Perplexity CTO Denis Yarats on AI-powered search

Perplexity CTO Denis Yarats on AI-powered search

Author: Unusual Ventures April 21, 2024 Duration: 35:14

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 sandhya@unusual.vc.

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/.


Behind every so-called overnight success in software, there's a long, often messy journey of finding exactly what customers need and how to deliver it. That's the central theme explored in Startup Field Guide by Unusual Ventures: The Product Market Fit Podcast. This series is built for those in the trenches of early-stage software companies, from founders just starting out to leaders tasked with building something from nothing. Each episode moves beyond theory, offering grounded conversations with people who have actually navigated these challenges. You'll hear them unpack the real work of identifying a true market need, the nuances of early hiring decisions, and the practical steps of crafting a go-to-market strategy. Fundraising, often a opaque process, gets broken down into more understandable components. The focus remains consistently on the actionable and the specific, providing a kind of audio manual for the foundational phase of a business. Tune in for a candid look at the less-glamorous, critical work that separates an idea from a viable company, all brought to you by Unusual Ventures. This podcast serves as a resource for turning those initial concepts into a sustainable operation, one hard-won lesson at a time.
Author: Language: en-us Episodes: 53

Startup Field Guide by Unusual Ventures: The Product Market Fit Podcast
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