Yesterday afternoon, Y-Combinator held their Demo Day for their Silicon Valley accelerator, and while Facebook’s acquisition of Oculus VR may have overshadowed the demo day, the event was not without its merits. Most notably, I was watching Search as a Service Algolia, which I recently named among the top hottest startups in France – the company is not necessarily raising a round of funding. They raised $1.5 Million from Alven Capital, Index Ventures & Point Nine Capital last year, ironically they gained much of their traction when they applied to Y-Combinator last year and were rejected.
http://t.co/abwWcMN87Q: DB search as a service. (API-based search platform) #YCdemoday (@500startups already investor, thx 2 @PointNineCap)
— Dave McClure (@davemcclure) March 25, 2014
One interesting tid-bit during the Demo Day came from 500 Startups’ Dave McClure, who was casually tweeting out the startups who were demo-ing. In the above tweet, he mentions that, in fact, 500 Startups is already an investor in Algolia, through what appears to be a co-investment agreement that they have with Point Nine Capital.
Point Nine raised their second fund of €40 Million in February 2013, and Dave McClure has been quite active in the Berlin scene in the past, though Paris has escaped 500 Startups for now. This might be the first 500 Startups in a French startup.
If you haven’t tried Algolia out, you definitely should: they’ve done a nifty demo using the Hackernews thread, and they’re also powering ProductHunt. Oh, and we’re also using them to power Rude List (Coming Soon).