I really love this approach. I am currently trying to do something similar for academics as part of my PhD project.

We have to understand that programming an algorithm actually is not always "easy". Imagine a new method presented in an academic paper that you would actually like to use. Re-Coding the whole thing that it works exactly the way presented sometimes is not possible (as not all implementation details are explained in the paper).

But imaging having a place (like Algorithmia) where researchers can upload there implementation (without giving access to their source code) and for others to access this algorithm with a very easy to use API would be a huge step forward in academics.