20VC: Fundraising Is Also Business Development with Nicolas Dessaigne, Co-Founder & CEO @ Algolia

The Twenty Minute VC (20VC): Venture Capital | Startup Funding | The Pitch

The Twenty Minute VC

Finance, Venturecapital, Tech News, News, Siliconvalley, Technology, Investing, Startups, Business

4.4 • 637 Ratings

🗓️ 22 April 2016

⏱️ 25 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Nicolas Dessaigne is the Co-Founder and CEO @ Algolia. Algolia are a brilliant case study for the successful pivot, having started off life as an offline search engine for mobiles but really took off by helping companies deliver an intuitive search-as-you-type experience on their websites and mobile apps. They participated in Y Combinator's Winter 2014 batch and raised $18.3M in May 2015 from the likes of Accel Partners, Point Nine Capital, Storm Ventures and many more incredible investors.

In Today’s Episode You Will Learn:

1.) How did Jonathan make his way into tech and come to found the likes of Friendster and Nuzzel? What were his biggest lessons from working at Netscape?

2.) How did Algolia go about crafting their company culture and how have they approached maintaining it as they have gone into hyper growth mode?

3.) What des Nicolas think are the most common challenges with regards to the building and maintenance of a company culture? What pitfalls and advice would Nicolas give to an early stage founder looking to build that culture from the offset? How can investors determine the strength and sustainability of the company culture when viewing startups?

4.) How was the fundraising process for Nicolas? How did the rounds differ from round to round? What elements surprised or challenged him? For Algolia, an incredibly hot startup, how did Nicolas go about about selecting which investors to have?

5.) Talking of the highly competitive round and the very excitable startup community, how do you respond to all of this insane hype and positivity. How do you ensure that you do not fall into the trap of drinking your own cool aid and remain grounded and humble?

Items Mentioned In Today’s Episode:

Nicolas' Fave Blog: SaaStr

Nicolas’ Fave Book: Creativity Inc

As always you can follow The Twenty Minute VC, Harry and Nicolas on Twitter here!

If you would like to see a more colourful side to Harry with many a mojito session, you can follow him on Instagram here!

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Transcript

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0:00.0	Welcome to the final episode of this very special SaaS week on the 20 minute VC with your host Harry Stebbings.
0:05.7	And you can find me on Snapchat at H. Stebbings. It would be fantastic to see you there. And this week of
0:10.9	SaaS was to celebrate the release and the success of the official Sasta podcast, brought to you by Jason
0:16.7	Lempkin and I. And you can find that on iTunes by searching for Saster, and we'd love to hear what you
0:21.3	think. But now it's time to let the SaaS continue today, and I'm thrilled to be joined by Nicholas Desaigne,
0:26.9	founder and CEO at Algolia. Now, Algolia have to be the perfect use case that successful pivots can happen.
0:34.4	Having started life as an offline search engine for mobile, they transitioned to
0:39.2	helping companies deliver an intuitive search-as-you-type experience on the web and mobile,
0:44.6	and they were part of YC's winter 2014 batch and recently raised 18.3 million in May 2015,
0:51.4	with investors including the likes of Excel partners, 0.9 capital, storm ventures,
0:57.6	all of whom I hasten to add we have had on the show and many other investors. And I have to say,
1:02.7	I do hold a sweet spot for Algolia as they power my favourite site on the web product hunt,
1:07.6	so fun fact there. But before we delve into all things sass with Nicholas today,
1:11.6	it is Friday and the weekend is coming, and there's no better way to relax than spending the
1:16.2	weekend in bed. So make sure it's a Lisa bed. Lisa is like the Tom's or Warby Parker of the mattress
1:22.1	industry. They craft their mattresses to perfection, with three layers, including two inches of memory foam and two
1:28.8	inches of cool latex light foam designed to keep you cool at night. That sounds good, but it gets better.
1:34.8	You don't even have to go and pick it up. Lisa delivered to all customers in the UK, US and Canada,
1:40.5	and all Lisa mattresses are made in the UK and the US. So join me for this weekend of
1:45.7	Lisa Heaven and head over to Lisa.com forward slash VC. That's L-E-E-E-S-A.com forward slash VC. And
1:53.8	enter the promo code VC-75 to get an incredible $75 off at checkout. However, it's now time to jump into the show today. So without further
2:02.9	ado, I'm delighted to welcome Nicholas Desaigne, founder and CEO at Algolia.
	...

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