Kagi user, personally I don’t care what they spend my subscription money on as long as they provide a good service (which they do). That said, Kagi has to be the poster child for not staying in their lane. I mean that mostly as, they keep going off and trying random things and I worry it will distract them from the core product(s).
This rings of the whole t-shirt factory thing all over again. Get an office, that’s fine I guess if you will use it but the coworking aspect is just odd.
Would you mind explaining the t-shirt criticism? I got one, it's nice, I'm literally wearing it right now, and I have trouble understanding the "distraction" critique. Seems like a nice way to let their (unusually devoted) users broadcast their enthusiasm.
Well, I think it's less about the t-shirts themselves and more about how much effort and money was spent on them.
> 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!
> allocate nearly a third of our investor-raised funds to produce and freely distribute 20,000 t-shirts?
That's a lot of their money just to give out some t-shirts but I get that it's marketing in a way.
I do care what they spend my subscription money on if it's not about providing a good service. The cost of this place is probably a drop in the ocean in terms of their income, but it does feel like it's yet another distraction from their core services.
Every company in the world does things like this, why do people get upset that Kagi does it as well? Don't you think your local supermarket or electrical company spends money outside of their core business? We're soon in December, when companies will invite their employees to Christmas dinners and other holiday events.
Because a lot of people want Kagi to succeed because they want to keep using the service. So people care if they make bad business decisions that might threaten their long-term success. Compare to, say, Fastmail, who won similar mindshare under similar market circumstances, and who never attempted to enter the real estate business.
That said, this isn't as crazy of an idea as it sounds from the headline. Kagi says they are "remote-first", so the main beneficiary of this real estate is meant to be Kagi and their employees. The idea to open up some of the office space for Kagi customers to reserve is novel but not completely ridiculous either. I can see it working out well as a marketing tool.
> but it does feel like it's yet another distraction from their core services.
It is basically marketing. I am not sure everyone would call that a distraction if it gives kagi more visibility and thus, customers and revenues to spend on r&d.
Belgrade is a good place to test if that marketing works. It is a tech hub, which means higher probability to get new kagi subsribers, and it is not too expensive as a place to do an experiment. If they realize the ratio between money spent on this coworking space vs customer gained in that area in a year is not in their favor they can easily not renew their rent and shut it off.
Belgrade, historically, was a "gateway between East and West" and in some ways it still is: as a non-EU member in Europe it has access to a broader range of markets than a lot of other cities. I think recently, the wave of Russian tech workers fleeing Russia has also elevated its "tech hub" status.
> Russian tech workers fleeing Russia has also elevated its "tech hub" status.
Fleeing as in seeking asylum? Or fleeing as in sanctions? If the latter, besides the Slavic nations, I'd have thought Germany, the UAE, Israel, and Canada to be more popular?
Fleeing as in "I don't want to die in Putin's war". I've heard from friends that it's actually becoming an issue with locals there (the overwhelming number of Russians who have moved there) to the point where it's beginning to strain the relationship between Russia and Serbia, who have historically been very closely aligned.
My impression is that b/c they're non-EU they've retained a lot more local talent. By contrast, any half decent programmer in Croatia has a very strong incentive to get a job in Germany and make a much higher salary
Seriously, while the Mozilla and Wikimedia foundations are burning cash on vanity products instead of reinvesting in their singular (1!) popular products, the bar for fiduciary responsibility is REALLY low.
At least Kagi already has multiple decently useful products (Kagi search, Assistant, Orion).
> 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?
> > 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?
When 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.
Sort 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.
There’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.
Yeah, 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:
For 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.
This rings of the whole t-shirt factory thing all over again. Get an office, that’s fine I guess if you will use it but the coworking aspect is just odd.