Company
Date Published
Author
Exa Labs
Word count
381
Language
English
Hacker News points
None

Summary

A popular AI writing assistant aimed to stand out in the competitive productivity market by addressing the research needs of students, professionals, and writers, facing challenges such as citation friction, accuracy concerns, and educational market barriers. To tackle these issues, the platform developed a real-time citation engine using Exa's search endpoint with neural search, enabling seamless integration of academic research discovery and citation formatting into the writing workflow. This solution offers contextual citation suggestions and live content extraction, making the process of finding and citing academic sources more efficient. As a result, the writing assistant experienced significant business outcomes, including a rise in annual recurring revenue from under $1 million to $6 million and a 10% increase in free-to-paid user conversion, as well as adoption by over 230 educational institutions.