[CharlesW]

By "via API for an affiliate site", I was referring to developer uses cases where the result can be used in a traditional website, by an AI agent, as a "related products" mechanism in an already existing system, etc. in order to monetize it. In that case, what will differentiate you?

[glawrence13]

Ah, sorry for misunderstanding. There are a bunch of challenges with that approach that my co-founder experienced first-hand (actually, that exact workflow is why we started Channel3!). To get up-to-date info, you'd need realtime websearch -- that's slow and expensive. To monetize, you'd need to set up affiliate relationships yourself. And, at the end of the day, the info you get from foundation models isn't really sufficient for building a rich shopping experience. So, someone could try that approach, or they could just use our API for cheaper and not deal with the hassle.

[CharlesW]

Great, thank you and good luck!