Algolia YC Application

Winter 2014Active

Algolia went through Y Combinator in the Winter 2014 batch as a B2B company. Below: what the company does, who founded it, and its application to YC, reconstructed question by question in the real YC form.

YC batch: Winter 2014
Industry: B2BEngineering, Product and Design
Team size: 810
Status: Active
Launched: 2013

Founders

Nicolas DessaigneFounder/Board Member
Julien LemoineFounder/CTO

What Algolia does

Our mission is to make every search interaction meaningful & rewarding, through developer-friendly and enterprise-grade APIs. Algolia is the leading Search & Discovery API for websites and mobile apps. We help the most innovative companies across e-commerce, media and SaaS industries create powerful, relevant and scalable discovery experiences for their users. Unlike other solutions, our hosted platform reduces the complexities of building and scaling a fast, relevant digital experience and helps teams accelerate development time. More than 9,000 companies like Under Armour, Twitch, Periscope, Medium and Stripe rely on Algolia to manage 50+ billion search queries a month. Founded in 2012, we're backed by $184M in funding from Accel Partners, Alven Capital, Point Nine Capital and Storm Ventures. The team is headquartered in San Francisco with offices in Paris, London, New York, and Atlanta. To learn more, visit --- We’re looking for talented, passionate people to build the world’s best search technology. As an ownership-driven company, we seek team members who thrive under autonomy and diversity. We're committed to building an inclusive and diverse workplace. We care about each other and the world around us, and embrace talented people regardless of their race, age, ancestry, religion, sex, gender identity, sexual orientation, marital status, color, veteran status, disability and socioeconomic background

Algolia's YC application, reconstructed

Y Combinator application

Algolia, Winter 2014 batch. The real form questions, answered from public data.

Founders2
Company7
Progress7
Idea4
Equity3
Curious2
Batch Preference1

Company

Company name

Algolia

Describe what your company does in 50 characters or less.

Developer-friendly and enterprise-grade search API

What is your company going to make? Please describe your product and what it does or will do.

We are building a hosted Search & Discovery API designed for websites and mobile apps. Our product helps companies quickly create fast, relevant search experiences without dealing with complex infrastructure. It handles large volumes of queries and scales for enterprise needs, simplifying search integration for developers.

Where do you live now, and where would the company be based after YC?

We live and work between San Francisco, CA and Paris, Île-de-France, France. After YC, the company would continue to operate from those hubs.

Explain your decision regarding location.

We chose San Francisco and Paris because they give us access to top tech talent and critical customer markets in both the US and Europe. It also fits our backgrounds and existing setups.

21 more answers in the full application

Founders, Progress, Idea, Equity, Curious, Batch Preference are in the full version. Create a free account to open it in YC Insights, next to every other YC batch.

See full application

Frequently Asked Questions

Is this the real Algolia YC application?

No. Y Combinator keeps submitted applications private. This is a reconstruction: the real YC form questions, answered from Algolia's public data (launch notes, founder backgrounds, product description). It shows how a company like Algolia would present itself to YC, not the text they submitted.