“Sleep With Fear”: How Aravind Srinivas, the CEO of a $14B AI Startup Stays Ahead of Google

Aravind Srinivas:  Why This AI CEO Says You Should Be Terrified of Your Competitors

Aravind Srinivas, co-founder and CEO of $14 billion AI startup Perplexity, believes the key to building a game-changing tech company lies in an unlikely place: embracing the fear that someone else might beat you to it.

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In a world where Sam Altman and Mark Cuban are forecasting a wave of billionaire and even trillionaire founders fueled by artificial intelligence, Srinivas says the pressure of intense competition shouldn’t paralyze founders—it should drive them.

“You should assume that if you have a big hit—if your company is something that can make revenue on the scale of hundreds of millions or billions—you should always assume that a model company will copy it,” Srinivas said during a recent talk at Y Combinator’s AI Startup School. “You’ve got to live with that fear and you have to embrace it.”

Aravind Srinivas, 31, is no stranger to that pressure. Since launching Perplexity just a few years ago, the company has rapidly grown into a serious contender in the AI search space—rivaling tech behemoths like Google, Microsoft, and emerging giants such as OpenAI and Anthropic.

Rather than becoming overwhelmed by that reality, Srinivas says the solution is to move fast and build with identity.

“Realize that your moat comes from moving fast and building your own identity around what you’re doing, because users at the end care,” he emphasized.

Perplexity’s unique approach to AI-powered search has made waves across Silicon Valley, gaining attention not only from users but also from major players like Apple, which has reportedly held talks about a potential acquisition.

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