Coworking with Piyush Patel

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Piyush Patel is chief ecosystem officer at AI search and discovery company Algolia, whose customers include PetSmart, Hershey, and Walgreens.

How would you describe your job to someone who doesn’t work in retail? We help the world’s largest retailers turn chaotic product data and fragmented digital experiences into something that actually feels intuitive for shoppers. At Algolia, that means making search, discovery, and AI-driven experiences fast, relevant, and scalable—so customers can find what they want instantly, and brands don’t lose them in the process. My job specifically is to build the ecosystem around Algolia that customers already invest in and need to leverage for success, including our tech partners, our SI partners, and our Cloud partners, as well as our largest customers who push the limits and help us innovate for the broader customer base.

One thing we can’t guess about your job from your LinkedIn profile? A big part of my job is translating between worlds. Technical teams, merchandisers, and executives all think about “search” and “AI” very differently. The real work is aligning those perspectives into something that can actually be operationalized at scale.

What’s your favorite project you’ve worked on? Honestly, building a home lab with my son last summer—setting up performance servers, large-scale storage, and running our own containers and AI inference workloads. It’s nowhere near foundation-model scale, but that wasn’t the point. It gave me a much deeper, hands-on understanding of how these systems actually work, including the layers, the trade-offs, and the failure points. And, more importantly, it was time spent learning and building something together. It’s a good reminder that staying close to the technology is just as important as talking about it.

Which emerging retail trend are you most excited about right now, and why? The shift from search as a utility to discovery as a competitive advantage. With AI, retailers can move beyond static results pages to dynamic, conversational, and personalized experiences, but the real unlock is clean data and strong infrastructure. The winners won’t just have better models, they’ll have better foundations.

What’s your go-to coffee order? I’m definitely not a creature of habit. I rotate between flavored lattes, usually low sugar, depending on the mood. Chai one day, lavender the next, maybe a pumpkin spice when it’s in season. I like a bit of variety and personalization—probably why I care so much about making sure digital experiences don’t feel one-size-fits-all.

Worst piece of advice you’ve received? “Write out the idea and approach in detail.” In fast-moving areas like AI and retail, over-planning can be just as risky as under-planning. Real progress comes from iterating quickly, learning in-market, and letting outcomes evolve—not trying to perfectly define them upfront.

What was your favorite retail product when you were 15, and what’s your favorite retail product now? At 15, I spent all of my time on my Commodore 64. Now, I’m all about the Mac Mini (but I’m eyeing the Nvidia DGX Spark).