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Poll: Apply HN Runoff – Which two startups should YCF fund?

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Poll: Apply HN Runoff – Which two startups should YCF fund?

#1
Here's your opportunity to help pick the winning applications for the Apply HN experiment. For background on the experiment, see https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11440627 and https://news.ycombinator.com/applyhn.

Below are the top 20 Apply HN submissions after they've been ranked using three criteria: upvotes received, number of comments posted, and quality of comments posted as assessed by multiple-moderator review. The top two choices will be the ones HN asks YCF to fund.

We've modified HN's poll software in two ways for this thread. First, the choices are randomized on each view (for logged-in users) to reduce bias. Second, we modified the voting mechanism to introduce some entropy and extra review as anti-gaming measures. You may not see your vote show up in the score right away. (Edit: koolba had a better idea—we'll just hide the point totals for now.)

The discussion below is for debating the merits of the different applications. Please don't post about the Apply HN process itself; we'll have a big post-mortem discussion later this week to talk about what worked well and what didn't. And if you're an applicant or a friend of one, please don't post in the thread below, except to answer questions about your startup.

A small number of applications (two or three) were disqualified due to abuse. If you don't see your application here and think it should be, you're welcome to email us at hn@ycombinator.com to find out why.

Edit: voting is now closed. We'll unveil the scores and rankings shortly.

Edit 2: Hmm. We need some time to look more deeply into the voting patterns here. Please stand by.

Edit 3: Several users have complained about the voting being closed too soon. They have a point, so we've reopened voting and will let it run until some time tomorrow. Sorry about that!

Edit 4: Ok, we've closed the voting now, and HN has sent the ranked list to YCF. We'll try to announce sometime tomorrow (if so, it will be later in the day because I'm travelling tomorrow), but it depends on Kevin being able to talk to the startups first to make sure things are ok on the YC side. If there's an update about timing, I'll add it here.

Edit 5 (6:25 pm Pacific, 2016-05-04): Kevin has now talked to all the winning startups and I have now stopped travelling, so the announcement post is up: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11633270. And so (in the thread) is an explanation of the thing you're probably all wondering about.

Re: Poll: Apply HN Runoff – Which two startups should YCF fund?

#2
BrightWork looks like a really interesting proposition. Out of all of these, it's the one that jumps out to me as "I'd use this myself".

The other "I'd use this" for me, is probably Eat My Dust. After some of the recent debacles like Flint, MI, I've been really interested in "at home" testing for various contaminants in water, air, soil, etc. This is something that I think a lot of people care about and might use.

Re: Poll: Apply HN Runoff – Which two startups should YCF fund?

#4
Since it is being left up to community vote, and only 2 startups can win, isn't including Pinboard unfair to the other 19 startups?

As noted in the previous thread, Pinboard is indeed eligible for YCF by the letter of the law, but including a 7-year old startup with a popular founder doesn't seem to fit the spirit of Apply HN.

Re: Poll: Apply HN Runoff – Which two startups should YCF fund?

#5
post #3

I'm not sure if the HN code allows it but it'd be nice to hide the point totals until after voting has closed. EDIT: I just noticed the randomization of the entries. That's a plus! EDIT #2: Point displays are now gone. Nice turnaround!

I agree. It's screwing with my objectivity.

Re: Poll: Apply HN Runoff – Which two startups should YCF fund?

#7
post #3

I'm not sure if the HN code allows it but it'd be nice to hide the point totals until after voting has closed. EDIT: I just noticed the randomization of the entries. That's a plus! EDIT #2: Point displays are now gone. Nice turnaround!

That's a really good idea. The code doesn't allow it, but perhaps we can coerce it.

Edit: coerced.

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