Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

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

news.ycombinator.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

151–160 of 288 posts

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

#151

Post by theuttick »

sandGorgon wrote: post #145
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 t…

I understand your concerns and they are legitimate. Full fledged browser based CAD systems already exist in things like Onshape. Our algorithms will run partially on the server and mostly in the browser. However, CADWOLF isn't really about CAD in the browser but rather altering the way engineering is done. Instead of doing design, CAD, FE, and documentation separately, everything is done together. This drastically alters the engineering workflow. It will also let us create templates for structures like fittings and trusses so that users can pull them into their own structures without the need to do their own design and analysis. We can do for engineering what GitHub has done for coding and make a warehouse of templated structures available to anyone.

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

#152

Post by chatmasta »

magthor wrote: post #142
chatmasta wrote: post #127

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

It was a small shop run by two guys, mostly drawing from their first and second degree connections. But they had hundreds of customers and were making in the mid five figures per month IIRC. Take that with a huge grain of salt.

People were more than happy to pay a percentage of their savings, but that might have been due to personal relationships with the founders and the fact that these people were pretty rich already.

And yes, the ongoing relationship you mention helps. That gives an answer to "why wouldn't I just do this myself and keep 100% of the savings?"

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

#153

Post by vishalkgupta »

pialy wrote: post #111

WedWell fills a void in the already crowded wedding space by making it easier for couples to plan their wedding within a budget.

Thanks! There's a lot of old tech in the wedding space, but the act of planning a wedding has largely stayed the same. We're hoping to evolve that. Our goal is to make it easier to iterate with more vendors. With scale, prices may also come down.

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

#154

Post by steveklabnik »

angersock wrote: post #48
tptacek wrote: post #31

Earlier 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.

I have repeatedly paid Pinboard money, which is more than I can say for the vast majority of companies YC funds. If that's not "real entrepreneurship" I don't know what is.

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

#155

Post by vishalkgupta »

msrpotus wrote: post #123

Trying WedWell right now and I'm interested in how they'll grow (as well as helping my fiancee and I). Makes things a lot easier.

Thanks again for being a client! We're really lucky to have clients like you and your fiancé. Your feedback is helping us make a better product.

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

#156

Post by steveklabnik »

YuriNiyazov wrote: post #59
idlewords wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Small correction: I am actually now udon profitable.

You should probably try to eat less carbs.

"Shirataki profitable" just doesn't quite have the same ring, as much as I love them.

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

#157

Post by buckshot »

If there was one line to write what you thought:

Brightwork: A bit toyey

Gresham Dollar: Mad

Author Investments: Fairly dull

WedWell: Boring

Cadwolf: Could be used in VR

TruSert: Ok

Eat My Dust: TF

Tiz.com: Interesting

Brodlist: Fantasy

Wanderlust: Really. Probably the unicorn so far.

Pikii: Ok

Jury Board: No idea

Pinboard: Why?

Utiliz: Ok

Feynman Nano: Best

AutoMicroFarm: Cute

Krewe: Doesn't fit in

Hacksplaining: What happened to rtfm?

Siris Rooms: Ok

Casepad: Dull

Edit: formatting

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

#158

Post by vishalkgupta »

gills wrote: post #134

WedWell has promise, but it is a difficult space. I began building on a very similar concept 8 years ago and quickly ended up pivoting off into a subproblem, because [at the time] this ultimately boiled down to quite a lot of manual human coordination which I couldn't scale. Running solo, I decided it was infeasible. If you can scale vendor coordination in the wedding space, and avoid the temptation to build the tech…

Thanks gills. Love to pick your brain a bit about this. Happy to move to email at some point. What was your solution called?

We think that this is a process problem vs a technology problem at first. We're trying to distill the client's ideas into a wedding brief that can be viewed by vendors. Vendors then upload a proposal on Google docs (initially), that allow for comments by the couple. We allow the couple to iterate with the vendors and we go from there. We're trying our best to not just blindly build out tech, but to really focus on on boarding clients/vendors, then build technology around the bottle necks. We're experimenting right now.

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

#159

Post by josh_carterPDX »

buckshot wrote: post #157

If there was one line to write what you thought: Brightwork: A bit toyey Gresham Dollar: Mad Author Investments: Fairly dull WedWell: Boring Cadwolf: Could be used in VR TruSert: Ok Eat My Dust: TF Tiz.com: Interesting Brodlist: Fantasy Wanderlust: Really. Probably the unicorn so far. Pikii: Ok Jury Board: No idea Pinboard: Why? Utiliz: Ok Feynman Nano: Best AutoMicroFarm: Cute Krewe: Doesn't fit in Hacksplaining: Wh…

What does "toyey" mean?

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

#160

Post by angersock »

CameronBanga wrote: post #103
angersock wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

To call Pinboard performance art is to dismiss the amazing product that Maciej has built over several years. Do I love his writing, sense of humor, and most importantly his sarcastic Twitter? Yes I do. But I voted for him because I do honestly believe that he would leverage this opportunity better than any of the other candidates in order to positively grow his site into something that could see significant growth. I…

I don't mean to imply that Pinboard is not a good company.

My issue instead is with the reasoning GP gave--that it'll be fun to watch.

Post reply on HN