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Poll: Apply HN Runoff – Which two startups should YCF fund?
111–120 of 288 posts
Re: Poll: Apply HN Runoff – Which two startups should YCF fund?
#112Earlier quoted context omitted.
I disagree about your assessment on AutoMicrofarm. If they execute it well, I believe there is a good market for such things. If it doesn't break my bank, I would love to have my own micro farm to product most of what I need, for the most part. I think its fun and I don't think I am alone in this regard.
As an AutoMicroFarm co-founder, I think you're exactly right: the idea itself is good, almost too good to be true (a concept my boss blogged about: https://medium.com/@snootymonkey/paul-graham-is-wrong-411fe0... ). I think the market will be obvious when each AutoMicroFarm pays for itself in a year (or even better, a growing season). But, that's a few orders of magnitude away in terms of manufacturing scale.
I agree with you and the parent post -- I think it's a neat idea that people will want I just doubt the total market being big enough that the "get investment and grow fast" model makes sense.
I don't think anybody's going to drink your milkshake if you take a few years more to come to market so unless you truly need big capital to do anything at all you seem like an ideal candidate for running super lean and self-funding.
Re: Poll: Apply HN Runoff – Which two startups should YCF fund?
#113I feel like Jury Board isn't something I could support. I don't think the prosecution or defense should be able to filter jurors. It should be fully random.
Re: Poll: Apply HN Runoff – Which two startups should YCF fund?
#114Earlier quoted context omitted.
As an AutoMicroFarm co-founder, I think you're exactly right: the idea itself is good, almost too good to be true (a concept my boss blogged about: https://medium.com/@snootymonkey/paul-graham-is-wrong-411fe0... ). I think the market will be obvious when each AutoMicroFarm pays for itself in a year (or even better, a growing season). But, that's a few orders of magnitude away in terms of manufacturing scale.
OK, I read your pitch and now I'm interested. What sort of plants are you ideally suited for? How important are the fish and aquaculture part? Would it really "pay for itself" given the labor costs (time)? I mean you say it is automated, but what about refilling water, cleaning up dead fish, and whatever else comes up? Do I have to clean the fish tank? How do you prevent animals from getting into it and eating your p…
Glad you're interested!
What sort of plants are you ideally suited for?
Almost everything you grow in a garden can grow in aquaponics. The only limitations are extremes: plants that require a really low pH, such as blueberries, large trees (banana trees will wreck your veggie bed), etc.
How important are the fish and aquaculture part?
The fish are very important. They provide the nutrients for the plants (you still would need to add a bit of iron once in a while). Without the fish, you have a hydroponics system, with ongoing nutrient costs.
Maintenance is minimal. When I ran my first proof-of-concept system for a year and a half, I averaged 15 minutes a day, and that was mostly to feed the fish (easily automatable for ~$10).
Do I have to clean the fish tank?
It depends on how clean you want it to be. If you're looking for aquarium-level of cleanliness/clarity, then you'd have to clean it a few times a year. If you're ok with backyard-fish-pond-level cleanliness (a bit of algae growing, etc) then once a year (or less often) is fine.
How do you prevent animals from getting into it and eating your plants or fish?
I had my system in a greenhouse, so that wasn't an issue. If you get an outdoor system installed, you can add a number of off-the-shelf measures to prevent animals from eating your harvest, such as nets.
If this becomes popular, what's preventing competitors from making the same thing, and commoditizing your product?
If we're able to figure out the mushroom media feature, that would be a huge differentiator, but that will be an R&D journey to get there. Another way we can build a sustainable advantage is to develop AI to tell you signs of early-stage pest infestation/disease, and what you can do to avert it (But that requires both smart hardware and software dev).
Re: Poll: Apply HN Runoff – Which two startups should YCF fund?
#115Edit: This may have come across as too terse to pass the not-just-civil-but-nice test so I've added more explanation to my choices I wasn't following the initial wave of submissions so here's my fresh-eyes take on the finalists. I'd particularly like to see other people's assessments of the whole field (vs individual submissions) Not Ambitious Enough: These are in competitive spaces -- even if they delivered on their…
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Re: Poll: Apply HN Runoff – Which two startups should YCF fund?
#116Maciej livetweeted our demo day. I remember sitting there, refreshing, and being both a little relieved but also a little disappointed he didn't skewer us as well.
I also kicked in $5 to his Antarctica experiment. As far as I can tell, he's made a lot of good choices in his life, and would use the investment wisely.
Re: Poll: Apply HN Runoff – Which two startups should YCF fund?
#117Let me be the first to say what a lot of my startup/YC dork friends are only going to say privately on Slack: If you're not going give Pinboard one of the two HN/YCF slots, because Maciej is HN-famous or too well-established, then just make a third slot for him. This is the cheapest access you will ever get to Maciej Ceglowski. YC came up with an interesting idea and actually tried it. Something interesting happened…
This is the cheapest access you will ever get to Maciej Ceglowski. But do they want access to Maciej Ceglowski? They didn't want access to me, even after I promised that I would refrain from providing any marketing advice; and I'd like to think that I could be a helpful member of the community. (Which, incidentally, is why you don't see Tarsnap on this list. I figured that since YC had decided that they didn't want t…
I think the difference is that you've stated explicitly that you'd rather be King than Rich, while Maciej's response when asked that was "I feel like after seven years, I have a pretty good sense of what bookmarking/archiving needs people have, but am at the limits of what I can personally build. If the votes swing my way, I'd be happy to have a good-faith conversation with you", i.e. as long as YC didn't try to turn Pinboard into something it isn't, he'd be willing to listen to ideas that may help it reach more people. The difference is pretty subtle, but it basically amounts to "Is YC wasting its time with its advice?" It also helps that it's Kevin Hale opening the conversation, and Wufoo was not unlike Pinboard (or Tarsnap, for that matter).
Nothing wrong with being King, BTW, but YC's made it clear that it's not willing to play court jester.
Re: Poll: Apply HN Runoff – Which two startups should YCF fund?
#118Edit: This may have come across as too terse to pass the not-just-civil-but-nice test so I've added more explanation to my choices I wasn't following the initial wave of submissions so here's my fresh-eyes take on the finalists. I'd particularly like to see other people's assessments of the whole field (vs individual submissions) Not Ambitious Enough: These are in competitive spaces -- even if they delivered on their…
I am the founder of CADWOLF. There is no product that links a CAD model to a mathematics background to an FE model to a part tree system to a documentation and analysis system. While there are a number of products like Matlab to solve mathematical problems, we are looking to redefine the entire field of engineering.
Our system as it stands now with web pages that act as documents that solve mathematical problems is just a first step. It represents a large amount of work already put into the platform, plus the ability of the founder to achieve the stated goals, and the ability to break the system up into steps that can hopefully make the company financially viable without large scale funding.
Re: Poll: Apply HN Runoff – Which two startups should YCF fund?
#119Earlier quoted context omitted.
Including a startup with a founder who happens to be popular on HN doesn't seem any less in the spirit of this exercise as including a startup with a problem domain that happens to be popular on HN --- which is something you could say about a "currency for basic income" or "anonymous social network" or "new kind of database". In fact, if part of the point of this exercise is legitimizing the use of HN as a sort of de…
It will be fun to watch, for a lot of us, and that's worth something. This somewhat implies that the ApplyHN experiment is at least as much about performance art and entertainment as it is doing any sort of real entrepreneurship. That's fine and all, but let's be honest with ourselves about why we're here.
Curious why you think "performance art and entertainment" is mutually exclusive with "real entrepreneurship"?
Many of the biggest companies founded in the last 3-4 decades have been because somebody thought "Wouldn't it be interesting if...?" In Apple's case, they explicitly thought of themselves as artists, and I doubt they're unique in that.
Re: Poll: Apply HN Runoff – Which two startups should YCF fund?
#120The tagline for Cadwolf is "CAD software in the browser". Does CAD in this case stand for something other than computer aided design? Based on their site it doesn't really look like a CAD solution.
I am the founder of CADWOLF. I am not sure where that tagline comes from. CADWOLF will eventually be a full scale engineering solution. The idea is that an engineer designs the system mathematically in web pages on CADWOLF that we call documents. These web pages are then linked to a CAD system, a finite element model, and a part tree that links all of the components. By doing this, users can design engineering systems whose components adjust automatically with changing requirements. In other words, you change the load on a truss and the truss components update their thickness, material, etc. Right now, it has no CAD component. It has the initial step which is the web pages that act as documents to simultaneously solve and document engineering problems.