Aravind Srinivas
Co-founder and CEO of Perplexity, the AI answer engine company that has expanded into autonomous agents, research and knowledge-work tools.
“You don't need teammates for your life. You need teammates for your work.”
Newcomer Pod · Startups & Venture · November 2026
Context
Newcomer pressed on weak retention for consumer agent tools. Srinivas says repeat agent use belongs at work, which is why Perplexity named its agent product Teammates.
Transcript
Yeah, that's because only VCs book a lot of business-class license hotels every week. Normal people don't. That's it. Yeah. It's as simple as that.
It works so well for them.
Well, exactly. So it's a product for 100 people, 200 people in the world. The rest of the people, repeat use cases for agents are actually in the workspace, which is why we called our product teammates. You don't need teammates for your life. You need teammates for your work. So I think that realization we had last year itself. That if you want to actually build agents and if you want to have high retention, you need to have people pay for it. And that's why you've got to focus on. So
are you pretty bearish on, let's say, Muse? No. Or you think it just has to become an enterprise tool?
No, I think, look, I actually think the Muse strategy is very good. They don't rely on click-based ads, so they can use all the understanding they gain about every user on the free usage and make your Instagram feed a lot better. They claim they won't do that today with their privacy policies where…
In a way that you think the other players in that space are not.
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