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Comment by spacechild1 | Hacker News Reader

This sounds great! I'm sceptical of every company that takes VC money, so it's great to see that they didn't.

Well they did, they took venture funding from their users.

That's not what most people understand as "VC money" (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Venture_capital).

What "most people" (Arch Linux enthusiasts I presume) think about it has no influence on the contracts between Kagi and their investors, and the laws the parties have to abide to.

When I used the term "VC money" I obviously meant VC firms. It's not about the laws, it's about the underlying motivations.

And how do you suppose that Kagi receives the money invested by their users? If you guessed by function of a VC firm, then you guessed right.

These are legal and contractual proceedings, with strict definitions of terms by law, not by popular opinion in the hacker community.

"Underlying motivations" of the investors is never a legal factor in any kind of investment deal. That's not something that can be accounted for by any kind of contract.

> If you guessed by function of a VC firm, then you guessed right.

I would not have guessed that. Why would I need a VC firm to invest a few thousand dollars into a company?

Because Kagi is not a publicly traded company, where anybody can invest.

They raised money in the form of SAFE notes, in which case a venture capital firm is created (you can also call it a legal entity or a juridical person) and each investor owns a part of that firm in proportion to the money they invest. That firm in turn will have a contract with the startup company which details and regulates how the invested funds in the future can be transformed to actual shares.

Thanks for the insight. But that's not how most people understand the term "VC money". So while you might be technically right, you are still (intentionally?) missing the point.

We're talking about behavior, not legal factors. Just because something is legally equivalent does not mean it is the same in all other aspects.

That’s not venture funding.

Key difference: They didn’t take any funding from anyone whose values are misaligned with their own

Venture funding is a financial and legal term with a defined meaning. Unfortunately the real world does not care whatever idea the hacker "community" has regarding what the words mean.

Actually the real world does care. Words have meanings in the context that they're spoken, and often times whether you want to or not, dictionaries have to update their meanings because they changed over time.

A dictionary has no bearing on the law and what is defined in a business contract. That would be like me claiming that I own a share of Apple Inc because I purchased an Apple in the supermarket. Sure, maybe I can get the entire HN comment section to agree with me, but that doesn't change reality.

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