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Comment by hosteur | Hacker News Reader

Well, 29K subscribers is quite alright considering that they are not doing any ads. So their marketing is largely word of mouth as I understand it.

Of course, they are not going to grow to the level of FANG with this approach but do they have to?

I am a very happy Kagi subscriber myself. And I loathe when I have to wade through SEO spam sites on the few occasions where I have to use Google, Bing, etc. due to being on someone else's computer.

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> Of course, they are not going to grow to the level of FANG with this approach but do they have to?

They do if they want to demonstrate that paying is a viable alternative to ads, and not just a niche curiosity.

Almost every business in the world outside of Silicon Valley is a niche business. And these are still brands that every one of us are familiar with, employing thousands and making healthy profits.

Why would anyone want to demonstrate that? Why would any small player feel the need to grow to FANG level at all?

They run a profitable company that is supported by fees paid by clients. Just this alone is the proof it works. And is far, far away from the speculative nature of stock market and FANG.

They only run it off the backs of large search engines. Kagi pays to use other search engines.

That 20K subscribers wouldn’t fund them enough to make their own engine nor could they compete for the engineers to maintain it.

By that measure, every company in the world except the magnificent seven is a niche curiosity.

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