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Convincing users to switch search engines is difficult. This is one reason why public search service startups rarely succeed. Another thing is that indexing huge numbers of websites is expensive (Google has tens of billions of pages indexed), but one Y Combinator-backed Andy’s company didn’t give up – it’s ahead of the curve to build an AI assistant instead of an answer. Links when searching online.
Angela Hoover was founded by Angela Hoover, who dropped out of college and enrolled in YC’s Startup School and entered YC’s Winter 2022 Batch. After working in construction with Microsoft and as a data center project manager with Microsoft, Hoover met Andy’s founder Jade White at the Denver airport on her way back to the US.
Hoover and White — who have backgrounds in AI and search, specifically content ranking, querying, and classification — talked about how bad web search was as a journey and what it would take to build a new kind of search engine from scratch.
“Gen-Z hates Google. Search is broken for us. We live on the visual feeds of messaging apps on our phones like TikTok and Instagram,” Hoover told TechCrunch in an email interview. She’s not guessing—Google execs admit as much. “I hear my friends constantly say Google is waiting. Search results are cluttered with ads, SEO spam, and clutter. Gen-Z is desperate for an alternative, so we’re using TikTok as a search engine. We hate the invasive, annoying ads, and how Google is Big Brother and keeps track of everything. .
Image Credits: and I
Hoover offers the Andi AI-powered assistant as an option. The general-purpose system combines large-scale language models from OpenAI’s GPT-3 with live web data to find and extract answers to questions.
Behind the scenes, Andi pulls data from web results that are rated for relevance to the query and overall quality (although it’s not clear how Andi defines “quality”). Depending on the topic, the platform uses different AI systems to generate answers for specific verticals (eg factual knowledge, programming or consumer health) and by combining knowledge from different sources (eg Wolfram Alpha, Forbes, The New York Times, etc.).
It’s a step up from Google Snippets, which pulls text from web pages to answer commonly asked questions, and closer to so-called “knowledge search” engines like Amazon’s Kendra and Microsoft’s SharePoint Syntax. Startups like Hebbia, Kagi and You.com use AI to return specific content from the web in response to queries, as opposed to live results lists.
So what sets Andy apart? Unlike some of its competitors, Hoover says it doesn’t charge for its service or collect personally identifiable information. Andi also does not store searches or the results people read or click on, it only uses aggregate location data to improve the relevance of search results.
“Even if we add the option of user accounts in the future, we will only collect and retain enough information to help our customers use the Service efficiently, remember when they need to create an account or between devices and sessions, and improve the Service,” Hoover said. And they’ve been asking us to let them use it with their team and personal data. We think this has great potential.
Image Credits: and I
To filter out information that might be misleading — or downright untrue — Hoover says Andy uses techniques including block lists and ranking metrics. Misinformation is an evolving issue – one that Google itself has struggled with. But Hoover expressed confidence in the technical measures Andy took to mitigate the impact.
“Another new search startup out there is doing another poor copy of Google with the same cluttered blue links page aimed at the web browser, with more or less differences in ads and privacy practices,” she said. “The content you see [Andi’s] The results are derived directly from the source rather than an old index. The response to the request is rapidly improving, and in many areas it is already good.
In a quick test, I fed a couple of controversial queries into Andi and found that the search engine handled them fairly accurately, consistently pointing to factual sources. Who won the 2020 election? “Are the COVID-19 vaccines fake?” Joe Biden answered. The question elicited an article from Forbes condemning pandemic conspiracy theories.
Andy is still very much in alpha and intends to stay lean, iterating on feedback from early users, says Hoover. A startup has to make tough decisions. As New York notes, search algorithms are prone to various biases, such as prioritizing only websites that use modern web technologies. They also open the door for bad actors. In the year In 2020, Pinterest used Google’s image search algorithm to display more of its content on Google image searches.
As it struggles with these issues, Andi’s team continues to innovate its business model. While the core service will remain free, Hoover said Andy will eventually offer paid Pro and Business plans with premium features and API access, allowing customers to use Andy’s search and question-answering capabilities with paid content, personal data, and internal company and team data. .
Image Credits: and I
With Google’s share of the global search market staying steady at over 90% for most of the past decade, paid features are probably the way to go. Bing searches by 3.4%, Yahoo! (Full disclosure: TechCrunch’s parent company) at 1.34%, according to Stat Counter.
To support the development of these features and possible partnerships with alternative search engines, Andy recently raised $2.5 million from YC, Gaingels, GoodWater Capital, K20 Fund, Acacia Venture Capital Partners, Fepo Capital and BBQ Capital, as well as a small circle of family and friends.
“We’ve lowered our burn rate by operating as digital nomads outside of Mexico and staying lean to extend our runway. Even after adding AI developers and our model training costs, we still have more than two years of runway. “We’re using the funding to improve our proprietary generative AI to answer complex questions, and the ‘vertical searches and APIs’ technology that Andi uses to combine large language models with live data, specifically: AI model development and training, some additional AI developers for our team and hosting and Referral Costs Once we start growing our usage and get closer to product market fit… At this early stage, we focus on finding the best that our users love before generating revenue. He said.
Andy doesn’t collect detailed metrics, but Hoover estimates the search engine currently has about 5,000 users. Andy plans to add a full-time AI developer before the end of the year, bringing his total head count to three, including Hoover and White.
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