Fortune reached out to Srinivas for comment.
On his journey as a millennial entrepreneur building Perplexity—or, as he calls it, the “fastest way to get answers to any question”—Srinivas says that watching others struggle early on has been a huge help.
“In a startup, when you have an initial group of people, the number one thing to do is just iterate and do something,” he said. “I’ve seen many founders spend at least six months to a year in the idea maze going around and around and not getting anywhere.”
In the world of software, developing a product as soon as possible should be the top goal of entrepreneurs, he added.
OpenAI may be one of Perplexity’s biggest competitors, but the two growing AI powerhouses are on nothing but good terms—in part thanks to Srinivas and Sam Altman once calling themselves coworkers.
