Poll: Apply HN Runoff – Which two startups should YCF fund? • Hacker News Board

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

#221

Post by vishalkgupta » Tue, May 03, 2016, 12:35 PM UTC

dzink wrote: post #190

Voting based on what can go right with these ideas + feedback. We can’t evaluate the team with this much information, but that’s what YC interviews are for - they can get grilled by the partners. YES Eat my Dust - there us a huge gap in the mindset of consumers here that can be filled lucratively. Products that keep my home and family safe from bad air, water, or particles in my house. If this team can execute, great…

RE:WedWell - no good vendor would put themselves through his - they’d be too busy making money.

>Not what we're seeing. Were initially focused on the NYC area. There are a huge amount of great vendors who are constantly battling for each wedding here. Plenty are excited to extend their reach. Each market is different, but it makes sense right now in bigger cities.

Also RE: the RFP process. Initially vendors are using their own proposals to iterate with the clients, eventually we see this being baked into the system. Either way, drawing up a proposal has to be done whether you meet the client in person or via our platform. The time savings is the initial iteration is done electronically vs face to face.

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

#222

Post by zb » Tue, May 03, 2016, 12:43 PM UTC

Suncho wrote: post #100

gus_massa wrote: post #89

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Many business have a net-30 policy, so they will not mind sitting on the GD for 30 days until they convert to 30 dollars. I'll copy a comment from other user: > What happens if there's a "bank run" where everyone waits for their GD to mature rather than spending it? In a normal "bank run", the people are afraid that if they don't exchange the bad currency now at a discount, they will get a worse exchange later. But i…

In a normal "bank run", the people are afraid that if they don't exchange the bad currency now at a discount, they will get a worse exchange later. But in this case there is a guaranty that waiting only 30 days they will be converted to dollars. Hmm. Not exactly. Initially, this is true, but that's just an early part of the bootstrapping process. Further down the road, the total amount of GD will be greater than the…

If people don't trust their GD to convert to USD in 30 days, the only way for them to get rid of it is to spend it.

Who would accept it (at par value) under such circumstances?

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

#223

Post by argonaut » Tue, May 03, 2016, 1:01 PM UTC

sharemywin wrote: post #218

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 would argue following conventional "bias" and "rules of thumb" is exactly the opposite from the goal. YC has already picked plenty of "great teams" with "lots of "experience in the field". I would see this as the 10% exploration of a multi-armed bandit problem. Not to say that is what they intended but exploring alternate theories could help the process.

It's in the best interest of HN to not mess this experiment up by picking great ideas that never go anywhere. Because if the experiment fails YC won't repeat it. I really do consider it obvious (e.g. unnecessary to explore) that the skills and abilities of the founders are extraordinarily important in judging potential startups. At such an early stage for these companies, the biggest killers of the startups are going to be the founders just giving up / not prioritizing well (e.g. not going out there and talking to users, etc.).

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

#224

Post by tripzilch » Tue, May 03, 2016, 1:02 PM UTC

I'm voting for Starty McStartupface.

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

#225

Post by magthor » Tue, May 03, 2016, 1:13 PM UTC

chatmasta wrote: post #152

magthor wrote: post #142

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 alrea…

Chatmasta, you are 100% correct. There may be times where the best rate we can find is publicly available but the service aspect will retain customers in this case, especially as we are charging a reasonable flat fee. However as we are a broker we have access to private rates and as our book grows so will our ability to negotiate discounts thus making us more sticky. A core part of the beta is a 'how much did I save' feature which will make cancelling a tough choice. Thanks for your comments!

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

#226

Post by tomplace » Tue, May 03, 2016, 1:20 PM UTC

pjc50 wrote: post #205

How does utiliz differ from the existing offerings in this space? (uswitch, gocompare, etc)?

pjc50, a very good question. There are many 'comparison' sites out there. Some are government run (energize CT), some are energy brokers (chooseenergy) and others are bundlers (comcast energy rewards) and of course the two you called out. All of these sites have one or more of these drawbacks: 1) you have to do the research and switching yourself. Given the best rates are on short term contracts this is every 3-6 months. 2) you are not getting the best deal as they are being funded by the supplier as fees or a spread above the true rate

Utiliz differentiates itself by continuously monitoring the market and switching you as often as needed to guarantee you the best rate, all without you lifting a finger - it's a concierge service. Additionally by charging one transparent annual fee and passing through all the savings to the consumer we put the power back (pun intended) to the customer.

Our models show that this could be significant revenue in itself but the big idea here is that the energy market is massively inefficient. Think about trading stocks before exchanges--there were no standards and it was a pain. If we can get enough customers to drive standardization in the market we could revolutionize this industry and realize the original vision of what deregulation was meant to be.- Tom

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

#227

Post by tomplace » Tue, May 03, 2016, 1:22 PM UTC

shanacarp wrote: post #177

I knew very quickly that Feynman Nano was an in for me. I read through the comments, and when they mentioned they could coat grout, it became a definite in. While it is really obvious to coat medical implants, iv leads, ect - I know that pending material review, I'd be happy to buy a cutting board coated with the stuff for chicken and meat. I even think they would be smart to figure out how to coat woods, granite/sto…

Shanacarp, Tom from Utiliz here, thanks for the feedback. To clarify we have zero exposure to energy fluctuations. We don’t hold any credit, counterparty or price hedging risk as the contract is still ultimately between the supplier and the consumer. We are operating as an authorized agent of the consumer. If a given supplier mis-hedges and goes insolvent, their customers’ incumbent will step in as the supplier of last resort. Those who are also our customers will continue to benefit from switching at the next good opportunity. Given this we only leave the upside in your feedback of driving market efficiency and revenue at scale. Happy to discuss further. Tom

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

#228

Post by ig1 » Tue, May 03, 2016, 1:29 PM UTC

I didn't get a chance to read all of them but this was my reasoning on the ones I read:

(note I'm excluding founder background from evaluation as almost none of the posts mention it; but it's generally considered a key factor for angels)

WedWell: Large market, hacking it with initial customers, however no unique insight, no clear customer acquisition strategy in an expensive market, lots of dead startups in this space. Pass.

Pinboard: Has product users love. Not clear if he wants to go “big”. YCF would probably accept him anyway. Pass.

Gresham Dollar: Interesting idea, lacks users validation and idea doesn’t seem to have been fully thought through. Underestimates adoption difficulty of online currencies. Pass.

Siris: Growing middle-class in Africa and adoption of mobile services makes this interesting plus initial traction with hotels. Not clear what the size of the market will be and if they’ll be able to buy discounted capacity. $12k will make a major difference to them. Accept.

Wanderlust: Another space with lots of dead startups, no insight on on why they’ll succeed when others have failed. Pass.

Brightwork: Not clear if there’s enough demand for this product. You can already get wrapper libraries for things like social integrations but people prefer to integrate directly for the flexibility. Segment which did this for analytics are moving away from this space into ETL. Pass.

Hacksplaining: Solves a genuine problem, user interest. Largely a content business though, tough to scale. Not clear there’s a huge market. Pass.

Krewe: As a rule of thumb social sites generally need ~1m+ users to raise a Series A from top-tier investors. Given the inherent lack of viral in this concept and lack of stickiness (after group is formed you never need to come back) seems like a dead-end without a significant rework. Pass.

Utiliz: $30-$50/user/year isn’t enough to build a sustainable business. Would essentially mean a $10-$15 CAC which feels low for this space and expected conversion rates. Pass

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

#229

Post by danieltillett » Tue, May 03, 2016, 1:37 PM UTC

tptacek wrote: post #212

danieltillett wrote: post #173

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Since none of the other startup ideas posted to Apply HN have especially credible founding teams (not a ding!) How credible does the founding team have to be Thomas? While I might not be as well known here on HN as Maciej or yourself, I think I have more than enough of a track record to be credible.

Sorry, I wasn't very careful about how I worded that. I certainly wasn't trying to be predictive; I just flailed around for a word and landed on that one.

I am not personally offended, but a lot of the applicants are less experienced than us and so we need to be careful with what we say.

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

#230

Post by baron816 » Tue, May 03, 2016, 1:37 PM UTC

ig1 wrote: post #228

I didn't get a chance to read all of them but this was my reasoning on the ones I read: (note I'm excluding founder background from evaluation as almost none of the posts mention it; but it's generally considered a key factor for angels) WedWell: Large market, hacking it with initial customers, however no unique insight, no clear customer acquisition strategy in an expensive market, lots of dead startups in this spac…

re: Krewe -- it does not end after your group is formed. You continue to gradually expand after you become close with your group, thus making it possible to make dozens of friends in your neighborhood. You're also 'born into' a decent chat application, so you don't have to head over to facebook groups and set that up. It also has functionality similar to Down to Lunch, so you don't have to set that up either. I have plans for many more features that will keep users engaged long after their first meet.

Krewe is not a "Tinder for friends." It's about giving people the kind of network they can rely of for anything including making career connections, finding romantic partners, becoming connected to their local community, and having incredible real world experiences.