* You're pitching this search engine specifically "for devs".
* You're pitching it on HN, a community which (correct me if I'm wrong, @dang) is largely composed of your target audience.
* When given feedback, you're responding very defensively in almost 100% of your comments with something akin to "an extension takes 5s to install and uninstall, just do it, no one cares, we don't want to prevent ordinary folk whom we consider morons from using our search engine so everybody has to use our middleware to even give it a try". Buddy, in case you can't see why that's inane, let me help you: you're marketing this as a search engine for devs and devs are telling you why they won't use it. If you can't even get your target audience to give it a try, why on earth do you think the average person (who sadly doesn't give a fig about "the big bad monopoly boogeymen") will spare a glance for your product _if they even hear about it in the first place_? You're defending a user-hostile practice with shallow nonsense logic.
It's been my experience that founders who are seeking to "disrupt a monopoly" by ignoring feedback from their target audience don't end up disrupting anything (unless you count disrupting their employees' lives when the VC money runs out and everyone gets laid off), they just end up alienating anyone who'd ordinarily care enough to give the product a try. Best of luck, though.
He's also gaslighting a crowd of folk that he absolutely had to know will know better[1], and then asks us to trust that his product will respect privacy.
If you're starting a relationship of trust off with such a ballsy, blatant lie, then nothing you say can be trusted going forward.
For real. It makes me wonder what the culture is like for the other people working there. Apparently, they're currently hiring; for their sake, I hope one of the open positions is for someone who can do PR.
Spot on! The OP appears to be so obsessed with taking down a monopoly that he forgot to make a good product, or a good onboarding experience, or to just be a respectable human when interacting with others. He came here to convince the startup and dev community that he's our savior against Google, and then repeatedly told us we're just too stupid to understand what he's trying to accomplish. I find it disgusting.
> [snip] or to just be a respectable human when interacting with others. He came here to convince the startup and dev community that he's our savior against Google, and then repeatedly told us we're just too stupid to understand what he's trying to accomplish. I find it disgusting.
100% agree. Considering how poorly he handles feedback, user concerns, and basic human interaction, I'm very glad I don't work with him. With the quality of his comments and behavior all day, I guess I shouldn't be surprised that he was bragging about not having a PR person, either.[1]
Yeah, it would be nice if it was easier to test... so that people could assess whether or not they like it. Instead, we get this hostile experience where we're forced to make it the default search engine before we know if we want to use it.
It's also concerning that they're throwing around "privacy" like a buzzword... but aren't sharing how they plan to monetize the platform in the future. That plus the dark patterns will make it a no-go for me.
The dark patterns, the complete and utter inability to address legitimate feedback appropriately, the excuses, the gaslighting... Yeah, no. I don't need yet another company with these philosophies and this kind of founder in my life.
Especially (from their intro comment, which I can’t reply to for some reason):
> We believe in superior privacy choices without losing convenience.
Their replies in this thread contradict that - both privacy and convenience are compromised in favor of sticky user acquisition, with the founder doubling down on how this is somehow not contradictory, just “unfortunate”.
> Especially (from their intro comment, which I can’t reply to for some reason):
>> We believe in superior privacy choices without losing convenience.
> Their replies in this thread contradicts that - both privacy and convenience are compromised in favor of sticky user acquisition, with the founder doubling down on how this is somehow not contradictory, just “unfortunate”.
Absolutely. That, and constant references to how much of an underdog they are fighting as the peoples' champion against a $2tr Goliath with a browser monopoly that forced them to implement this "unfortunate" requirement. eye roll
I feel really sorry for the people on his team who undoubtedly put a lot of time and effort into this, only to see it being put to waste by the most tone deaf CEO I’ve ever witnessed.
This guy is going to blow the 20 mil trying to get people to download his browser extension instead of actually making a search engine or whatever it's supposed to be
The saddest bit is that when it does end up failing, he will have convinced himself it's because:
1) "competing with a $2tr company is hard"
2) "people were too dumb to be able to immediately make it their default navbar search engine"
3) "We made a super easy extension to let people install it before trying it! We even open sourced it! Clearly, people don't care enough about privacy yet. It's not my philosophy or my PR approach, it's the users that suck. I hope the target audience for my next genius idea isn't as stupid and lazy as this one was!"
Well, that's the problem in the world where everyone expects certain things to be free. Nobody wants to pay for a search engine, so the only way to keep paying the dev salaries and server costs is to sell your data. There's no magic here, just economy.
* You're pitching this search engine specifically "for devs".
* You're pitching it on HN, a community which (correct me if I'm wrong, @dang) is largely composed of your target audience.
* When given feedback, you're responding very defensively in almost 100% of your comments with something akin to "an extension takes 5s to install and uninstall, just do it, no one cares, we don't want to prevent ordinary folk whom we consider morons from using our search engine so everybody has to use our middleware to even give it a try". Buddy, in case you can't see why that's inane, let me help you: you're marketing this as a search engine for devs and devs are telling you why they won't use it. If you can't even get your target audience to give it a try, why on earth do you think the average person (who sadly doesn't give a fig about "the big bad monopoly boogeymen") will spare a glance for your product _if they even hear about it in the first place_? You're defending a user-hostile practice with shallow nonsense logic.
It's been my experience that founders who are seeking to "disrupt a monopoly" by ignoring feedback from their target audience don't end up disrupting anything (unless you count disrupting their employees' lives when the VC money runs out and everyone gets laid off), they just end up alienating anyone who'd ordinarily care enough to give the product a try. Best of luck, though.