Celebrating One Year at Algolia

It’s been one year since I stepped out of the founder role and put on my employee hat — I joined Algolia one year ago today, and I find that anniversaries are a great time for reflection, so I will continue with a long-standing tradition of mine of writing about the past, present, and future.

I wasn’t a great employee. In fact, I didn’t make a great first impression when I first started at Algolia. In my interview I bluntly stated during a presentation that one of the most important things for me was to feel like I could be in direct contact with the founders. While it was true, (#candor) it left a bad taste in a lot of people’s mouths, that definitely wasn’t improved when I jumped on Slack in my first few days and inserted myself into every conversation I found interesting.

I was hungry — I had taken 11 weeks off of work after closing down my company and I wanted to sink my teeth into something. Everything.

Stepping out of the Baguette

I was still carrying a leftover “Rude-ness” (I ran a blog called the Rude Baguette) that became the subject of a number of 1:1 conversations in my first year. While I 100% valued the core values that define Algolia — and still do today — that didn’t mean that I was the embodiment of, say, humility. As I wrote last week about my life without Rude Baguette (I swear I don’t just write ‘1 year since’ articles), I had to learn to listen — not just as a means of giving other people room to speak their opinions (not everyone screams their opinions unwelcome), but as a means of empowering people to grow, and therefore of “managing”.

Over the past year, I’ve had some amazing opportunities. I participated in a number of amazing projects — redesigning our website, fleshing out our brand, content & editorial strategy, spinning up our PR strategy & working on our Series B communication, designing billboards — that both leveraged my previous experiences and pushed me well out of my comfort zone. I love being outside my comfort zone — I wouldn’t go so far as to say that I’m comfortable there, but it’s a familiar sort of unease that I associate with performing gigs with my high school band and the beginning of a roller coaster as the cranks turn to carry you up to the top of the big drop. It is the eminent feeling that something awesome is about to happen.

Company, Business, Product

Yes, we actually have a channel called #celebration, and it’s full of wonderful positive validation.

Algolia has taught me a lot about what it looks like to run a company correctly. The number of times I’ve realized just how blatantly I was doing things wrong before is mind-boggling, and I hope that I will continue to be boggled. The thing I’m most excited by is that there are clear definitions of our product, our business & our company, and that they all work together to create Algolia. We want to build the best product for developers to create great search, and we want everyone to use it — big companies and hackers alike — and we want to do that with a workplace environment that empowers everyone to take control over their impact on Algolia. Those three things work so well together that I wonder how other companies operate when the three aren’t aligned.

One year in, the marketing team has grown from 6 or 7 to about 20 people. We run multiple projects in parallel, we are dealing with team scaling issues around communication, and I feel like everything I wanted to do when I arrived has had a bite taken out of it. I’m learning a lot about what it is I do, what I can do, what I don’t want to do, and what I need to learn. I’m relying less on my creative side and pushing myself to be more data driven — a non-natural instinct for someone who isn’t meticulous and shoots from the hip.

Growing Up

In the next year, Algolia will continue to grow — we’ve added 70 employees since I joined, meaning there are more people who joined after me than before me (I was employee 50 or so). We’ll move into a new Paris office this fall, expand into new markets, and look to take on the next level of challenges.

I am still working on finding a balance between pushing back when I feel like the best path forward is not being taken, and letting other people grow by pursuing the path they think is best. Born out of a desire to help team members of mine avoid the landmines I stepped on, I tend to be too hands on during the first 90 days of onboarding, which ends up hindering Algolia’s ability to benefit from that new employee’s unique perspective. I’m getting better at shutting up — usually by saying “I’m gonna shut up now,” but it’s still not a gut reaction.

Looking at how our leadership operates, I see I still have a lot to learn about being OK with things not being done the way I would do them. I catch myself stretching myself too thin trying to be more involved in projects than my skillset justifies, so I need to learn to trust my teammates better not just in philosophy but in practice.

A lot changed this past year — I got a dog, asked my best friend to marry me, visited new countries, learned so much about search — but one thing stayed the same. I still love getting to know every new team member, and count some of them among my closest friends. I still work weekends because I love what I do. I still wake up every day excited to go to work, and have trouble leaving at the end of the day because I just want to do more.

I always say that, if I haven’t done something in the past 12 months that I couldn’t have anticipated 12 months ago — that is, if my year has been predictable — then it was a wasted year. This year has been truly unpredictable, unbelievable, unimaginable. If the next year is anything like the last, then I can’t wait to get started!

)

Liam Boogar-Azoulay

Written by

Director of Brand Marketing @360learning. Ex -@MadKudu,ex-@algolia, Founder @RudeBaguette. I’m a storyteller.

Welcome to a place where words matter. On Medium, smart voices and original ideas take center stage - with no ads in sight. Watch
Follow all the topics you care about, and we’ll deliver the best stories for you to your homepage and inbox. Explore
Get unlimited access to the best stories on Medium — and support writers while you’re at it. Just $5/month. Upgrade