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Re:Kagi Raises $670K by function_seven on Thursday June 29, 2023 @03:35AM (#36517534)
I had to read the headline twice. At first I read it as $670 million, and I was very sad. That’s “VCs gonna enshittify it in 3 years” money.

But then I saw the “K” and grinned. This is proper bootstrap money, and makes me hopeful that Kagi will stay close to its original mission.

Congrats. I am really pulling for you, Vlad.

Re:Kagi Raises $670K by EdwardDiego on Thursday June 29, 2023 @03:38AM (#36517551)
You're going to have to explain the relevance of the K man.
Re:Kagi Raises $670K by Tostino on Thursday June 29, 2023 @03:41AM (#36517574)
Just that it was a smaller number than would you are expected to sell your soul for with VC cash. Only raising what you need to grow "naturally" and retaining control is a good thing in my book, but that isn't what a lot of people want to do in that situation.
Re:Kagi Raises $670K by blokey on Thursday June 29, 2023 @03:39AM (#36517559)
Re:Kagi Raises $670K by mattweinberg on Thursday June 29, 2023 @03:39AM (#36517567)
The “k” means “thousands”, meaning they raised $670,000 and not $670 million.
Re:Kagi Raises $670K by EdwardDiego on Thursday June 29, 2023 @03:51AM (#36517630)
I genuinely read that thing about the K as being a reference to the K in Kagi.

I'm going to go have a coffee.

Re:Kagi Raises $670K by barbazoo on Thursday June 29, 2023 @01:32PM (#36523717)
We all have moments like that :)
Re:Kagi Raises $670K by tromp on Thursday June 29, 2023 @04:25AM (#36517831)
Re:Kagi Raises $670K by detourdog on Thursday June 29, 2023 @05:23AM (#36518210)
The K-man knows all.
Re:Kagi Raises $670K by thejazzman on Thursday June 29, 2023 @09:44AM (#36520301)
Re:Kagi Raises $670K by weikju on Thursday June 29, 2023 @04:00AM (#36517676)
and it seems like many actual users of Kagi (and Orion?) have contributed, so this isn't a (completely) a "big VC firm will enshitify this". This gives me hope. I wish I would qualify to invest in things like this...
Re:Kagi Raises $670K by yieldcrv on Thursday June 29, 2023 @12:51PM (#36523105)
You can lie. That’s what “self-certify” means.

If you have the money to participate and lie about having/earning more money then you qualify.

There is no constitutional way to prevent you from investing based on net worth, so the law places consequences on the companies offering investments.

And the only time this affects the company is if they were relying on a regulatory exemption that also allows unaccredited investors, in which case you should have just participated as an unaccredited investor and they were supposed to verify.

Otherwise, the law says “self-certify”, which is the state sanctioned term for lying.

Re:Kagi Raises $670K by JumpCrisscross on Thursday June 29, 2023 @11:27PM (#36530180)
> no constitutional way to prevent you from investing based on net worth

What? Of course there is. Low net worth isn’t a protected class. We don’t do it that way because the purpose of the law is to protect small investors.

Re:Kagi Raises $670K by yieldcrv on Friday June 30, 2023 @01:14PM (#36538654)
It doesn't need to be a protected class and is not how I would argue

If a fine or sanction from the government was applied to the investor themselves based on net worth, I would argue 5th amendment and 14th amendment equal application of laws, and 1st amendment's freedom of speech citing the Citizen's United case where money movement is speech

I think that would be resilient in most circuits and certainly scotus

Re:Kagi Raises $670K by weego on Thursday June 29, 2023 @04:20AM (#36517800)
$670k investment is not "bootstrap money". It's literally the opposite of bootstrapping. What is the value in this attempted narrative? Is it the entrepreneur equivalent of "I don't work with big data, only 500 billion row sets but..."
Re:Kagi Raises $670K by tough on Thursday June 29, 2023 @04:45AM (#36517968)
You can pay a couple years software engineers for a year at SF rates
Re:Kagi Raises $670K by ignoramous on Thursday June 29, 2023 @05:04AM (#36518076)
Or pay 2 capable engs in India for 11 years. £670k is a lot in some parts of the world
Re:Kagi Raises $670K by AdamN on Thursday June 29, 2023 @06:15AM (#36518546)
The typical formula is that it costs double a person's salary for the total budget. So really you're saying 5.5 years and 2 people is a low number so maybe you build a team of 4 and then the runway is an excruciatingly short 2.75 years.
Re:Kagi Raises $670K by skrebbel on Thursday June 29, 2023 @08:32AM (#36519524)
That formula makes no sense if you’re a scrappy distributed team.
Re:Kagi Raises $670K by AdamN on Friday June 30, 2023 @07:49AM (#36533249)
At that point the numbers are so small that yes, the rule breaks down.
Re:Kagi Raises $670K by hcks on Thursday June 29, 2023 @05:06AM (#36518091)
If by « a couple » you literally mean 2 then sure
Re:Kagi Raises $670K by Nuzzerino on Thursday June 29, 2023 @06:08AM (#36518508)
He clearly meant "a couple of three things" like from the Sopranos /s
Re:Kagi Raises $670K by codegeek on Thursday June 29, 2023 @08:55AM (#36519736)
I agree with you. The amount doesn't matter.

Investment = you are not personally liable and no need to return the money if u fail. It's not ur money.

Bootstrap = you are responsible to pay it back.iys ur money once u get it.

Re:Kagi Raises $670K by nivertech on Thursday June 29, 2023 @04:35AM (#36517896)
It's "Kagi", not "Magi" ;)
Re:Kagi Raises $670K by detourdog on Thursday June 29, 2023 @05:22AM (#36518200)
Kagi is such a funny company. I remember as an early internet payment provider. I subscribe to kagi search.
Re:Kagi Raises $670K by Taniwha on Thursday June 29, 2023 @05:34AM (#36518290)
this is a totally different company from Kagi the shareware recovery provider
Re:Kagi Raises $670K by detourdog on Thursday June 29, 2023 @05:51AM (#36518380)
D’oh had no idea.
Re:Kagi Raises $670K by TeMPOraL on Thursday June 29, 2023 @07:16AM (#36518928)
You're one of today's lucky 10 000 :).

https://xkcd.com/1053/

Re:Kagi Raises $670K by alwaysbeconsing on Thursday June 29, 2023 @11:49AM (#36522086)
That is right. There's a bit in their FAQ about this https://help.kagi.com/kagi/company/history.html?highlight=sh...

> We are not affiliated with the legendary Kagi - the shareware payments platform. … We liked the name and acquired it when we got the chance.

Re:Kagi Raises $670K by sgt on Thursday June 29, 2023 @05:49AM (#36518373)
It's not $670 million, it's: They've raised a bunch of money!

Now let's go and blow that money in Vegas.

/s

Re:Kagi Raises $670K by pindab0ter on Thursday June 29, 2023 @05:50AM (#36518378)
Is there any specific reason for this take?
Re:Kagi Raises $670K by sgt on Thursday June 29, 2023 @06:27AM (#36518623)
See fly.io's "bunch of money" story
Re:Kagi Raises $670K by TradingPlaces on Thursday June 29, 2023 @07:39AM (#36519099)
Nice, Vlad. Keep up the good work!
Re:Kagi Raises $670K by xcavier on Thursday June 29, 2023 @08:54AM (#36519735)
I read that headline as precisely the opposite: oh, bugger, they are not doing well and that money won’t help
Re:Kagi Raises $670K by yieldcrv on Thursday June 29, 2023 @09:27AM (#36520057)
> “This was made possible with the participation of 42 accredited investors”

Same impression here

Re:Kagi Raises $670K by JumpCrisscross on Thursday June 29, 2023 @11:30PM (#36530201)
Could they pivot to a low-growth model? It doesn’t seem like a traditional start-up track exists for them if they’re relying on retail.
Re:Kagi Raises $670K by redbell on Thursday June 29, 2023 @08:56AM (#36519757)
> At first I read it as $670 million

Same here!

I think this is because our eyes-brain system is optimizing the read operation by scanning the words and maps them against a list of words we already familiar with, thus, sometimes it got the wrong meaning. This trick was used by some brands to mislead people to buy some products with a familiar brand name.. like “Adibas” and “Reedok”.

> makes me hopeful that Kagi will stay close to its original mission

I really hope so but no one can guarantee this would be the case if the company get bigger with more money being thrown there.

In its first years, Google’s tagline was “don’t be evil“ but they couldn’t deliver the promise.

OpenAI’s original mission evaporated as soon as ChatGPT became a thing.. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34979981

Re:Kagi Raises $670K by RGBCube on Thursday June 29, 2023 @10:48AM (#36521127)
> “Reedok”

Huh?

Re:Kagi Raises $670K by JohnFen on Thursday June 29, 2023 @01:10PM (#36523352)
This made me happy, too. I've been delaying becoming a paying customer because I wanted to see if they were going the VC route first. This is a signal to me that they aren't, so I've signed up.
Re:Kagi Raises $670K by gumby on Thursday June 29, 2023 @07:11PM (#36528109)
> This is proper bootstrap money,

By the way, to "bootstrap" a business is short for "pulling yourself up by your own bootstraps" (yes, it's an old phrase) and means not raising any money.

Just a to bootstrap a computer is to start it when it has no code loaded or running. Nowadays it's in ROM so the term is rather obscure but we used to toggle a little bootstrap program in from the front panel or, if you were lucky, load it in from paper tape. That program was very short, just enough to get some more code loaded and start it.

Re:Kagi Raises $670K by freediver on Wednesday July 05, 2023 @04:40AM (#36597545)
> to "bootstrap" a business is short for "pulling yourself up by your own bootstraps" (yes, it's an old phrase) and means not raising any money.

Today I learned! Technically Kagi was bootstrapped up to this point (I've invested $2MM+ of my own money to get us this far). This is the first external fundraise (as noted in the annoucement) and what makes it very special to me is that people participating in the round are Kagi users who were already a part of our journey.