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

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141–150 of 288 posts

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

#141

Post by beeboop »

ph0rque wrote: post #114
jrpt wrote: post #105

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 w…

Good luck, I voted for you. I would love a simple system like this - fresh food in my background with low effort and cost. Lots of reduced waste from grocery store shopping (in terms of shipping to the store and associated spoilage). Also a great program for the surprisingly large amount of families in the US that struggle to get enough food.

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

#142

Post by magthor »

chatmasta wrote: post #127
bcoates wrote: post #66

Edit: 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…

Customers can save a lot more than dollars a month on utility bills. After my freshman year, I interned at a small company in Texas that had the same business model as Utiliz. Send us your bill, we analyze your usage data and get you on the best plan. You split the savings with us. Do NOT underestimate the energy bills in Texas... The average prices I saw were ~ $800. Obviously this was a luxury market, but your perc…

Hi chatmasta, Kevin from Utiliz here. How did your business do? Splitting savings is always a hard pricing model to sell. Our unique angle is that we don't just switch customers to the best plan once, we remain their agent, track the market daily and switch them whenever a new opportunity comes up. We do that in return for a low, transparent, annual fee from our customers instead of taking a hidden spread on the rate. In deregulated states one can almost always find short term 3-6 month rates lower than the incumbent's rate, often as much as 20-30% cheaper, so our service can pay for itself in as little as one month. Brokers who can bring large aggregated loads can negotiate better than retail rates, even with their supplier commission. Because we will be a zero-commission broker for the suppliers (we're paid by our own customers), as we scale we'll be able to negotiate even lower rates for our customers. Not sure how long ago you were looking at this space but many suppliers now have some mechanism to help with automation of bulk switching and for those that don't we are building the tech.

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

#143

Post by josh_carterPDX »

bcoates wrote: post #66

Edit: 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…

Co-Founder of Brightwork here. Just wanted to address the classification of "Yet Anothers" because I feel like the summary YC put next to our name may have done more harm than good when it comes to what we actually do.

Brightwork is an API Developer Platform. Meaning we built a platform that enables Developers to see usage data, performance information, as well as cost projections of their APIs. No other API Management platform offers this level of granularity.

On top of the aforementioned feature set, we also allow API swapping in which Developers do not have to re-code or re-deploy their application.

We're also offering pre-bundled APIs to enable fast prototyping so Developers can focus on the front-end design rather than the cumbersome task of standing up a back-end which can take some time.

If you have further questions don't hesitate to ask or email me at josh@brightwork.io Hope that helps!

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

#144

Post by jonwachob91 »

stonemetal wrote: post #136
jonwachob91 wrote: post #87

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I beg to differ. Infection Resistant materials could be used on any number of surfaces. It's has a real chance at being a Unicorn ;) ... But I'm biased...

How is it different than the infection resistant surfaces we already have? Say microban which is found on most shopping carts as an example.

From a technology standpoint: they are a chemical additive, we are a nanotextured surface. Microban (Triclosan) can only prevent the bacteria from growing, we prevent the bacteria from adhering.

From a business standpoint: they don't own the product supply chain, they simply provide one component to existing chains. Nice for getting to revenue but not for big growth. We make (or intend too) the entire product, an application that is anti-microbial and can be placed on any existing surface, and for polymer based products we'll nanotexture those ourselves.

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

#145

Post by sandGorgon »

argonaut wrote: post #79

A lot of people are evaluating too much based on the ideas, rather than the background of the founders and whether that background gives them the experience to execute the idea. For example, I liked the Cadwolf idea because the founder has worked as an engineer in the kinds of organizations he wants to sell to. Many of these applications had no info about the founders that I could find. All in all, the vast majority…

I like the Cadwolf idea as well, but I'm unsure about the architecture and what the founder thinks is possible.

For example today I can say I'm.building AutoCAD in the browser - what does that mean? Am I implementing the CAD algorithms in Java on the server... Or am I somehow interfacing with AutoCAD running on the server through RPC?

The founder claims he's working on version control - this means that the state of the CAD tool can be captured in version friendly formats : what is that format? I get worried when people invent too many things at once

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

#146

Post by ph0rque »

bcoates wrote: post #112
ph0rque wrote: post #90

Earlier 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.

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-fu…

We just recently figured out a way to move forward while bootstrapping, so that's a huge relief for us.

However, there are several areas where funding would help us grow a lot faster:

* Mushroom media R&D: we can run a lot more experiments simultaneously with a research-grade facility to experiment in (i.e. not my kitchen/garage).

* Once we're ready to scale, manufacturing will take some capital.

* Funding will enable us to work on the project full-time.

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

#147

Post by sandGorgon »

Siris rooms is interesting - it's pretty much what most startups in India are building towards. Like the billion dollar OyoRooms (Lightspeed), Fabhotels(Accel), GoIbiboRooms (Naspers).

This model works well in countries where the law and order situation does not permit for a Airbnb to flourish.

The problem is that soon you will need to reserve rooms to work with these hotels - and here comes the differentiation in approach: some startups will just reserve 1 room in a hotel, and will not have enough of a stick to control quality ( http://yourstory.com/2016/04/oyo-customer-service/ ) or will book sizeable number of rooms in fewer hotels and so will grow slower (by orders of magnitude).

However as a model, I think it can work in Africa.

EDIT : I think YC has a lot of experience around Airbnb (working with regulators and in the product space of hotel bookings). They could bring some serious value to the founders and really accelerate the learning curve for them.

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

#148

Post by sflicht »

etimberg wrote: post #113

I 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.

Yes, this seems like something that could very easily end up making a bad system even worse.

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

#149

Post by blazespin »

I know we weren't supposed to comment on this, but the truth is, it's impossible to evaluate these like this. Doing such a shallow pass is just completely unfair to the founders here.

I think a better idea would be more of a facemash approach, where you have to evaluate just two and pick which one is better. That way you can do a deeper dive and say something sensible with your vote rather than something stupid.

I vote that the results are thrown out from this thread and a round robin type approach is done.

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

#150

Post by vishalkgupta »

malyk wrote: post #65

WedWell - $300 Billion dollar space...$55 Billion in the US (according to a quick google search), Median Wedding Cost: $18,000 (same search). Solving a problem in an interesting way while hopefully reducing the stress of planning a wedding.

Thanks malyk! It's a huge space.

Some more data that we find really attractive in this space:

Average cost of US Wedding(1): $32,641

Average cost of Wedding in NYC(1): $82,299 (We are located in NYC and are focused here for phase 1)

Most of those vendors are paid with paper checks. There's an obvious push towards better payment solutions.

Mobile Wedding Planning (2) : Couples are using smartphones more than ever to plan their wedding and they expect personalized solutions.

More Couples Depend On Professionals(2) : Couples are spending on wedding professionals to help them plan a perfect day, and to ensure they have long-lasting memories.

There's plenty to disrupt, and couples are more and more asking for mobile and easy payment solutions. WedWell is really excited to be working on this space!

Sources:

1 - https://www.theknot.com/content/average-wedding-cost-2015

2 - http://ir.xogroupinc.com/investor-relations/press-releases/p...

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