Perplexity AI’s Co-founder and CEO, Aravind Srinivas, has a stark message for aspiring entrepreneurs: stay prepared, and be ready to hustle – because the giants are watching.
According to a report by NDTV, in a session at Y Combinator’s AI Startup School, Srinivas offered blunt advice to undergraduate, graduate, and PhD students working on the next big thing in tech. If your idea is good, he warned, expect billion-dollar companies to take notice and copy it.
He recounted how Perplexity launched its real-time web crawling answer engine in December 2022 – a feature that competitors like Google’s Gemini, OpenAI’s ChatGPT, and Anthropic’s Claude quickly followed.
“They will copy anything that's good. I think you've got to live with that fear, and you have to embrace it. Realise that your mode comes from moving fast and building your own identity around what you're doing because users at the end care,” he added.
According to Srinivas, such copying is often motivated by the financial expectations placed on tech giants.
Instead of letting fear of replication stall innovation, Srinivas encouraged builders to push forward.
Earlier this month, Perplexity launched its own Comet browser on July 9. Within hours, reports emerged that OpenAI was developing a similar web browser, potentially setting up a new round of competition, though OpenAI has yet to make any official announcements.
Following this, Perplexity’s head of communications, Jesse Dwyer, shared his take in a statement to Business Insider:
“Browser wars should be won by users, and if users lose Browser War III, it will be from a familiar playbook: monopolistic behaviour by an ‘everything company’ forcing its product on the market. In this sense, whatever OpenAI builds as a browser will be no different than Google's,” Dwyer wrote.
“Bigger companies will not only copy but also do everything they can to drown your voice,” he added.
With a growing user base and a firm belief in agility and originality, Srinivas and the Perplexity team seem ready for what’s next – browser battles and all.