YC General Partner David Lieb sits down with Aravind Srinivas, the co-founder and CEO of Perplexity, to discuss his origins in Silicon Valley, what it's like to compete with Google, and what the future of search could look like. Apply to Y Combinator: Chapters (Powered by ) - 0:00 Intro 0:51 Aravind’s early days in AI 3:45 What made Aravind start a company 6:35 The first iterations 14:10 Realizing Perplexity had potential 19:02 “The user is never wrong.” 22:20 Managing the team 24:53 Brutal honesty brings out the worst bugs 25:33 Avoiding becoming a big slow company 27:37 The future of search 31:11 Perplexity’s advantage against its competitors 34:26 Outro