This rings of the whole t-shirt factory thing all over again. Get an office, that’s fine I guess if you will use it but the coworking aspect is just odd.
> The process from here involves setting up a business entity in Germany, so we can import the t-shirts, store them in a warehouse, connect inventory logistics and ship them all over the world. This includes building a website and connecting it to a back-end database. So, we basically ended up owning a merch production operation end-to-end, just so that we could ensure premium quality of these t-shirts!
> allocate nearly a third of our investor-raised funds to produce and freely distribute 20,000 t-shirts?
That's a lot of their money just to give out some t-shirts but I get that it's marketing in a way.
It is basically marketing. I am not sure everyone would call that a distraction if it gives kagi more visibility and thus, customers and revenues to spend on r&d.
Belgrade is a good place to test if that marketing works. It is a tech hub, which means higher probability to get new kagi subsribers, and it is not too expensive as a place to do an experiment. If they realize the ratio between money spent on this coworking space vs customer gained in that area in a year is not in their favor they can easily not renew their rent and shut it off.
Fleeing as in seeking asylum? Or fleeing as in sanctions? If the latter, besides the Slavic nations, I'd have thought Germany, the UAE, Israel, and Canada to be more popular?
Most popular places to move I guess are Georgia(365 daya visa-free, easy to reach), Serbia, UAE, Cyprus, Poland.
That said, this isn't as crazy of an idea as it sounds from the headline. Kagi says they are "remote-first", so the main beneficiary of this real estate is meant to be Kagi and their employees. The idea to open up some of the office space for Kagi customers to reserve is novel but not completely ridiculous either. I can see it working out well as a marketing tool.
At least Kagi already has multiple decently useful products (Kagi search, Assistant, Orion).
They gave away some t shirts to paying customers. It probably had decent returns on both marketing and loyalty.
> The process from here involves setting up a business entity in Germany, so we can import the t-shirts, store them in a warehouse, connect inventory logistics and ship them all over the world. This includes building a website and connecting it to a back-end database. So, we basically ended up owning a merch production operation end-to-end, just so that we could ensure premium quality of these t-shirts!
> Now, you may ask, why did we go through all this trouble and allocate nearly a third of our investor-raised funds to produce and freely distribute 20,000 t-shirts?
Marketing.
I never understood how this very simple position flies over certain heads.
Now, if the company dies because of genuine financial mismanagement, I will be pissed. I rely on Kagi's search and AI offerings. For now, those core offerings keep getting better even with these side quests. For example, their Ki research assistant just left beta: