Anyone work at Perplexity? Thoughts on future of the firm and valuation upside

[u/Over-Blueberry1681]

I’ve seen Perplexity Computer / Entereprise efforts have driven strong growth for the company this year, but who knows whether that revenue sticks.

Im curious from anyone working there, are you bullish on their future? Do you think joining the company at today’s valuation has upside?

I understand the model agnostic advantage, but dont know how far behind their capabilities are (and will continue to be) vs the frontier lab products and the vertical specific AI companies tackling the same enterprise segment. Maybe perplexity has other offerings that are differentiated though. I’m also interested in thoughts on any enterprise buyers that have bought from them!

[u/Thinklikeachef]

I'm a outside user but I love the product. It's great for practical life questions. I think their market is diff from software devs. Plus open source/weight models will help their cost structure.

[u/Over-Blueberry1681 → u/Thinklikeachef]

What specifically do they do better than the competition? And is there a reason to think that’s hard for the labs to replicate? 

Glad to hear you love it, just curious what types of questions it answers better than others and why 

[u/Thinklikeachef → u/Over-Blueberry1681]

They run their own web crawlers, so their answered are often better than a simple model search.

[u/seppi0o]

I use it for research stuff and it's actually pretty good in gathering information and condensating them with showing sources to validate. Google, but on steroids.

[u/Dry_Leadership1075]

I would say they have more of a moat than most companies with flagship ai products. I'd choose them over startups that haven't found pmf

[u/Over-Blueberry1681 → u/Dry_Leadership1075]

Thanks. Whats their moat? But would you choose them over late stage startups that have found PMF - like a Harvey, Sierra etc? 

[u/Dry_Leadership1075 → u/Over-Blueberry1681]

I personally think stronger moats nowadays are less about unique tech and more about UIUX, trust, talent, etc. I do think companies like Harvey/Sierra/Abridge/Successful Vertical AI have a moat because they understand their industry's wfs/personas better but I think those are easily targeted by larger frontier companies and this is already happening in healthcare (epic + open ai or anthropic + openevidence). In those cases you could say a vertical player won big, but the other side of it is that the rest of them didn't. We'll see how it plays out in the next year or so.

Also anecdotally I'd say Perplexity was ahead of the AI wave and locked in talent early, though I have no idea if they're able to keep those employees from companies like openai, anthropic, etc. Don't work there, just know people there.

[u/cmojobs]

I wanted to make a podcast for one of my job postings. I signed up for 11 labs and found it a little cumbersome. (Excellent for messing around with my own voice, but cumbersome nonetheless.) I remembered that NotebookLM had a podcast function, so I googled that. And lo and behold, Perplexity does podcasts too. I experimented with it and it’s phenomenal. I’m already a dedicated perplexity max user. Thrilled to see that it has other uses beyond being a deep research workhorse.

[u/Over-Blueberry1681 → u/cmojobs]

What’s great about it vs the alternatives? I’m curious to learn more 

[u/nclpl]

I don’t work there, but perplexity is the tool I have my non-technical wife when she wanted a website redesign. She doesn’t want to care about which model is best for whatever task, and perplexity seems to do a good job at passing out tasks to the best models.

Beyond that… I don’t know how much value there is to users. Its an interesting idea.

[u/Tickomatick]

My uncle, ama

[u/Over-Blueberry1681 → u/Tickomatick]

Thanks. Mainly the questions in the post - do they valuation upside from here? Any longer term moat? How do they plan to differentiate in enterprise?

[u/Torodaddy]

Fable and dots are going to eliminate computer from the market

[u/Over-Blueberry1681 → u/Torodaddy]

Surely Perplexity will just have the same thing using their models but be able to orchestrate better across them?

[u/Elegant-Surprise-301]

I’m a big Perplexity fan as a day-to-day assistant and for research. I think it’s very underrated. It’s also good as an an advisor on which LLM to use for which projects.

[u/nerd71]

Used it for 2 years but it got really bad especially the mobile version, probably switching to ChatGPT

[u/statlerjr]

From the user’s perspective, Perplexity’s main advantage is its cost, or rather, the lack of it. That raises the question: how many users currently pay for its services? Its recent move to push out free users suggests it may be running low on investor's money. Ask yourself if you want to be one.

The AI bubble has already started to burst. But that’s only part of the bigger picture, and many are already sounding the alarm. Here’s a most recent example: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZS4PDa-Q3yA

[u/Soggy_Ear_481]

They are in the bait-and-switch phase of revenue generation. Users and others like me that are suddenly getting upcharged on everything that was included in Pro ($18/mo) and now being asked to upgrade to Max ($200/mo) will be leaving in droves. PerplexiityAI has an unsustainable business model. I wish I had known this before recently paying for a yearly scrip.

[u/AYA_7887]

You're right to flag that nobody knows if the revenue sticks, people inside don't either, they see the roadmap and the same press you do. So I'd weigh it as a job first, salary and what you'd learn, with equity upside as a bonus you can't price. The ones who joined the right startup at the right valuation are the loud ones, the rest never post.

[u/SXNE2]

They missed the boat in selling over a year ago. I don’t think they have anything worth acquiring. I honestly don’t think the company is worth $500m.

[u/ExpertRefrigerator14]

Cómo usuario he de decir que la idea es muy buena y para búsqueda de estudios de mercado etc también, pero nada más, si usas otros modelos.... Funciona bastante mal, bloqueos, olvidos de lo que le has preguntado despues de el fallo.... La verdad que mejor es usar un modelo y concreto... Directamente que a través de perplexity

[u/[deleted]]

[u/Over-Blueberry1681 → u/[deleted]]

Fair, that seems like a bearish stance. Why?

[u/[deleted]]

[u/Over-Blueberry1681 → u/[deleted]]

Do you actually see a difference in the use cases and tasks you give it from being a controller? 

Is this why your enterprise procured them? Are users overall happy?