Kagi is still rough around the edges.

User forum sign up - needs notification in the sign in/up screen that the user forum is a separate login setup than the search engine. Since you allow third party login see if you can't make the experience more seamless.

Get customers to pay something - right now you have a strict 50 searches a month which means most folks won't come back. It takes 66 days to ingrain a new habit so give them 2 months free. Then for the folks that won't bite at $10 a month offer the ability to get them to pay something. The average online user does 2-3 google searches per day so let them pay $12 a year to go from 50 searches a month to 100 (ie $1 a month). You really want to show your investors you can get adoption AND paying subscribers. Keep the $10 a month plan for unlimited and new features.

Side by Side - let users have the best of both worlds with a dual window search results where you show Kagi's results in the primary window and you have icons for your competitors Bing & Google that if clicked show their results side by side with Kagi. It'll help users see the difference. Since you use webkit browser you can even show what cookies and trackers are being run in realtime.

Corporate Swag - have the sales team send out nice swag & corporate Kagi laptop stickers to customers that generate sales leads at their company. Having someone on the inside pulling for Kagi to be their company's search engine would be a huge help. There are a lot of tech companies that would be willing to give you a try.

Student Swag - You should also have student pricing with $40 for 4 years pricing that slowly roll out with student ambassadors at colleges with computer science programs. Folks that sign up get a Kagi t-shirt, laptop sticker and an opportunity to interview for internships after they've used the product for a few months.

Settings - Kagi's setting pages need to showcase the user. Take the account info page and add it to the banner bar. Add the user's name and Active Account since xx/xx. Let folks choose from a couple of themed settings for the search & settings pages so they feel ownership. Adopt Apollo (Reddit client) pixel pal concept as a return hook to get folks to come back each month to feed their tamagotchi pet (you could also use Viridi app's zen garden). Hide it as an easter egg (maybe when you double click on the Kagi dog) on the search screen and let people name their Kagi pet (better than the no internet t-rex cactus game in Chrome). It'll help you build out your identity and customer loyalty.

  • Vlad replied to this.
    4 days later

    The most common user feedback any business gets is "Your product should be cheaper" and "You should give away free stuff". Of course every customer wants to spend less. I think Kagi is already cheap, somebody who won't pay $10 per month would never pay $5 either. They wouldn't pay even 50c. They would go for free alternatives no matter how good you make your paid products.

      13 days later

      Riptide360 Thank you for the great feedback. To align perspectives couple of quick notes:

      so give them 2 months free

      Kagi is a bootstrapped startup, so the question is who pays for free users searching 2 months free.

      he average online user does 2-3 google searches per day so let them pay $12 a year to go from 50 searches a month to 100 (ie $1 a month).

      Unfortunately Kagi would be losing money on such deal with cost per search approachng 1.5 cents.

      You really want to show your investors y

      Kagi does not have investors and does not priortize for growth at all costs, but prioritizes product quality and sustainabile growth.

      Side by Side

      Not sure how to realize the side by side idea a lot of users search on small screens or mobile.

      have the sales team send out nice swag & corporate Kagi laptop stickers

      We do not have a sales team (can not afford it atm). We will have a swag store soon

      Student Swag - You should also have student pricing

      This is a good suggestion but does require a dedicated sales/marketing org which we currently do not have.

      Your ideas are great and obviosuly influenced by your experience in good performing VC funded startups or corporations. The playbook for a bootstrapped company is very different. Our team is tiny and we are playing a resource allocation game every day.

      If you have some ideas for this situation please reach out at vlad@kagi.com and we can arrange for a call to discuss.

        12 days later
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