American company with a fully remote team opening an office in Belgrade? This just feels like such a waste of money.
Kagi only has ~61k members, I have a feeling this won't get used much, most probably won't ever visit Serbia.
Kagi only has ~61k members, I have a feeling this won't get used much, most probably won't ever visit Serbia.
Also (I'm a Serb, I'm allowed to hate on my own country don't worry) who the fuck visits Serbia, much less to visit some random search engine's office?
It can be seen as a combination of benefits given to employees (motivation boost) + marketing.
It's also a space that our founder has already been leasing for the better part of 10 years(?), long before Kagi was even a thing. As others have pointed out, this is Serbia, not SF - it's very cheap in relative.
So in perspective,
- a handful of our team just got a nice office for daily use together in person
- it is a "home base" that others in Kagi can freely use as they travel; we're already planning some "jams" to host there in 2026 to get major features over the line in person :)
- our community can engage with us there as well, we love our customers! online engagement is a very suffocated and transactional space
- it really isn't that expensive
It's all net positive to us in terms of investment in our own people and the community.
The point here is that it is far away from where it is likely to see huge demand because if it was not the fact that this is selling dollar bills for a cent would bite them immediately. It is a marketing and publicity thing, and maybe a recruitment thing: friends of employees can now come hang out.
Or look at it as if Google or Microsoft or whoever sponsored a random hackerspace.