Perplexity CEO says copycat fears should push founders to move faster

Perplexity CEO Aravind Srinivas is urging startup founders to treat the risk of imitation as a daily source of urgency. His message lands as AI tools make it easier to build companies quickly, while also giving competitors more ways to chase the same ideas.

Srinivas, co-founder of the AI search startup Perplexity, told Y Combinator’s AI Startup School last year that founders should assume a successful product will attract copycats, according to Fortune. TechCrunch reported in 2025 that Perplexity was last valued at $20 billion.

“You should assume that if you have a big hit, if your company is something that can make revenue on the scale of hundreds of millions of dollars or potentially billions of dollars, you should always assume that a model company will copy it,” Srinivas said at the Y Combinator event, according to Fortune.

Srinivas said founders have to live with that anxiety and use it, rather than freeze under the pressure, Fortune reported. He told the audience that speed and a clear identity around the product matter because users ultimately decide which company wins.

Perplexity’s rise in AI search

Fortune described Perplexity as an AI-powered search company competing in a field that includes Google, Microsoft, OpenAI and Anthropic. The company has drawn attention from larger technology firms; Fortune reported last year that Apple had discussed a possible purchase of Perplexity.

Srinivas, 32, has also described a demanding work routine. In a 2025 Reddit Ask Me Anything, he said, “I don’t do anything other than working, sadly,” while adding that he listens to podcasts and audiobooks when possible and spends substantial time on X, according to Fortune.

He also said in the Reddit discussion that he still sees family on weekends and goes to the gym three times a week, Fortune reported. At the Y Combinator event, he gave founders a direct version of his advice: “Work incredibly hard. There is no substitute for it.”

Srinivas told the Y Combinator audience that there is value in carrying the fear of competition into each day and waking up motivated by what the company is building, according to Fortune.

AI and smaller companies

Other tech executives cited by Fortune have argued that AI could make it possible for far smaller teams to build high-value companies. OpenAI CEO Sam Altman told Reddit co-founder Alexis Ohanian in a 2024 interview that his group chat with tech CEO friends had a betting pool over the first year a one-person company reaches a billion-dollar valuation.

Altman said such a company would have been hard to imagine before AI and that it “will happen,” according to Fortune’s account of the interview.

Mark Cuban made an even larger prediction on the High Performance podcast, Fortune reported. Cuban said AI could create the world’s first trillionaire and that the person could be “one dude in the basement.”

Fortune noted that Elon Musk claimed trillionaire status Friday after SpaceX’s record IPO. Against that backdrop, Srinivas’s advice frames fear of being copied as part of the operating reality for AI founders, rather than an occasional threat.

This story draws on original reporting from Fortune.