How Find AI Scales Innovation with DigitalOcean

Find AI is a search platform focused on solving the problem of lead generation through AI-powered search. Connecting with the right people is crucial. By integrating search capabilities with AI agents, Find AI simplifies the process for organizations to identify potential clients and collaborators.

The concept for Find AI came from a real-world challenge. As Anson shared, “I was talking to a friend about lead generation, and they were trying to source leads for some GPU cloud services.” Traditional tools, with their basic filters, fell short. Anson envisioned a more comprehensive solution utilizing AI to find the people needed.

Find AI helps take search to the next level. It allows searchers to provide more criteria beyond the capability of a filter. “The nuance in this case,” Anson elaborated, “was that there are people who just integrate with OpenAI where they don’t need GPUs. And there are also instances where they’re building their own models, which is a slightly different nuance where they would need GPU Cloud services. So just looking at AI companies in general wouldn’t be specific enough.” For example, if you’re looking to sell GPUs, searching for companies that are AI-focused isn’t enough. Find AI takes search one step further—in the instance of needing to sell GPUs, they can find companies that are posting jobs for PyTorch (who then may be more likely to need GPUs). By filling in the gaps to help searchers get to their end result, they simplify the search experience.

This capability is also used by Find AI to help people find investors, leads, or founders, as explained in their blogs on finding angel investors and investors in general.

Why DigitalOcean?

Initially experimenting with various cloud providers, including AWS and GCP, Find AI found DigitalOcean to be the most developer-friendly option. “We’ve played around with several cloud providers, AWS, GCP included. But we’ve always had some presence on DigitalOcean from the start,” Anson noted. “The first product we started with was App Platform because it was simple to connect to a repo and launch.”

The simplicity stood out compared to the complexities of setting up IAM permissions and configurations with other providers. “With AWS, GCP, it was more overhead, setting up IAM permissions and things like that. It was harder to get one-click everything set up.”

Over time, Find AI transitioned nearly all its infrastructure to DigitalOcean, leveraging DigitalOcean Kubernetes (DOKS) and Managed Databases in addition to App Platform.

As Anson explained, “We first started doing almost everything on App Platform, but we outgrew those requirements on the app. We’ve now moved to DigitalOcean Kubernetes. So our primary setup is through DigitalOcean and Kubernetes.”

DigitalOcean: Stability, Scalability, and Support

As a search platform, stability is paramount for Find AI. DigitalOcean has consistently delivered. “We’re a search engine. Search engines are obviously always obsessed with stability and latency, just like Google. Google’s infamous for being always up. We’d love to have that standard of stability,” explained Anson. The managed Postgres and Kubernetes offerings have ensured that Find AI meets the high standards expected by its users.

Scalability has been another standout benefit. From app hosting to Kubernetes clusters, Find AI’s infrastructure has adapted to their growing needs. Even as they manage large datasets, the flexibility and performance of DigitalOcean’s solutions have been invaluable. Speaking on their use of Managed Databases, Anson said, “The managed databases are nice because you can resize as our needs have grown and shrink, depending on our re-architecting. It was smooth to be able to move stuff around between databases without a ton of work.” He added, “It would make sense to have databases and compute separate, just the latency to go back and forth.”

Hosting compute and databases within DigitalOcean’s integrated ecosystem has also minimized latency and enhanced system stability. Anson emphasized, "Having everything in one place just makes sense for our system design.” This approach has been critical in ensuring efficiency and reliability as their infrastructure scaled.

The Search Stops Here

Find AI is poised to redefine how businesses find and connect with their ideal customers. With the foundation they’ve built, Find AI is set to redefine AI-powered business workflows, with a goal of providing non-technical users with the ability to harness AI at scale.

Their recent launch of V3, which Anson described as a “re-engineering of the whole thing from bottom to top,” demonstrates their commitment to improvement. “The last couple of months have been trying to get the system to work. But now we’re doing go to market,” Anson shared, highlighting their partnership with Clay, a testament to their growing influence in the market.

As they continue scaling and look to expand their database by 10 to 20x, they’re excited about leveraging DigitalOcean’s evolving capabilities, particularly exploring new Postgres plugins like PG Vector Scale. Anson expressed his enthusiasm for these advancements: “We’re doing a next-level engineering project now that will probably be more database intensive…we are looking to leverage full-text search plugins, pg_vectorscale, and other PG plugins.”

Looking to the future, Anson is particularly excited about the potential of AI agents. He further elaborated on how Find AI is already leveraging this technology: “Our search is really underneath a bunch of AI agents that are powering it. So, you as you keep up a search and it’s sort of acting as a human and going on figuring out where to look for leads, how to look for leads, what kind of leads would be best.”

Find AI’s vision extends beyond lead generation. They aim to empower non-technical users to harness the full power of AI, breaking free from the limitations of current interfaces. “My vision for the future for AI is maximizing the amount of AI compute that a normal person can harness without having to learn how to code,” Anson shared.

A Partnership Built for Growth

Find AI’s journey is an example of how a company can leverage DigitalOcean’s infrastructure to bring AI solutions to market. As they continue to innovate and scale, their partnership with DigitalOcean will remain a cornerstone of their success.

Direct connections with DigitalOcean’s team have further enriched Find AI’s experience. “Raphael reaching out was helpful to get a team connect. Before we first started, we were small customers. You have an app, which is easy to use and great, but it’s great to have a human contact where you can go, ‘We want to think about this issue’ or ‘We’d have to get connected.’ That was great. That helped to increase engagement from us with DigitalOcean,” Anson noted. This personalized support has played a role in building trust and facilitating problem-solving.