Ryan Foutty (Perplexity): The New Era of Search | PodKast #236

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Mar

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very excited to have uh to have Ryan

with us r f

uh Ryan is is leaving uh goto market and

parip efforts at perplexity perplexity

is a company that uh it really it really

uh the way that we see it and we're GNA

of course listen that from you it will

be way better and and super interesting

but you guys are really uh you know

changing the or trying to change the

foundations of how people are searching

online which is an amazing an amazing uh

Mission and I would love to hear more

about that but you guys raised 900

million and that's always uh uh I going

to put you on a spotlight

anyway uh so listen before we jump into

uh perplexity I think uh the first thing

that we normally do is to try to uh

learn more more more about the man

behind the role so we would love to hear

more about you Ryan and what has been

your story from the very beginning

actually uh you working very very

interesting companies also uh so let's

hear more about that sure yeah thank you

so much for having me it's great to be

here with you in Madrid um you know I

get to spend a lot of time in Europe as

part of my role in perplexity and you

know M Madrid has been one of my my

favorite places that I get to visit um

so frequently so it's really great to be

here um I I was born in the Cleveland

Ohio area so the Midwest of the US not

necessarily you know the the tech

capital of the world it's it's it's

usually not the first place you see uh

new technology and startups uh emerging

in the world I mean there are great

companies that are being being built in

the midwest but um you know I was sort

of this person that grew up and fell in

love with technology um uh and um you

know uh you know sort of spent my my

early life very much uh playing sports

and competing onam are you a sport

person I am yeah I was a fairly big

baseball player and I think a lot of

that is sort of what um competing in

teams and like striving to wi and

battling um you know difficulties you

know baseball is a sport where success

is failing seven out of 10 times um and

you know startups actually are somewhat

similar in terms of the I'd say the the

frequency at with which you can be

successful it's it's really really hard

um so learned a lot of perseverance and

and working on teams I actually went to

a small school uh called depa University

for college uh originally my plan wasn't

to work in startups or business or go to

market or anything like that I I want

wanted to be a sports play-by-play

broadcaster on radio so uh I that was

what I did for a lot of college was

actually doing you know radio

broadcasting for baseball and football

and

basketball um field hockey uh and you

know I I ended up being fortunate to do

some internships work in minor league

baseball in the pros in college and I

decided halfway through that I didn't

want to do that I wanted to sort of take

a different path and sort of stumbled

you know as always like I said

interested in technology stumbled into

technology and marketing and go to go to

market um interned actually in with a

company in Munich Germany which also I

think really um Drew my love for taking

products and businesses and turning them

and making them Global uh and uh was

fortunate enough to intern with a small

startup in the Bay Area while I was in

college while I was still going to

school um called uh fresh it was sort of

this

product um revieww company where you

know you have you know sort of

particular that time Kickstarter was

incredibly popular uh that was

201 2012 13 yeah and you know it was

really tough post kick Kickstarter for

companies to get their next 10,000

customers right so you have big moment

where you raise all this money they

reach Plateau very Qui and then it takes

time to launch a product and so this

this company fresh was trying to figure

out like how do you get that next set of

customers by giving people the ability

to try products for a period of time and

then review them and be able to do it

you know for free as long as you review

the product more like b2c B2B or B b2c

BC and um they started working with me

because I was just such a Avid user of

the product and a part of the the system

of how you um could earn points to then

be able to review certain products and

move up this this leaderboard to get it

next was to refer people to the platform

and I was I you know supposedly like one

of their best referers and so they were

wondering you know how are you doing

this and then they ended up offering me

an internship and um my plan was

originally to go work there after

college they didn't end up raising you

know the round at the time that they

were trying to raise and um ended up

looking uh at you sort of was thinking

about what do I want to do for my first

job out of college applied to a bunch of

places Googled Dropbox none of those

places wanted to hire me um because of

that internship I was in San Francisco

for uh a few weeks and disced covered

Uber and ended up applying to Uber in

both San Francisco and Chicago at the

time every city within Uber was its own

startup and you sort of you had a CEO

you had a growth team you had a

operations team that was working on the

supply side um didn't get an interview

with Uber San Francisco um but I did

with Chicago and um um was very lucky

that they took a chance on me I I really

didn't have a whole lot of experience um

but it's it's one of 2015 or 14 uh 2013

13 back then uh I I was about to join a

stripe I join a stripe one year later

and I remember we were developing things

for the flow of payments more focus on

the drivers yeah what was it the the

biggest challenge back there was already

uh providing solutions for the drivers

so that was the supply as you said or

yeah I mean it was you know Uber was

this this constant balance of supply and

demand right where um you know my focus

was primarily on growing demand but we

had a team that was focused on growing

and optimizing suppli so adding new

drivers to the system and in the early

days you know we later did lots of

growth marketing and and found ways to

sort of at scale try and recruit drivers

but actually a lot of the tactics that

worked on the driver side were things

like going to airports and talking with

drivers we would host dinners or meetups

where drivers could invite their friends

and um you know get them on boed uh onto

Uber um you know we or accelerated

payouts which was something originally

launch Lift uh back in the day and then

payments was a huge thing and like Real

Time payments same day payments was a

really critical part and and you know

for Uber drivers it it gave them control

and ability to if they needed to earn

some money on a Friday um they could go

do that and get paid you know that day

or the next day and so um Uber was a

really incredible place to start my

career and a very lucky place I was one

of the first 300 employees it was 30

cities at the time and Chicago was one

of the bigger markets in the US um I

originally joined Uber to do like

marketing campaigns and social media uh

and then as happens in startups uh about

two weeks in they said hey you're doing

Partnerships now uh and I was like okay

what what do I what's that what do I do

uh and um it's one of the the best

things that's happened to me because

it's you know I'm sure that would have

been great doing marketing and social

media um but I I love you know working

on Partnerships working on go go to

market strategies mixing sort of a

flavor of deals and marketing and

creative uh activations and uh and you

know sort of the rest is history so I

ended up spending all of my time ad Uber

doing that I launched a few markets in

the US like Houston and Austin I spent

most of my time based in San Francisco

doing Global Business Development

working with Miller cor and Live Nation

and Manchester United and um you know a

bunch of amazing partners nice yeah and

then what is the open te are yeah so I

left you know I started you know I was

really interested in Mobility so I ended

up going to lime and and sort of doing

that and helping scale lime globally I

lime y first yep and then um and that

was a great experience again like yeah I

think the single thread for my my entire

career has been taking new technology

new technological product and finding a

way to sort of give the world access to

it introduce it to New a audiences and

scale it globally and make it a

household name and a that people love

when I was looking at your career I

thought this guy he's managed to catch

four very interesting waves yeah like

the you know uh writers yeah wave 2012

2013 and then you know lime all about

Mobility these days back in the day

right open SE with the nfts yeah this

really really crazy story give actually

two minutes and now yeah AI right I mean

so it feels like you are if it's a

certain you are catching very very

trendy stuff stuff at the right moment

in a way right yeah I mean the how do

you manage to that by the way do you do

you have like a very strong vision of

markets and then you jump into it or

what is the story here or it's by La U

Uber was completely luck I mean I I was

really interested in like I the reason

why I found Uber is because I was in San

Francisco with this this internship and

I like was trying to figure out how to

get around best place to be right and so

it was like it actually came from like a

personal use case mhm uh I think a lot

of the places and companies I've been

forun to work with it's a product that I

love and just personally have fallen in

love with and use frequently um you know

lime was I was very interested in these

like short distance trips because I was

using Uber frankly on trips where it was

inefficient to get in a car it was much

would have been much better to have

something like a scooter or an ebike um

open SE was really interesting for me

because I had done a lot of work with

creators and I was excited about the

opportunity for nfts to give creators

access to better engaging audience

better control and own um the money

they're making not on a St in the game

no yeah and and to like make that access

pretty broadly give people the ability

for to earn royalties and you also were

working on bishers uh on yeah so I I

built and led the business development

team there and it was everything from

working with big Brands helping them

launch nfts and get another space to um

creators artists athletes celebrities to

payments as well so figuring out you

know in a world where you want to buy an

nft is very much like a digital good

right it's not like buying a

cryptocurrency asset so worked with a

company called moonpay to build this

ability to allow people to pay with Fiat

and their credit card to buy an nft

without needing to like buy crypto and

then send it to a wallet and try and

streamline that process and and make it

a lot easier for people um learned a lot

through that experience um um it was it

was an incredible very quick ride you

know my first month we were doing 100

million in monthly gmv and why month

three or four we were doing three

billion uh a monthly uh gmv but I think

all of this has been building to what

I'm now doing at perplexity which to me

feels like the most exciting thing I've

ever done and you know Ai and really

revamping how we think about search and

getting questions answered that we all

have on our minds on a daily basis um

and that's what perplexity is is focused

on um it feels like my entire career has

been building to this did you do you go

for the for the they approach you

perplexity guys approach you or uh yeah

good question so I had started using

perplexity and I at the time I was doing

consulting so I wasn't doing anything

full-time I like took a break uh I was

just sort of working with a variety of

different startups helping them with

growth and also thinking about like what

did I want to do next next and AI was

one of the the top you know areas of

focus for me um and consumer is sort of

the the aspect of technology that I love

and a lot

of the plays and companies out there

were not necessarily like consumer

focused and like about building a

product uh and a former colleague of

mine from Uber Demetri chveno who's the

chief business officer of perplexity I

reached out to him and just said hey I

saw you in a perplexity would love

advice on how did you end up there

consulting or or full-time because I

want to do something Sim

it hadn't occurred to me you know this

was in um February of almost like a year

ago it hadn't occurred to me that a 30

person company perplexity would need

more business people right like most of

the time startups their business teams

are added much later in the life cycle

but um perplexity you know one aspect of

how we win is building an amazing

product right that is a step change on

what's been possible in search over the

last two decades um but the other piece

that's critical solving is distribution

and awareness um and you know perplexity

values both um on a very similar level

and uh so demetry sort of gave me great

advice and then flipped it back on me

and said well why don't you just join

perplexity and uh the rest of his

history how was the interview with the

founder it was uh it was great I mean it

was one of those um things where I I was

able to meet him in person which I think

is such a big differentiator I actually

the process wasn't moving as fast as I

would have liked and so I told

perplexity hey I'm going to be out in

San Francisco that's where perplexity is

based we should meet in person um for

Consulting and the truth was I wasn't

out there for Consulting I was I was

literally out there to try and meet in

person when you get in person with

people it just accelerates conversations

and I don't know that I wouldn't have

gotten this job if I would not have been

able to meet arvan uh sboss the CEO and

co-founder perplexity in person and we

had what I thought was going to be a

15minute conversation turned into 45

minutes which is generally a good sign

if it goes longer and um we just got to

know each other really well and what he

was looking for was someone who was

going to hustle and like

wanted um someone to think outside the

box in terms of like how do you get

distribute like we can't replicate do

the same things that other companies be

at Google or even at Uber have done in

the past in terms of getting

distribution

and um you know in in my time talking

with them then I knew there was

something really special about the team

that perplexity had built obviously the

product as well um and that's you know

certainly been my experience over the

last year as well amazing I think it's

you know it's critical to understand not

the problem that they're solving today

but the problem that they will be

solving in the future as a company back

then I I remember when I joined his

tribe it was all about payments but the

reality is that has become like a

treasury company right it's all about

moving funds everywhere open up uh

entities being to being able to manage

uh you know many things that I initially

was not supposed to be managed right so

uh and it's not so easy to identify

those companies that can become you know

those kind of a platform play next to

the take to the next level so listen

what is the give us the pitch I mean I

would love to hear more so what is the

mission that you guys are trying to uh

to achieve and give us some

understanding about what is the

technology and the need so it's like I

was just talking to you before before

this uh this podcast and I was saying

it's like feels like it's it's an hybrid

between the traditional search and llms

how does it work technology so yeah so

perplex mission to is to empower and

feed the world's curiosity at its core

like we're a company that our our goal

is about curiosity and the product is

very much about curiosity let me stop

you curiosity anyone out there so it's

purely for everyone it's not academic

curiosity it's no everything started

from day one as anyone I'm going to be

able to satisfy anyone's curiosity yeah

and and you know perplexity it's an AI

powered search engine we call it an

answer engine so you know the way to

think about it is the last two decades

of the internet um when you ask a

question you wouldn't get back an answer

you'd get back 10 BL links and the

internet has opened up so much

information and access to information in

the world but it's not organized in in a

way that's easily accessible for people

and that's whether you're doing like

academic research or you're doing

something for work right we all ask

questions in our jobs uh or you have

personal questions like you know how

should I was wash this shirt uh or you

know how do I fix my broken faucet or

leaky faucet or uh you know I'm a sports

fan like help me understand like for

fantasy football who should I start this

week and why um there are so many

different questions that we all ask

whether it's in a work context or a

personal context um and what perplexity

what we want to do is help you be able

to learn faster and gain that knowledge

and information faster and so we you

know if for the last 20 years you ask a

question you get back 10 blue inks and

you have to go through the arduous

process of clicking on on those links

and reading a bunch of pages and

hopefully you find the answer to now

perplexity what what we do is we

basically are using AI to read links on

the internet to answer your question so

you go to a search box very much like

you have traditional search you type in

your question we give you an a

summarized answer we show you the the

sources and the links actually above the

answer and then we have citations as

well within the answer and it's it's a

you know succinct concise accurate

answer that's well sourced there's

transparency around the sources to to

help answer your question and then you

know you asked how does it work uh

you're right we're really the marriage

of a traditional search engine so we

built a search engine um and combined

with llms and we're using you know one

of the key insights of perplexity is to

answer people's questions there's two

things that need to be true one is you

need to have access to real-time

information in facts right if you're

asking a question about um you know is

Lebron James injured right and you want

to know because you're you're not GNA

watch the Lakers game if he's not

playing um you need to have current

information um but you also need it to

be accurate and Trust like something

that you can trust and what we realized

if you use a AI at large language models

to answer the question you don't have as

realtime information DeLay So months no

uh it can you know vary depending on you

know when when it could be or longer

frankly even longer uh and then you know

AI LMS are not great at storing

knowledge and so what that means is

accuracy isn't always as high it

hallucinates and and so what we do is we

use AI the llm for synthesization

summarization which you know AI

technolog is great at today it's great

at synthesizing vast amounts of

information and then we use the open

internet as the source of you know

verifiable facts and information that

are useful for helping answer your

question but the beauty here the secret

source is you take whatever the links

that you are finding on the open

internet and then you're going to filter

and you're going to find out what is a

what is the real value there then you

send that to the llm and then it come

back with a dtic uh you know uh outcome

for the for the you that's yeah and we

have other data sources so for local for

example we've announced a partnership

with Trip Advisor recently or for sports

we have access to you know statistics

and sports scores from from the

companies that provide that information

so um we just announced a partnership uh

with crunch base where you can inte your

crunch base account of perplexity and

ask questions based on the data that you

have via crunch base so it's you know

the internet and links but it's also a

variety of other you know data sources

that are I was GNA let you tell tell us

but uh I was just checking the number of

users that you have today uh you just

recently announced but you have 20

million H search a day daily yeah I mean

the North Star for us is number of

questions asked a day right the reality

is that's a function of new people

trying perplexity and then the

stickiness of perplexity are you asking

more questions on a daily basis and are

you moving from a weekly use case to

multiple days a week to multiple queries

a week um and you know we're doing 20

million plus queries a day globally okay

that's amazing so congratulations so

before we jump into the goto Market uh

and and how you guys are managing to get

all this capity uh which is amazing the

the business model is you have the pro

solution which you have to pay for it m

I have it once again I have one year

because I have LinkedIn uh Pro account

so because mostly because of you I guess

you were the one signing this this

partnership uh but then you have also an

API solution right so can you just

explain how does it wor the you know

from a pricing and business model

perspective so proplex yeah was free

there's a free version and then we have

a more premium version called proplex

Pro um I actually didn't do the LinkedIn

deals one of my colleagues did one one

of the great great Partnerships that

we've done um and you know Pro you pay

$200 a year $20 a month for um so we

have a consumer subscription Revenue

business that's really fast growing um

uh and that's despite us doing a lot of

these deals where you get it for free uh

we also have an Enterprise version of

that which we launched in April of last

year where companies are buying

perplexity for their employees to use um

every day at work one of the interesting

things I'm curious if you know the most

used Enterprise product that nobody pays

for is Google

search uh but you pay for it and lost

productivity uh and so now we have you

know thousands of companies that have

perplexity Enterprise Pro um for their

employees to be able to use and get

answers to their questions faster and

there's a lot of interesting stuff we

can talk about there we're also allowing

you to integrate some of your internal

uh systems and data um so we have

Enterprise we also have API so

developers are using our apis to build

all sorts of AI power search

experiences um and then we've also

recently launched advertising uh at the

end of last year uh where uh and this is

you know advertising will never

influence the sources or the answer we

that's very important to us like the

objectivity and and unbiased nature of

you know getting answers from trusted

authoritative sources um but one of the

things that's interesting know 40% of

the questions asked on perplexity are

actually a followup question uh and

Below an answer we give you a series of

suggested related questions to allow you

to go deeper down that rabbit hole of

learning and it's one of the most

beloved features that we have and so um

you know we're starting to introduce

things like a sponsor related question

or a sponsored video um uh that's

clearly indicated um that that you know

where we sort of earn advertising

Revenue as well um give us a uh uh you

know a bit of uh uh some comments about

how you guys do the Cod to Market so

because is b2c uh plus B2B plus

B2 institutional almost so how do you

guys mix that and what are the current

challenges yeah I mean you know the

biggest challenge for us uh is awareness

uh I mean amazingly you know I you

travel the world and it's more often

than not I find people that have not

heard of perplexity or don't know what

or even in the US frankly even in the US

even in the US um we've just scratched

the surface despite all of that growth

that you know it's a 2-year-old company

um doing you know 20 million plus uh

searches a day um but we're still very

much in the early Innings of of

perplexity and and of AI it's still

early in terms of people's adoption and

regular usage so that means that the

lowest Revenue driver would be the pro

in a way what do you mean it means that

uh you are signing deals on the B2B and

that's actually working nice but not not

many people have the their own awareness

to know the produ well we do a lot of

those deals yeah so the kind of the

first thing to do is to develop the B2B

more before going into the b2c it's

actually the opposite you're going to go

in parallel or what is it we're going I

mean I'd say B2B is is it's a it's a

distribution strategy it's less I mean

yeah we think there's a great business

to be built there but we're it's a it's

a way to drive general adoption and

awareness perlex if your company is

buying you a seat to use Enterprise Pro

you start using it at work that's

generally someone's first use case as

you're asking questions as you're doing

research for your job and then naturally

gravitates into your personal life so

the B2B side Enterprise Pro is actually

really it's another channel for us to

drive distribution and awareness um

where we started was very much more a

pure consumer product um where you you

know are using it and maybe you're using

it for work but you're using it not you

know because your company has bought it

for you um you know for us what we want

to do is we want to drive General

awareness of perplexity so what is

perplexity and why should I care the

second is then we want you to try

perplexity and we want you to start

asking questions because it's a product

that once you start using it you love it

and what we found is the magic number is

some something like 10 um queries and

once you get to asking 10 questions um

you become hooked and you start to

really think about this as a a daily use

product in in your life and so a lot of

the Partnerships that we've done you

know how we've grown the company in the

earliest of days was actually pure like

earn media and PR so arvan our our C and

co-founder is doing lots of podcasts

like this um talking with the media um

and and that drove a lot of awareness

and growth um we also have some very

high-profile

investors um like Jeff Bezos and

um and Nvidia and Jensen Wong is a daily

user of perplexity and talks about it

all the time so we also have um um

investors or just you know very

successful business people that are

using perplexity and love talking about

it so there's a word of mouth element to

it actually even creators um organically

just talking about flexi With Their

audience um you talking about it with

your friends and then you know in the

last year or so as we built up the

business team Partnerships has been um

and creative activations have been like

a really important way that we've we've

tried to drive awareness and then sort

of adoption up complexity mhm no

absolutely and by the way is there any

specific ideal

customer uh so what is the profile yeah

I mean the truth is we're going for sort

of more democratizing access to to Ai

and and everyone the early adopters of

perplexity there's sort of two cohorts

the first one are sort of knowledge

workers so people that you know are are

asking

um questions of the internet for your

job lawyers um or startup people um

entrepreneurs Founders

Founders um

investors um I have to pay health

insurance and things yeah I mean

actually one of their early uh it was

perplexity was building what perplexity

would be one of the actually early

insights believe it or not was you know

Arend and the team were like learning

how to build a company for the first

time right and they like well how do I

get insurance for my employees um what

like what are all these terms and

actually like they were using perplexity

to answer a lot of those questions okay

um so absolutely um and then another

cohort um which probably not surprising

are college students of course and young

professionals where you're a college

student you know you're writing papers

you're doing research for school you

know the the currency of the citation is

something that you're used to you know

citing your sources in papers and

perplexity from the very beginning was

the first um AI product to have sources

listed above an answer to have citations

in the answer and that transparency

around sources uh and so college

students found you know tons of utility

around using it for school but also you

know naturally you're thinking about an

internship or companies you might want

to work at and you graduate and so

you're using because the reality is that

you are you are you are going you're

trying to go into facts no uh but how do

you uh perhaps is a very deep question

but how do you get rid of the opinion

you know how do you do that how do you

actually manage to make sure that

whatever you actually come up uh

whenever I ask you a question the answer

is is factual yeah I mean a lot of that

is like waiting of of you know different

sources and like we tend to bias towards

peer-reviewed sources academic journals

journalism um and building sort of the

ranking so you qualified the the content

Source yeah and like building like

products and internal systems around

ranking sources and and you know

critically you know a source isn't

necessarily it's like it's not just like

you know in different countries or

markets but it's also by category so you

know if you're asking a question about

politics you probably don't want to use

Reddit as a source um but if you're

asking a question about you know how do

I like video games like how do I get to

this next level sources like YouTube

actually are pretty helpful to answering

that question and so it's also looking

at it on a category by category basis

based on the types of questions that

people are asking M excent so uh

thinking about your strategy go to

market strategy one thing that uh I find

it very interesting is uh all those very

big deals that you signing partnership

deals that you signing with Telos

actually you in Madrid yeah uh because

you announced yesterday uh I just read

the pr this morning uh the the agreement

with telica which is by the way one of

our as you might know uh so how do you

do that uh is a company because you

don't have a very you don't have a very

big team right it's fairly small I would

love to hear also about the culture a

little bit more and how you guys are

building the team and what are going to

be the needs by the way in the future

but how do you manage to get all deals

with all those very strong big Partners

you know uh and uh and is that and and

there's always tension about hey I'm

going to B this I'm going to bring this

very huge partnership uh and those guys

are going to bring their own playb so I

need to adapt to them uh how do you guys

manage that tension you know of signing

all those globally also because you have

also the global complexity component to

add into the equation so yeah give us a

little bit of uh of your experience here

yeah I mean so as I mentioned obviously

building a great product is like

foundational and we have a really

talented team of product and Engineers

that have and obviously the founders

that built amazing product and so then

the the other piece is solving

distribution and we can't replicate what

other tech companies have done in the

past we're not able to do things like

browser Integrations because those deals

are incredibly expensive you know many

browsers are getting paid billions of

dollars a year from companies for for

that access and so you know then the

question becomes like what are the other

channels and categories of partners that

we would have um where we can you know

get access to people at scale um and

fits and aligns with a product like

perplexity and

Telos um you know sort of the thesis

there Telos have direct access to

Consumers right they have you know

millions or tens of millions of

customers in a given Market um they're

very technology forward um connectivity

is really critical um they have

experience introducing new products and

subscriptions to people right so you you

know your your TCO like movie star you

can some you know get Netflix or Spotify

um as part of your plan um and you know

this is where there's a real alignment

in terms of what they care about what we

care about they are excited about Ai and

they want to be early to helping

democratize access to Ai and so we um

we've had tons of success with tokos

it's it's been um probably our biggest

partnership um biggest part of our

partnership strategy so far so we

partnered with telefonica as you said we

just launched mov star here in Spain but

we've also launched Vivo and Brazil and

vmo2 in the UK and and more to come

across and how it's going to work so if

I'm a mob star user I will have like one

year license for free or yes we

basically M Star for example which we

announced yesterday is offering all of

their customers in Spain one year free

of perplexity Pro perplexity Pro is our

subscription it's sort of the premium

version of perplexity you get access to

choose the model that does the

synthetization and summarization um from

a variety of different publicly

available and private uh models um you

get access to things like voice mode

where you can sort of have a

conversation and and get answers wrote

back to you um you can upload images and

ask questions or PDFs and ask questions

um in the US we have something called

Pro shopping which allows you to

oneclick buy something within perplexity

as you're doing research um and and and

then you know one of the most love

features is PR search which is sort of

this multi-step reasoning feature that

we've built to help answer the most

complex questions in a structured way

and so their customers get a year free

your perplexity Pro uh and then they

sort of promote this via email and you

know inapp push notifications SMS uh one

of the big things is PR so we had a big

launch event yesterday where Arvin um

rco is is in town and announced it with

the the M Star leadership team at a

press event um and we had a couple of uh

influencers um terona and gorgo uh

Esports uh gamer um you know also appear

and talk about perplexity and that

generates tons of earn media and press

um that helps Drive awareness or

perplexity then there's sort of the

direct marketing from from mov star or

they're sort of messaging users about

perplexity and giving them access to

this benefit and then we do these sort

of fun things so Arvin yesterday was on

a live stream with gorgo playing FIFA

and talking about uh football and

talking about FIFA and talking about

perplexity um he showed our new Android

assistant that we also announced

yesterday um he does podcast interviews

like this

um and that model has really worked

quite well and you know we started with

this sort of pro distribution model with

tokos and it's been telica and Deutsch

Telecom and SoftBank and SKT and

Comcast um and a lot more to come uh I

think we've done I think we've launched

something like 15 countries so far with

the these too deals and we have

another at least 15 to 20 to go that

will be launching in the next couple of

months um and uh but then we do more so

with movar we've also launched a TV the

world's first TV integration of

perplexity where on the mov Star Plus

app you can um push a button on your TV

remote ask a question and perplexity

will give you an answer back but be it

you what's the weather or content

recommendations what should I watch or

you know you you're thinking about

traveling somewhere and you want sort of

more of a visual experience and on your

TV you know push of push of a button on

your remote away from getting an answer

to your question um so we also have done

things like that TCO is like star and so

I'm thinking uh of course we're came

from a very uh unexpected years right

after you know from 2021 the whole thing

changed it was not about growth anymore

but we have seen companies like in the

insanity mode growing heavily on head

count you know you guys raised 900

million uh what is the you know and but

I have the feeling that you guys are you

know very carefully hiring yeah uh so

tell us a little bit more about the

culture of the company with regards to

you know uh headcount and how do you

guys approach it uh so what profiles are

people are you guys bringing and how do

you guys see the future here yeah people

are often surprised to learn that we're

a really small team uh about 140 people

globally uh when I joined we were around

30 or 40 people in March of last year

here uh so we've added you know about

100 people or so but you know there are

many other AI companies that are far far

bigger thousands of people and you know

our plan and although we will continue

to add people and grow is to keep the

team really lean uh and as small as

possible it's not to necessarily hire a

bunch of people um and we don't need you

Uber I was they said was one of the

first year employees when I left in 2018

about four and a half years later we

were something like 20 25,000 people

that business required more of it

because you have sort of on the ground

an operational component um perplexity

that's less so but um the team is very

intentional about adding really high

quality people um so it's constantly

like when we're referring people the

question is always is this person you

know the top 1% of people you you've

worked with in your career we tend to

like bring on a lot of people that we

have either worked with either you know

I've worked with doing a deal with them

or we work together at the same company

we have a lot of people from Uber and

Kora and um and and I get that and I

have no doubt that you guys will be able

to do it but you know what it really

finds very interesting is that you guys

managed to get TI like telephon and you

guys are very Global very siging very

very interesting deals with Telos with

Publishers uh you know and and initially

in a very very sucessful companies they

you're going to raise the one 1% people

I get that and but those guys are tend

to be gener IST mhm very very good guys

very very strong project managers in a

way yeah but to get to those

Partnerships that you guys are getting

you need specialist people you know you

need to people in theory people that

speak the language they know The

Narrative of Telos so tell me what what

is happening out there for you to manage

to Sol those deals you know without

having those specialist because you

don't have them anyway well the thing we

hire a lot of former entrepreneurs and

Founders right so people you know my

boss started his own company after he

left Uber um you know one of our product

managers who leads mobile who is big

part of the the Android assistant we

launched yesterday he had his own

startup we hire a lot of people that

have built and and frankly like many

people that have failed in building

startups so you have an understanding of

what it's like to build a company and

you have like that ownership mindset so

so I think that's one piece we also hire

you know like myself a lot of you know

operators who were very early at

companies and have either helped see

like that growth trajectory in the

positive or you've maybe you've not been

able to do it as successfully you know

Uber was a great experience lme was

really really hard um um you know to

scale that company for a variety of

different reasons um and it's not you

know lime is not the size of uber right

like uh it's it's um a great company and

they built a great product and the

business is is really great but it's

it's still really tough business um and

uh so we hire lots of people that have

this experience of you know seeing

successful companies but also being a

part of companies that maybe you know um

didn't realize you know sort of the Uber

Google Facebook Apple level of scale um

that that some have but we also hire

people we tend to hire people that have

worked in smaller teams uh and that have

have a bias for Action um that's a

really important characteristic is an

ability to like just get things done um

and speed you know our two of our sort

of the sort of things that help us be

successful is speed and focus right

we're just focused on this one thing

which is helping um build a platform

that helps you answer your questions and

do things

faster um and then speed which is you

know it's a pretty like flat company we

don't have like lots of layers we're all

empowered to make decisions so if I'm in

the room negotiating with telica I don't

need to like you know up to Arvin or

leadership uh the founders on certain

deal points like I am empowered to go

make decisions and get things done so

you know instead of a conversation that

might take many weeks with a big company

like we can basically come to an

agreement often within a meeting or two

um and like every and on the product

side we're shipping product something

like 300 out of 365 days a year like the

the team has a real yeah um bias to

shipping and iterating and learning uh

and not you know you know this sometimes

like you know perfect is the enemy of

greatness right so I don't have to

negotiate the perfect deal right um

actually what's most important for us is

getting things to Market and then

iterating and building so like you know

the the first part of our Toco deals you

know it's not necessarily the perfect

deal but what we found is we do sort of

a deal that allows us to start working

with them and then we build on top and

we have a great relationship and lots of

early wins and then we do more together

um and that's also the same thing on the

product side right so the Android

assistant that we launched yesterday um

you know the team has been working on

that for just a couple months um we

launched it and it's an amazing product

I uh we were talking about this earlier

like it's a like I I have an Android

phone now uh I've been a a DI hard iOS

you have two you have I have two phones

yeah I have two I have two phones uh but

I'm my Android phone more because of the

perplexity assistant um that's not the

final version of the assistant so we'll

launch something you know good enough

every it's it's good enough in fact I

think it's great um um but more features

are coming right it's just the beginning

and we didn't need to wait for the

absolute final perfect product we got to

a place where it was a product we were

proud of and we felt like would give

people lots of utility and be a magical

experience and we're just going to keep

iterating and adding more and more and

more every day every week every month um

totally so execution velocity is

incredibly important in this company

yeah yeah no I and I it come it I think

all comes back to hiring the right

people for sure uh but I I get it that

sometimes startups uh they trying to

launch Pro too quickly too heavily uh

and they need to take a you know it is

very important to do this beta launch

where you as I'm going to laun something

that is going to work but let's do not

rush into F the decisions too quickly

and let's hear what the market has to

say you know yeah and especially in b2c

I that's critical even in B2B as well uh

even yeah we should that a lot so that's

very interesting listen uh I would love

to hear how do you guys see the

future uh and talk a little bit about

competition so how do you see because I

have you I have the feeling you have a

very unique value proposition today I

think you you pitching H you will be

people will be very they will be

mind-blowing uh you know mind-blowing on

on how you guys propose things and is a

very unique thing today but I guess

you're going to run to someone in the

future so what do you Pro you will be

running into uh in the future from a

competitive perspective and secondly how

do you oversee the future from a pro

perspective so what Pro are you guys

building in five 10 years time so yeah I

mean I I think the the biggest obstacle

for us is like we're competing with

entrenched behaviors that people have

which is using traditional search over

the last two decades and that's a that's

a really hard habit to to break uh and

you know so there's we talked about

awareness and distribution getting

people to try it getting people to

attend queries but then it's also how do

you build across a variety of different

verticals and experiences a deeper more

differentiated product so uh and I think

a lot of you you see where things are

going and this is you 2025 2026 will be

sort of the years of not just answers

but

actions um because you guys are going to

launch a Marketplace no or is already

well we launched um around Black Friday

of 2024 we launched shopping on

perplexity in the United States only the

us only in the US coming coming uh

internationally uh very soon uh where as

you're doing research for a product for

example help me find the best 4K TV in

this budget range um we've um we've now

allowed people as you're doing that

research say you you know you see a

variety of different products you say

hey I want to buy this TV from Samsung

you can now oneclick buy within

perplexity we have your credit card

information we have your shipping

information as a pro user um and um you

can buy it and then we go and use

agentic payments to to buy that product

for you and then it's it's sent to you

and

you know that's the first set of actions

right shopping and it's it's done

incredibly well it's significantly

increased what was already a fairly

common uh category of query which is

shopping yeah um uh and made it an even

bigger use case within perplexity and so

you know the other actions that we're

excited about are things like restaurant

reservations travel bookings um

ticketing at some point to events um you

know uh and allowing you to do that in a

very seamless way perplexity is a

product you know is about curiosity but

it's also about giving people um time

back the gift of of time there are very

few products in this world that save us

time most actually cost us time but

perplexity saves you time right you get

answers to your questions much faster

and you know the sort of actions that

you're doing based on the questions

you're asking we want to do the same

thing for you um what it also end up

becoming is a product that is actively

working on your behalf for you and

anticipating your need

right um so you know let's say we know

you're a big Golden State Warriors fan

and you know one of the use cases that

that we love and and we've been sort of

experimenting with this is sort of

alerts around different types of things

that you care about so say sports and um

one of my colleagues is a big Warriors

fan he likes Steph Curry Steph Curry has

been injured a lot um and so he set a an

alert that um tell me if Steph Curry is

playing or not t night and and it gets

an alert and if he's playing he'll like

watch and spend more time and if he's

not you know maybe he he will go and do

something else U but we can also start

to like anticipate um what your needs

are based on you know things you tell us

or your your um engagement with

perplexity and start to be a platform

that's like working on your behalf as if

you've employed someone to do all these

things be it research or helping you buy

something or helping you find like a

great restaurant when you're visiting

Madrid it's going it's basically an

employee working on your behalf except

you know it doesn't cost you the salary

of an employee exactly that really

resonates and and and we want to give

that access to everyone yeah yeah

democratize uh uh democratize the access

to kind of a uh more proactive co-pilot

in a way uh makes a lot of sense and I

think you guys are in a unique position

to do I mean Ryan it's been amazing to

hear the story uh thank you very much

for saying your

uh background story very interesting the

companies that you've been working once

again congratulations that you've been

uh you know uh surfing very interesting

waves and the whole mission of

perplexity I mean we really looking

forward to seeing the companies uh

moving forward and see where the whole

thing is going to end uh um the last

question I have for you is a standard

question that we actually yeah uh uh use

with all the all the guests here is give

us a recommendation of of a book yeah

that or or TV series or whatever you

feel what content you would recommend to

our listeners yeah I mean on the book

side I don't know if you've read shoe

dog um the story of Nike from Phil

Knight I think that's um fascinating

really like if you're a fan of the the

Nike the brand to see like yes where it

started and a lot of the challenges that

he overcame in terms of trying to build

you know great shoes for athletes and

obviously more more cultural but also

like a great brand Builder right uh and

very much a mission Centric company like

their mission is not to sell shoes and

apparel um it's more about greatness um

um so I I it's a really great read if

you're into the brand if you're into

business if you're into building uh I am

also really into podcasts so uh uh ones

like this but one of my favorite ones

that I I listen to quite frequently is

from Rick Rubin called tetr griton um

and it's a great podcast on

creativity uh on personal growth um and

it comes from like company

Builders um actors

scientists uh and it gives you a picture

into the world of so many different

really successful

creators uh and I think there's a lot of

things that you can pull from that when

it comes to building companies and

products nice next time in Madrid good

question

um I'm generally here every couple of

months uh so um nothing yet planned but

uh hopefully hopefully I'll be in

Barcelona in Mark for memoral congress

so that's my next time in Spain I

actually be in Colombia

so exactly that week but listen thanks

very much anyway thank you very much

it's good to see you again really

appreciate it thank you

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