Perplexity CTO Denis Yarats on AI-powered search
Episode description
Perplexity is an AI-powered search engine that answers user questions. Founded in 2022 and valued at over $1B, Perplexity recently crossed 10M monthly active users and is growing fast.
In this episode, Sandhya Hegde chats with Denis Yarats, co-founder and CTO of Perplexity.
Join us as we discuss:
00:00 Reactions to Perplexity’s prototype in 2022
1:33 How Arvind and Denis started working together
4:04 Building a text-to-SQL tool initially
6:34 Launch of ChatGPT and pivot to general search
9:46 Focusing on user data, and not on the foundation model
14:43 Perplexity’s early adopters
16:42 Early customer feedback
18:44 Perplexity’s core technical competencies
22:44 Subscription pricing and future gross margins
25:12 Perplexity’s hardware partnerships
29:49 Future product vision
32:50 Advice for founders in the AI space
Sandhya Hegde is a General Partner at Unusual Ventures, leading investments in modern SaaS companies with a focus on AI. Previously an early executive at Amplitude, Sandhya is a product-led growth (PLG) coach and mentor. She can be reached at [email protected].
Denis Yarats is the CTO and co-founder of Perplexity.
Unusual Ventures is a seed-stage venture capital firm designed from the ground up to give a distinct advantage to founders building the next generation of software companies. Unusual has invested in category-defining companies like Webflow, Arctic Wolf Networks, Carta, Robinhood, and Harness. Learn more about us at https://www.unusual.vc/.