Neeva CEO Sridhar Ramaswamy on AI chatbots and the search revolution | E1686
This Week in Startups
Jason Calacanis
4.2 • 1.4K Ratings
🗓️ 27 February 2023
⏱️ 57 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Neeva CEO Sridhar Ramaswamy joins Molly to talk all things search and AI chatbots, including Neeva’s technology and the difficulty of building a search engine (1:41), Neeva’s consumer focus and business model (20:00), and the search-to-answer revolution (41:31).
(0:00) Molly kicks off the show
(1:41) Neeva’s Purpose
(5:06) The technological underpinning of Neeva
(8:00) The hurdles building Neeva
(10:26) Microsoft for Startups Founders Hub - Apply in 5 minutes for six figures in discounts at http://aka.ms/thisweekinstartups
(11:53) The problems search aims to solve
(18:31) LinkedIn Marketing - Get a $100 LinkedIn ad credit at https://linkedin.com/thisweekinstartups
(20:00) Why choose Neeva
(24:01) Neeva’s business model
(29:18) Moving from search to answers + citing sources
(35:53) The ad supported publishing ecosystem
(37:58) Pilot - Get 20% off the first 6 months at https://pilot.com/twist
(39:13) Leaving Google
(41:31) The search to answers revolution
(44:34) Compensating publishers and dealing with content moderation
(48:51) Open loop vs. Closed loop
(54:29) Neeva copycats
FOLLOW Sridhar: https://twitter.com/ramaswmysridhar
FOLLOW Jason: https://linktr.ee/calacanis
FOLLOW Molly: https://twitter.com/mollywood
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Hey, everybody. Happy Monday. Jason is still away. If you follow him on Instagram, you can see his ski adventures in Japan. It's incredible. |
| 0:07.8 | I am back though today with another great interview today on the show. I'm joined by Shridhar Ramaswamy, the CEO and co-founder of Niva, |
| 0:16.2 | an AI-powered search engine and chatbot. It's private. It's AI-powered search, but it's a very, very different model from open AI, chat GPT, |
| 0:27.4 | Google's Bard and Shridhar himself is a long time Googler who's trying to find a different way forward in the search world. It is a fascinating conversation. You do not want to miss it. It's going to be a great show. Stick with us. |
| 0:40.6 | This week in Startups is brought to you by Microsoft for Startup Founders Hub. It helps all founders build a better startup at a lower cost from day one. |
| 0:49.6 | Startups get up to $150,000 and as your credits, access to open AI APIs, free dev tools like GitHub, technical advisory, access to mentors and experts, and so much more. |
| 1:02.6 | There is no funding requirement and it only takes minutes to join. Sign up today at aka.ms slash this week in Startups. |
| 1:12.6 | LinkedIn Marketing to redeem $100 LinkedIn ad credit and launch your first campaign, go to LinkedIn.com slash this week in Startups. |
| 1:20.6 | And pilot. Grow your business sustainably and operate more effectively. |
| 1:25.6 | Pilot provides the most reliable accounting, CFO and tax services for Startups and small businesses. Head to pilot.com slash twist and get 20% off the first six months. |
| 1:41.6 | All right, everyone. I am having a great day. I am delighted to be joined by Shridhar Ramaswami, the co founder and CEO of NEVA, the next generation search engine that is using the power of AI to just give us answers with maximum privacy and efficiency. |
| 1:57.6 | And that I personally am already willing to pay for welcome to the show and thanks for coming up. |
| 2:02.6 | Thank you, Molly. Thank you, Jason. Super excited to be here. |
| 2:06.6 | So you probably heard us everybody audience talk about NEVA back on episode 1674. Shridhar is also a former SVP of Google's ad business currently a VC at Graylock. |
| 2:18.6 | And if you wouldn't mind, I guess let's start for those who may have missed that episode. I hope no one did tell us what NEVA and NEVA AI is and what you're building. |
| 2:27.6 | And also, are you building that while you are a VC at Graylock? |
| 2:31.6 | I am a venture partner. So it's very much a part time job. I'm on a board of like a synthetic data AI company on Graylocks behalf. |
| 2:39.6 | Most of my time is spent at at NEVA. Yeah, just unwinding a little bit. I was at Google for close to 16 amazing years early part of the search ads team, but sort of grew with Google for on the ads and commerce teams. |
| 2:56.6 | I left about four years ago with my co founder, Vivek, and we embarked on this crazy mission of reimagining search. |
| 3:04.6 | You know, we love the problem of search, but we just felt like Google was trapped in its own success. |
| 3:10.6 | And so NEVA is about rethinking, you know, what is a core product, you know, core part of our daily lives, most of us search without even thinking about it. |
| 3:18.6 | So we wanted to create a product that was all about the user, all about actually just, you know, creating a great product serving. |
... |
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