I’m Quentin, CEO of Meilisearch – AMA on building and scaling startups and finding PMF

@maya_shin2 Great question!

For me, the real turning point was when we started seeing people we didn’t know — developers, teams, even brands we respected — sign up, put in their credit cards, and start paying for Meilisearch Cloud on their own. Not just trying it out, but building real businesses and production use cases with it.

We’ve seen Meilisearch used in production since the early days of open source. But what really marked product-market fit was seeing how fast people moved to our Cloud offering, and more importantly, how much they were willing to pay once they saw the value.

If I had to do it again, I’d probably launch the Cloud earlier and start selling to bigger companies sooner. That said — let’s be honest — as a founder, you always wish things happened faster. But the reality is: building a company takes time. Especially when you’re in a technically complex space like search, and you’re trying to truly make a difference.

It’s a long game — and one that’s absolutely worth it.

@carolina_ferreira2 I've learned a ton from scaling the team, and I’m still learning every day.

It's probably obvious, but the biggest lesson is this. Hire the best people you can, and not just for talent. Look for people with the right mindset: team players, people you can trust, who aren't afraid to step out of their comfort zones, and who challenge others in a constructive way. Skills matter, but mindset and culture fit are what really shape the long-term success of a team.

Once you’ve built that kind of team, the next step is to create space for growth. Invest in feedback loops, encourage ownership, and give people the room to grow alongside the company. It’s not always easy, but it makes all the difference.

@nochainmarkov Great question.

I’d say it’s not the end of search — it’s the beginning of a new era.

With agents and LLMs becoming more present in every product, we need search engines like Meilisearch more than ever. Why? Because businesses need control over what these models can access, search, and retrieve from their apps and websites.

Just like traditional search engines were built to give users relevant, personalized results — we now need the same level of control and precision for AI. Without that, you risk handing over the user experience to a black box.

We’re already thinking and writing more about this — stay tuned for an article on the topic soon.

@zhiheng_zhang We are working hard to make this possible!