3 ms·

It's really interesting how many of these companies seem to be direct competitors with recent YC successes. The Dating Ring is essentially a carbon copy of Gro

It's really interesting how many of these companies seem to be direct competitors with recent YC successes. The Dating Ring is essentially a carbon copy of Grouper in description. Algolia looks to compete with Swiftype. Zesty v. ZeroCater, . AptDeco and Move Loot are competitors within the batch. Those are just the companies that seem to be solving the same problem in essentially the same way, and not speaking to the broader competitors trying to solve similar problems like analytics, mobile communication, etc. Just those that seem really similar to recent successes. Also, I don't think this is a bad thing. Competition is a net win for productivity, and increasing the number of smart people attacking a problem is a good thing.

redox_ 13y ago
Algolia's focus is not site-search but database search. That means we're not searching for long documents (web pages or pdf or ...) but for structured and multi-attributes based records (often stored in a DB). Our engine was built from the ground up (no hidden ES/Solr/Lucene) to provide instant-search (not just "prefix" search) and to retrieve relevant results even from the first keystroke (to do that our engine computes lots of "stuffs" at indexing time).
- the_watcher 13y ago
  Got it, thanks for clarifying. Again, I was mainly speaking about the surface level descriptions on MatterMark. Also, I'm totally in favor of multiple smart people working on similar problems. Looking forward to testing Algolia out!
hnriot 13y ago
these are very much me-too companies. Algolia says they are database-centric but that's just marketing speak, search is search, "database search" is just facet search where you've told them the relevancy of each facet. TheDatingRing sounds like an absolutely horrible idea, it's like getting a Realtor but for the opposite gender. And their website is embarrassing. They miss the whole point, for many the act of using the dating site is itself rewarding. I've seen this a lot, people enjoy the online attention. Dating really isn't that hard, you don't need a realtor to find someone for you. Their real (online) competitor is facebook. AptDeco are competing against CL which is a waste of time, no matter how fancy the website. This crop seems to be really disappointing. I didn't see a single company with any actual technology, it's all just me-too plus a little spin.
- redox_ 13y ago
  (I'm VP of Engineering at Algolia) Be sure I'm the first one hating marketing bullshit. Our team of 6 is composed by 5 engineers: we're developers/geeks/tech guys too :) When we speak about "database search" it has actually nothing to deal with "facet search". The 2 main differences of our engine comparing to "traditional/document search engine" is the way the ranking is working and the way we provide instant-search capabilities (not just "suggest" in a separated data structure like what you could have with ES/Solr, but real queries): we call that "database/record search". You may be interested by a blog post we wrote a few weeks ago describing our secret sauce: http://blog.algolia.com/search-ranking-algorithm-unveiled/ http://blog.algolia.com/search-ranking-algorithm-unveiled/. If you need more details, I'll be happy to chat (feel free to reach me at sylvain at algolia)
- the_watcher 13y ago
  The Dating Ring is closer to a competitor to Grouper than the other dating sites I think you are referencing. And as someone who has used both, the fact that you barely interact with a website to use Grouper is absolutely a highlight.

redox_ 13y ago

Algolia's focus is not site-search but database search. That means we're not searching for long documents (web pages or pdf or ...) but for structured and multi-attributes based records (often stored in a DB). Our engine was built from the ground up (no hidden ES/Solr/Lucene) to provide instant-search (not just "prefix" search) and to retrieve relevant results even from the first keystroke (to do that our engine computes lots of "stuffs" at indexing time).

the_watcher 13y ago
Got it, thanks for clarifying. Again, I was mainly speaking about the surface level descriptions on MatterMark. Also, I'm totally in favor of multiple smart people working on similar problems. Looking forward to testing Algolia out!

hnriot 13y ago

these are very much me-too companies. Algolia says they are database-centric but that's just marketing speak, search is search, "database search" is just facet search where you've told them the relevancy of each facet. TheDatingRing sounds like an absolutely horrible idea, it's like getting a Realtor but for the opposite gender. And their website is embarrassing. They miss the whole point, for many the act of using the dating site is itself rewarding. I've seen this a lot, people enjoy the online attention. Dating really isn't that hard, you don't need a realtor to find someone for you. Their real (online) competitor is facebook. AptDeco are competing against CL which is a waste of time, no matter how fancy the website. This crop seems to be really disappointing. I didn't see a single company with any actual technology, it's all just me-too plus a little spin.

redox_ 13y ago
(I'm VP of Engineering at Algolia) Be sure I'm the first one hating marketing bullshit. Our team of 6 is composed by 5 engineers: we're developers/geeks/tech guys too :) When we speak about "database search" it has actually nothing to deal with "facet search". The 2 main differences of our engine comparing to "traditional/document search engine" is the way the ranking is working and the way we provide instant-search capabilities (not just "suggest" in a separated data structure like what you could have with ES/Solr, but real queries): we call that "database/record search". You may be interested by a blog post we wrote a few weeks ago describing our secret sauce: http://blog.algolia.com/search-ranking-algorithm-unveiled/ http://blog.algolia.com/search-ranking-algorithm-unveiled/. If you need more details, I'll be happy to chat (feel free to reach me at sylvain at algolia)
the_watcher 13y ago
The Dating Ring is closer to a competitor to Grouper than the other dating sites I think you are referencing. And as someone who has used both, the fact that you barely interact with a website to use Grouper is absolutely a highlight.