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

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

#251

Post by sandGorgon »

theuttick wrote: post #249
sandGorgon wrote: post #248

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Just one question - and that's the part that you are skipping over. Are you building your own symbolic solver ? If you are "pulling" equations ... Are you also solving them or are you displaying equations? I'm getting the feeling that you have built a document and reference management system for CAD users (kind of like latex) rather than a CAD software that solves the equations, right?

No, I have built a system that solves the equations and then displays them in the mathematically correct format. (Yes, it took forever) Each equation can be thought of as a line of code. Each web page is both a document like Word and a program. The user adds an equation to the document via a gui and then double clicks on it to edit it. You can enter something like a=1+sin(0.5)/1 and then hit enter. My code parses thi…

This is what you should have written in your application. Rather than the rather hazy statement that you made. You have my vote.

P.S. you should do both sides in JavaScript.

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

#252

Post by ig1 »

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…

And on a few more:

Jury Board: SaaS note taking to enrichment (third-party api) to ML; solid long term strategy. Real user interest. With a large unique dataset you could essentially build a monopoly business. Founder seems to understand the space, but perhaps not commercial/sales side. Selling to legal firms will probably mean a salesforce which results in a much higher per-unit cost but that’s potentially sustainable. Not clear there’s a large enough market to take to IPO but could be a decent size trade-sale to someone like Lexis-Nexis or Reuters. Accept.

AuthorInvestments: Interesting approach to modernising “advances” structure of book publishers, likely extendable to other markets. As more content creation becomes freelance this could provide an alternative for creators that doesn’t rely on fans (ala Patreon) or pre-buyers (Kickstarter) but rather treats it as a form of alternative investment. Not clear if the founder is capable of delivering but definitely has potential to be a breakout. Accept.

Trusert: Seems to fix a hypothetical problem rather than a real one. Not clear what the market is for employers who are concerned that people crammed for test. Might be useful in markets with high-rates of cheating on exams. But doesn’t seem generally applicable. Pass.

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

#253

Post by cperciva »

YuriNiyazov wrote: post #250
cperciva wrote: post #213

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's partly the king-not-rich bit; but it's also partly that I'm an irrationally patriotic Canadian. Canada is my home, and Canada is Tarsnap's home; my notion of success includes providing an example of a Canadian startup which was successful without moving to the bay area -- because Canada is sorely lacking such examples.

That looks like a strangely self-limiting argument. No one in their right mind would argue that Canada can't produce a company that has global reach, but that consists of a founder that lives in Canada, and a UI programmer that lives in Romania. It doesn't seem to me that those are the examples that Canada is lacking. It seems perfectly reasonable, however, to argue that Canada doesn't have the investment ecosystem t…

Sorry, that was a bit incoherent; I was nearly asleep when I wrote it. Probably better to say that I'm pushing back against a pervasive notion that "you have to move to the USA if you want to succeed".

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

#254

Post by josh_carterPDX »

bbcbasic wrote: post #191
josh_carterPDX wrote: post #163

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Thanks for the feedback. Https is something we'll support at GA and the site's going through a reboot. :)

You're polite :)

No reason not to be. People have opinions and I don't disagree. Our site needs a major overhaul, but we've been too busy building the platform to make it a priority. Hoping to have a new site launched in the near future.

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

#255

Post by vishalkgupta »

dzink wrote: post #247
vishalkgupta wrote: post #221

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Wedwell sounds like a reverse waitlist - a try me too tool for vendors. They might do it to get first customers but it sounds like too much work for good vendors who already have a waitlist for their booking time.

We're still iterating, but right now we reach out to vendors proactively. So ideally it's little/no work for the vendors to have to search for events, we post them on events that they should be able to handle. The work that they do to create a proposal is no different from the work needed for any clients, if anything our templates may make it easier.

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

#256

Post by tomplace »

ig1 wrote: post #246
tomplace wrote: post #234

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ig1. Absolutely it is enough to build a sustainable business. Lets look at NY as an example. Over 7.2MM households and at our low end price point and a 0.5% penetration (36K customers) that’s over $1MM annual recurring revenue for electric alone. That's a drop in the bucket when you look at how we scale. 1) 15 deregulated states + DC: well over 50MM households with the ability to switch suppliers 2) commercial - over…

I don't disagree on the size of market, but you need to do a bottom up analysis and not just a top down one. Very few businesses which aren't inherently social/viral manage to make social media, referral, etc. channels scale without significant cost. Unless you've got a strong expertise in making such marketing channels work you'll be likely to struggle (and investors will know this and won't take you seriously if yo…

Hi Ig1. We shared top down as it's easier for people to visualize the size of the opportunity. Bottom up our revenue model projects CAC between $5-$8.

We think this business is inherently viral because everyone everyone knows buys electricity, and people who find a simple way to save money are usually eager, even proactive, about telling their friends about it.

We respectfully disagree with your assumption that the value prop diminishes over time or that we would have high attrition. The value is not in the relative price of the switched plans but in the total time & money savings to the customer versus staying with their more expensive incumbent supplier.

The snapshot of a customer’s bill is only needed on signup, not ongoing. In fact our system is designed to be zero effort after signup. The whole point is for us to work in the background, saving our customers money without them having to worry about a thing. However we will employ site features and notifications to remind users of how much they’ve saved and will continue to save, as well as how much we’ve saved our customers in aggregate. Once a customer is in our system there is high incentive to stay and refer their friends, and little reason to leave.

P.S. Thanks for Fizzbuzz!

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

#257

Post by theuttick »

sandGorgon wrote: post #251
theuttick wrote: post #249

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No, I have built a system that solves the equations and then displays them in the mathematically correct format. (Yes, it took forever) Each equation can be thought of as a line of code. Each web page is both a document like Word and a program. The user adds an equation to the document via a gui and then double clicks on it to edit it. You can enter something like a=1+sin(0.5)/1 and then hit enter. My code parses thi…

This is what you should have written in your application. Rather than the rather hazy statement that you made. You have my vote. P.S. you should do both sides in JavaScript.

But Node.js would only allow me to run one thing at a time. I want to be able to run equations on the server while updating things on the DOM/Server as well. Am I wrong about that?

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

#258

Post by jedgardyson »

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…

Hi, I'm Gabriel, one of the co-founders of Casepad.

A bit of background on us. I'm a '14 college grad. I'm also a self-taught software developer. I worked for a bit under a year as a data analyst, writing R, SQL, and processing excel spreadsheets, at a startup in NYC. While I was there I also volunteered at a public defense firm, usually one afternoon a week, running documents to and from court, rebuilding their HR filing system, building small a web-app for them. After I left my job I also spent A LOT of time doing research on the market and specifications for the system.

My brother and co-founder is getting his CS degree, but would work on this full time if we received the fellowship, in Brazil. He has work experience building/maintaining ERP software and a POS credit-access platform.

NOTE: If any other founders want to reply to this comment I asked Dang and he said it would be fine (even though there is no question written into it).

NOTE2: I'd encourage everyone to read through all the applications if you plan on voting.

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

#259

Post by Suncho »

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…

Hi, I'm Alex from Gresham Dollar (Now Greshm Dollar). I am pretty much the opposite of what you would want in a founder. My background is very shaky and I don't have a college degree. I barely graduated high school. I used to hack together CRUD apps until I got bored out of my mind and just stopped.

I was the first Druid on my realm to level 60 when World of Warcraft came out though, so there's that. But I wasn't really a team player and I couldn't get into any of the good guilds. I also never had any gold because I was busy doing fun stuff instead of mining thorium or whatever.

From 2006 to 2008, I worked on a virtual reality headset with my father:

http://www.leepvr.com

My father's health declined and our project never turned into anything. Well, that's not exactly true. Palmer Luckey used my father's lenses in the first prototypes for the Oculus Rift, but I had nothing to do with the development of those lenses.

Before I came up with the idea for Greshm Dollar, I briefly wrote a blog exploring some of the ways in which technology was transforming society:

http://www.suncho.com

I wasn't really trying to come up with an idea or looking for a way to make money. I just always assumed basic income was inevitable. For a while, I had known that a government could pay for a basic income through deficit spending (small leap from Post-Keynesian macroeconomics). But then when I was contemplating the crisis in Greece, I came up with an idea for how to smoothly introduce a new currency and it all clicked for me.

Everything I know about money, banking, economics, and finance, I learned through books and MOOCs.

Anyway, with my credentials, there's no way I'd get into Y Combinator or the YC Fellowship the normal way, so here I am!

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

#260

Post by theuttick »

glass-animal wrote: post #203

Cadwolf looks like the kid of platform that's dearly needed to ensure the integrity of modern science, but I really, really want such a thing to be open source.

Is that because you want to verify the algorithms, because you want to make sure it isn't spying on your work or copying it, because you want to contribute, or for something else?
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