Introduction
Algolia was founded in 2012 by Nicolas Dessaigne and Julien Lemoine, who is originally from Paris, France. It was originally a company focused on offline searches on mobile phones. Later it was selected to be part of Y Combinator’s Winter 2014 class.
Starting with two data centers in Europe and the US, Algolia opened a third center in Singapore in March 2014, and as of 2019, claimed to be present in over 70 data centers across 16 worldwide regions. It serves roughly 7,500+ customers, handling 60 billion user queries per month. In May 2015, Algolia received $18.3M in a series A investment from a financial group led by Accel Partners, and in 2017 a $53M series B investment, also led by Accel Partners. From June 2016 to September 2019, the usage of Algolia by small websites has increased from 632 to 5,168 in the “top 1 million websites” and 197 in the “top 10k websites” evaluated by BuiltWith.
In January 2021, Algolia acquired Romanian AI and machine learning start-up MorphL.
In July 2021, Algolia raised a $150 million Series D funding round and became a unicorn as it has a valuation of above 1 billion dollars.
What is that Algolia provides:
Algolia provides you with a SaaS service, this is not software as a service that you would see. They have a different version of it. Their service is Search as a Service. It lets you integrate real-time search in your app or website using a developer-friendly API. Using an Algolia-powered search feature feels like using Spotlight on a Mac. Results load with each keystroke and appear in just a few milliseconds. Although the in-site search has long been available from general web search providers such as Google, this is typically done as a subset of general web searching. The search engine crawls or spiders the web at large, including the client site, and then offers search features restricted to only that target site. This is a large and complex task, available only to large organizations at the scale of Google or Microsoft.
Aloglia’s product only indexes its clients’ sites, so the search task is far simpler. Data for the client site is pushed from the client to Algolia via a RESTful JSON API, then the search box is simply added to the client’s web pages. This search model is intended to give the performance and sophistication advantages of a full in-house search engine operating on the native website-end database, but with the simplicity of setup of using a site-restricted Google search.
The Stand Out Edge:
As mentioned before, there are many local search services given out by many other companies, tech giants as a matter of fact, so what makes this 6-year-old company stand out, as they have garnered quite a reputation in their market and also boast a consumer base of over 10,000 customers, including some big names, such as Slack, Stripe, Medium, Zendesk, and Lacoste. Right now, the company handles over 1.5 trillion search queries per year. This incredible feat was achieved by a rationally thought idea and perfect implementation. “The future is API-first — a reality underscored by the growth seen by Twilio, Stripe, Algolia, and others in the API economy. A huge part of our success has, and will continue to be, our relentless focus on developers with our PLG strategy — enabling them to build search into their websites and apps, so they create the most relevant and dynamic digital experiences.” Algolia CEO Bernadette Nixon said in a statement. “And we’re excited to continue to solve customers’ problems as we continue to expand beyond search with Algolia Recommend and Predict.”
The API SUPPORT:
Algolia provides its search service via various APIs. The Rest API provides basic features of search, analysis, and monitoring. There are 10 supported languages and platforms for client usage. Supported languages include Python, Ruby, PHP, JavaScript, Java, Go, C#, and Scala. Two mobile platforms, iOS, and Android are supported. Algolia can be also integrated with four web frameworks: Ruby on Rails, Symfony, Django, and Laravel. For the user interface, Algolia has a few UI library options to choose from.
Besides these products, Algolia also has integration with other open-source and third-party software, including Drupal, WordPress, and Magento.
Algolia has been constantly improving its infrastructure, calling it the Distributed Search Network, to efficiently reply to a search query from any location. These constant upgrades in the key part of their service architecture help them boast increased efficiency and effectiveness year after year and truly make them stand out in the world of cut-throat competition.
ALGOLIA RECOMMENDATIONS:
With Algolia Recommend, developers can use a simple and flexible API to build machine learning-powered recommendations on your company’s digital storefronts using as few as 6 lines of code, driving better conversion rates, increasing average order value, and boosting customer satisfaction & retention. Algolia Recommend has advanced flexibility so you can display customized product recommendations on your online stores.
They have conquered the micro-search field and now move to the hot topic of today, AI-powered technology, trying to make strides in the recommendations side of things.
Algolia Academy
Using AI/ML, Algolia’s Search and Recommend APIs simplify the ability to understand users’ intent so that it is possible to personalize experiences and offers — even from “first visit” and “first search.” This enables companies to move beyond content-based searches to predictive, intent-based experiences. Importantly, it will enable online retailers to monetize new products, new visitors, and infrequent visitors like they have never been able to do before.
Millions of developers around the world use Algolia to unleash their content across their digital properties. They use Algolia because we are API-first. We unlock incredible flexibility. We build blazing-fast speed into our APIs. And we provide backward compatibility. We do this because we know developers want to build cool things and innovate, not maintain and update APIs.
Learnings from Algolia
1. Strong idea, even stronger implementation: Algolia turned a logical and sizeable idea into an innovative one. They visioned providing auto-search and auto-complete using keystrokes, turning it into a predictability feature, which is now a common norm. They also went strong in the mobile search field and made strides in that area. The speed and accessibility features made them stand out in the market.
2. Embracing the competition: They spotted the key loopholes in services of giants like Google and Microsoft and made super-targeted changes in those loopholes to create their own different identities and this while being in the backyard of Google in Silicon Valley, CA. They showed that making simple but calculated strides in your niche can also bring wonderful results.
3. Constant Innovation: They selected the service to have an ARR (Automatic recurring revenue), which generate a quite bit of traction and made them appealing to investors. Their Model now boasts 320 employees, 7500 customers, 60B queries processed a month, and 70 data centers across the globe. They make new tweaks to their ideas constantly, as seen in Algolia Recommended.
4. Values matter: Algolia is a value-based company. They are very adamant about their five core values: Grit, Trust, Care, Candor, and Humility. They beautifully describe their mission and very vibrant work environment, providing for free search for non-profits, diversion, inclusion, environment, and sustainability. They rank very high in Equality index Results, Algolia’s score on the Female-Male Equality Index in France for the 2020 year was 83 out of 100.
5. Hyper Focus: They have been very quick to implement all their learnings and also constantly develop their architecture, data centers, workplace, and also their ideas like Algolia Academy, Algolia Search, Algolia Recommendations, and their other endeavors. They show how hyper-focus can achieve fast results.