In Four Months, Neeva has Grown to Half a Million Monthly Active Users

In the fall of 2018, Sridhar Ramaswamy decided to quit his nearly 16-year stint at Google where he worked on monetizing data for Google's ad business. Towards the end, Ramaswamy wanted to create a “different and much better product,” he said. Three years later, privacy-centric search engine Neeva came into existence. Founded by Ramaswamy and former vp of monetization at YouTube, Vivek Raghunathan in 2019, Neeva became publicly available to everyone last year, after previously being available to those requesting sign-up. To begin with, Neeva offered people a three-month free trial, after which people had to pay a monthly fee of $5. However, to increase the number of users, the company opened up its free service to everyone last year and introduced its premium options in January 2022. Now, it has over half a million monthly active users, and since January has been growing active users more than 20% per month, the company said, adding that it is too early to share how many are paying members, but 70% of its subscribers choose the annual subscription plan, rather than the monthly subscription payment. These people pay $50 for premium features such as incorporating work Slack to the search engine or access to password manager service LastPass, the company said. It wouldn’t share the conversion rate. “We picked ads-free and privacy because we felt that it laid the foundation for a truly differentiated and truly better experience,” Ramaswamy, chief executive officer at Neeva, told Adweek. Although the company is often approached to run sponsored ads on its page, the founders refuse. With subscribers in tow, the company is eyeing a European expansion. Privacy concerns have been at the forefront of the advertising businesses for the last few years. The death of third-party cookies and looming global antitrust cases reflect people’s trust in platforms like Google and their data collection tactics. While EU’s privacy laws influence states like California in the U.S., the ad-free and privacy-centric model of Neeva offers another option for people looking to search the internet. Financially comfortable The company started off in 2019 with about 35 employers, many of whom were ex-Googlers, including computer scientist Udi Manber and former vp of engineering at Google, Darin Fisher. A year later, the team has doubled to nearly 80 staff members, many straight from college. The company also secured a total of $80 million in funding, raising $40 million in its last round, from venture capitalists like Greylock Ventures, who also invested in Airbnb and Coinbase—and Sequoia Capital, known for its early investments in Google, Apple, WhatsApp, LinkedIn and Zoom. The company relies on subscribers for revenue but is in a “pretty comfortable position” financially, said Ramaswamy. Most Neeva subscribers, who are predominately male, work in professions like law, medicine and consulting, based on a voluntary survey Neeva sent out to its members. European expansion is in the works A global expansion is on the horizon for Neeva, which plans to extend its services in the third quarter to France, Germany and the U.K., where Europe’s GDPR will make it an attractive option. The company is exploring options to set up European offices and reach more people in this region. However, it did not specify the expected subscriber growth in Europe. One key challenge, according to Ramaswamy, is fighting off Google prompts to reset Chrome as the default search engine every time a user switches to Neeva. For this, the company is working on awareness campaigns through ad placements on key channels to increase its organic users. Ramaswamy points out that the Fast App feature on the app, where people can search results in the suggest box without having to go to the result page, is leading to more people using it. “Google cannot do things like that because it needs to take you to the page that you know that has ads” noted Ramaswamy. The company is also developing features like including user-generated content in its search results through a partnership with Reddit, which people often use as a search engine, while working on improving user experience in its travel vertical. Google Paying More Than 300 E.U. Publishers for News, More to Come Although two-thirds of Neeva's audience use the desktop version, Ramaswamy predicts more people will switch to mobile apps in the next six months. The company currently has an app on the iOS app store and is soon to debut on the Google Play store. An earlier version of this article incorrectly stated that 30% of Neeva’s users are paying subscribers.