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Y Combinator presents 26 new startups

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Re: Y Combinator presents 26 new startups

#12
These seem pretty good overall. Although I am rather unconvinced with the twitter ones, but then again I always thought twitter was a waste of time. But the others seem good.

There a couple of surprises: (i) there are two single founders, and (ii) there are a couple of pairs that seem to be in the same space. Obviously embedster and embedly seem to be doing something similar, but there was also a couple of search engines that do something similar as well. I wonder what Paul thinks about that. Won't the competition cause bad vibes in the meetings, etc.

Of course it is possible that I was mislead by the short descriptions and the companies do not really compete.

Re: Y Combinator presents 26 new startups

#14
Maybe it's time for those interested in privacy to exit stage left.

I'd like to see a start-up find a way to monetize my lack of desire to have my digital information monetized, maybe by obfuscating or deleting my information, and then I buy from their partners to say thanks.

Re: Y Combinator presents 26 new startups

#15
I think the DataMarketplace is a great idea.

I wonder if quality or customer satisfaction will be an issue. I imagine there could be some datasets that don't quite meet up to the expectation of the buyer. But there isn't a real good way to refund money since there's nothing to return.

For example, how do you verify that the dataset really contains 'Every Target Store' in the US?

Perhaps they have an ebay-like seller rating feature planned?

Re: Y Combinator presents 26 new startups

#16
post #9
post #2

I'll take the contrarian stance and say I'm not really impressed with the list. There are some that may be good, but there's not much new. Mostly me too products. Perhaps my expectations are too high.

I suspect that in times of crisis people tend to play it safe and start more 'simple' companies, with safer business models, instead of swinging for the fences with experimental ideas that have no clear future or business model. Still, there are some very interesting companies in this batch that are not particularly sexy but might have great potential.

I don't think these are safe business model companies.

Call me a cynic, but it may be more of a case of "built for investors/acquirers in SV".

Re: Y Combinator presents 26 new startups

#17
post #2

I'll take the contrarian stance and say I'm not really impressed with the list. There are some that may be good, but there's not much new. Mostly me too products. Perhaps my expectations are too high.

One example:

"Our goal is to do what Gmail did to Outlook: replace a popular desktop application with a better online version."

is badly begging the question. I'd be surprised if gmail + Google calendar had more active users than Outlook.

Re: Y Combinator presents 26 new startups

#18
post #2

I'll take the contrarian stance and say I'm not really impressed with the list. There are some that may be good, but there's not much new. Mostly me too products. Perhaps my expectations are too high.

I think the team is by far more important than the two sentence summary of the idea, so in that sense it's too early to judge.

Re: Y Combinator presents 26 new startups

#20
post #17
post #2

I'll take the contrarian stance and say I'm not really impressed with the list. There are some that may be good, but there's not much new. Mostly me too products. Perhaps my expectations are too high.

One example: "Our goal is to do what Gmail did to Outlook: replace a popular desktop application with a better online version." is badly begging the question. I'd be surprised if gmail + Google calendar had more active users than Outlook.

I bet they have more happy users.
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