Hello,

I am Vladimir Prelovac, dad and builder of things, born in Yugoslavia, currently living in San Francisco Bay Area, USA.

My youth was intertwined with the love for software, computer games, physics and astronomy. I started my journey in tech in 1983 with C-64 and Elite. Meeting David Braben to discuss terraforming Mars by driving a comet into it probably qualifies as the nerdiest thing I ever did.

I've been doing bootstrapped startups as a founder for the last 15 years. In my most recent corporate role (as an employee) I was grateful to be the VP of Product at GoDaddy (2016 - 2018).

I find great joy in working on ambitious, borderline crazy product ideas that keep me on the edge, and I am very fortunate to be working on one such right now. In 2018 I founded Kagi to create a novel search engine and web browser. I am dedicating this work to my three children, trying to make the web more humane and friendlier for them.

Current work

• Kagi - Search engine built for users, not advertisers
• Orion - Fast, zero-telemetry browser for Mac

We launched the public beta in June 2022. Here is an interview about the origin story, and here is a status update after three months.

Hobby projects

• Teclis (search engine for non-commercial content)
• TinyGem (bookmark app with AI curator, featuring my reading list)
• Cloud Optimizer (comparison shopping for cloud resources)
• GreatCountry.org (research project to rank world countries)
• VXAI (search engine for movies using natural language)
• Lands of Myst MUD (old-school multiplayer text adventure game)

Past companies

• ManageWP made multiple website management a joy (founded 2010).
• Lemon Email was the first decentralized email, built on top of blockchain.
• Devana Aero built a precision drone capable of flying human-sized cargo, pivoted to agricultural use.

Interests

• Origin of life and consciousness
• I am a big fan of The Egg view of the world
• Advancements in AI (particularly question answering and AGI)
• Swimming, running and cycling
• For fun I play Chess, Axis&Allies, Magic: The Gathering

Philanthropy

I spent over 20 years of my life in Serbia and in 2013 I built a non-profit organization to help support primary education and inspire entrepreneurship in kids.

Today, Zivojin Misic is the benefactor of the most prestigious annual award for teachers in Serbia.