1. Sorting order is dynamic, unlike Algolia where you are forced to define a sort order during index creation and you are forced to duplicate your entire index when you want another sort order, e.g. sort by timestamp vs sort by ratings.
2. Run fast on commodity hardware (e.g. a decent EC2 instance) instead of requiring special dedicated hardware that costs a bomb. This is achieved by using highly optimized in-memory data structures instead of relying on fast SSDs and memory mapped I/O approach that Algolia has taken.
3. Disprove the notion that one cannot host their search themselves and need to rely on a cloud service provider. We want to make it really easy to run Typesense and manage it. We have some things to do on this front, but this is definitely the goal.