Nicolas Dessaigne
Group Partner at Y Combinator
San Francisco, California, United States
Summary
👤
Senior🎓
Top SchoolNicolas Dessaigne is a seasoned technology entrepreneur and investor with 13+ years building and scaling search and AI-driven products from research to global operations. As co-founder and former CEO of Algolia and now Group Partner at Y Combinator, he combines product-led engineering leadership with deep domain expertise in search, discovery, and developer platforms. He has led large R&D organizations and turnaround reorganizations at enterprise-scale companies while also serving on multiple boards, blending hands-on technical insight with strategic company building. Based in San Francisco and armed with a PhD and an MS, he pairs academic rigor in information retrieval with practical experience shipping systems that handle billions of queries monthly. An underappreciated thread in his career is a consistent focus on empowering teams—restructuring R&D to foster autonomy and innovation wherever he leads.
13 years of coding experience
18 years of employment as a software developer
Ph.D., Ph.D. at Nantes UniversitéM.S., M.S. at ESIEA - ÉCOLE D'INGÉNIEUR·E·S D'UN NUMÉRIQUE UTILE
French, English
Github Skills (35)
algolia10
geo-search10
api-client10
faceted-search10
php10
api10
php-api10
javascript-api10
javascript9
search-engine9
laravel9
dotnet-library9
line-api8
python8
typesense8
Programming languages (8)
Github contributions (5)
algolia/algoliasearch-client-node
Jun 2013 - Oct 2013
Contributions:6 commits in 4 months
api-clientapinode-jsalgolia-searchnodejs
algolia/algoliasearch-client-cmd
May 2013 - Oct 2013
Contributions:4 commits in 4 months
api-clientapialgolia-searchalgolialine-api
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