Hello,

I am Vladimir Prelovac (pronounced "prel-oh-wats" - or simply call me Vlad), a dad and builder of things, originally from Yugoslavia. After going through two wars in my youth, I decided enough is enough and decided to move to US with my family and we now reside in San Francisco Bay Area. Sadly, the country I was born in does not exist anymore.

My youth was deeply intertwined with a passion for software, computer games, physics, and astronomy. I began my journey in technology in 1983 with a Commodore 64 and Elite (the game that opened my then 7 year old mind). Perhaps the nerdiest highlight of my life was meeting Elite creator David Braben to discuss terraforming Mars by driving a comet into it.

Since 2004, I begun running bootstrapped ventures as a founder. In my most recent corporate role, I had the privilege of serving as VP of Product at GoDaddy (2016-2018), which I joined following the acquisition of ManageWP.

I find immense joy in working on ambitious, often audacious product ideas that push the boundaries of possibile. Since 2018, I have been fortunate to dedicate myself to Kagi, a project focused on creating a novel search engine and web browser. This endeavor is my tribute to my three children, striving to make the web more humane and a friendlier place for them.

Current work

I am the CEO of Kagi Inc. Kagi (pronounced kah-gee) is building:

• Kagi - Search engine thats puts the user first
• Orion - Fast, zero-telemetry browser for Mac

We launched the public beta in June 2022. Here is an interview about the origin story. Check the live stats here.

Hobby projects

This is a selection of my current hobby projects, updated seldomly.

• WordCraft (logical word-based puzzle game I made for my kids)
• GreatCountry.org (ranking world's countries on diverse factors)
• EV Vehicle Range Simulator (interactive tool for estimating electric vehicle range)
• Teclis (search engine for non-commercial content)
• TinyGem (bookmark app with AI curator, featuring my reading list)
• Cloud Optimizer (comparison shopping for cloud resources)
• Lands of Myst MUD (old-school multiplayer text adventure game I started working on 1995 - and the reason I dropped out of college)

Interests

• Swimming, running and cycling (I completed my first Olympic triathlon in 2024, at age 47)
• Flying - I have ~200 hours as a glider pilot (mostly on Blanik L-13 and L-23) and ~50 hours as a private pilot (mostly on Utva-76 and Cessna 152)
• I am an admirer of The Egg perspective on the world. I hold a hobbyist interest in the nature of consciousness and pursue study of ancient scriptures as time allows.
• For fun I play Chess and Magic: The Gathering. I enjoy strategy board games like Axis & Allies.

Family crest

With the dedicated effort of my mother's family, the Jaksić lineage, we have managed to recover our family crest, tracing its origins back to the medieval era.

Philanthropy

In 2013 I founded a non-profit organization dedicated to supporting primary education and inspiring entrepreneurship among children. This initiative stemmed from a principle I proposed that "good" companies should allocate 10% of their profits to enhance society and benefit their local communities.

Today, Živojin Mišić stands as the benefactor of the most prestigious annual award for educators in Serbia.