that blogger said.
For example, the blogger was complaining that Kagi uses too much of AI tools. CEO responded with blog post which announced one AI tool being deployed, confirmed that they are going to keep working on AI, and announced upcoming features.
When blogger complained "Kagi stretches itself way too thin", CEO said "we have to do it"
Re taxes, CEO confirmed that they were not paying taxes, etc..
The best part was how blogger said: "LOL CEO does not understand PII, andd says emails are not PII because one can enter throwaway email" and CEO replied by restating the same thing.
Frankly, other than continuing to email him despite the explicit wish not to, the emails look totally reasonable.
Btw. the AI built-in to Kagi is imo excellent. I frequently suffix my query with a question mark to trigger their AI responder (it responds based on the content of a few top results, with citations), and the results are almost always great, and spare me the need to open each of the sites individually and look through them.
This would have been not at all noteworthy had the Kagi CEO simply resisted the urge to reply and walked away. The blogger's first reply could be interpreted as antagonistic and he should have recognized that and chosen not to engage.
My advice for anyone who runs a company (or may): make an active effort to learn about (healthy) human interactions, as well as how to figuratively take one on the chin. Like much of life, you can't choose how you'll feel about circumstances you find yourself in, but you absolutely can consciously decide how you'll respond.
Didn't this person's blog post make the front page of HN the other day? Why do they think it got "so little attention"? Said blog post and the resulting discussion is quite literally the only reason I know of Kagi's existence.
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[ 3.4 ms ] story [ 52.8 ms ] threadPS I wonder why the original blog post was flagged here on HN. It was also very enlightening.
But I'm still hoping they become sustainable and make it. I like using it and really do get great value from it.
Sounds pretty reasonable if you ask me. Especially considering that they are profitable.
Doesn’t sound all that wrong to me.
They money could have been used to hire new employees, but they decided to say thank you. I cannot criticize this since it does not seem to doom the company, while it might slow down a bit.
If someone stood in a public square shouting falsehoods about you and people gathered around to listen, you'd want to defend yourself too. The CEO could have written a public post about this blogger's personal attacks, but instead he tried to address them privately; the blogger pulled a 5th grader move and basically put his fingers in his ears and started singing "lalalalaala I can't hear you lalalalalaa".
For example, the blogger was complaining that Kagi uses too much of AI tools. CEO responded with blog post which announced one AI tool being deployed, confirmed that they are going to keep working on AI, and announced upcoming features.
When blogger complained "Kagi stretches itself way too thin", CEO said "we have to do it"
Re taxes, CEO confirmed that they were not paying taxes, etc..
The best part was how blogger said: "LOL CEO does not understand PII, andd says emails are not PII because one can enter throwaway email" and CEO replied by restating the same thing.
Btw. the AI built-in to Kagi is imo excellent. I frequently suffix my query with a question mark to trigger their AI responder (it responds based on the content of a few top results, with citations), and the results are almost always great, and spare me the need to open each of the sites individually and look through them.
My advice for anyone who runs a company (or may): make an active effort to learn about (healthy) human interactions, as well as how to figuratively take one on the chin. Like much of life, you can't choose how you'll feel about circumstances you find yourself in, but you absolutely can consciously decide how you'll respond.
I Lost Faith in Kagi
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40011314
Using your opponent’s gender as an argument shows that you truly don’t have any actual arguments.