81–90 of 200 posts
Notifo - Creating a mobile phone push notification platform which allows any service/business/app/website/anyone to send instant notifications to their users’ mobile phones without the need to develop applications for specific hardware models. SMS?
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It's 2010 - there should be things in this list that are more awesome, even at first reading, than 'embedly' and 'embedster'.
Says the guy who created a Delicious clone in 2009! http://pinboard.in/about/ (I admit it's a bit ad hominem, but putting other people's stuff down for being derivative when your thing is the epitome of that seems lame to me.)
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Hey this is Alex from LaunchHear. We just finished our presentation fifteen minutes ago and we're hanging around outside the YC building now. I just wanted to say that a lot of these startups are actually really impressive, it's probably just not obvious from the three sentence descriptions. Also, a bunch of these startups are still under embargo so they aren't even being written about. Give it a year or so and then…
His/her comment does not read as a complain, and I believe his opinion is shared with many. The reason, as you mentioned, is the short description takes away from the service, so I am sure these companies are in fact much much more. Another problem is that all these products are version 0.1 of a much bigger version, so they need time to mature. Edit: However Zenedy's description was very good and there seem to have a…
And although I'll regret being negative myself I will just say - Zenedy, really? I think if wanted to write a startup style description of a affiliate marketing site that'd be it.
If anyone's interested, all of these are now on my "Seed accelerators and their companies" spreadsheet on Google Docs. http://spreadsheets.google.com/ccc?key=0AkkhSN3vaY4jdF90b1l1... Corrections (particularly in early years of YC) welcome!
Dropbox website is now dropbox.com
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Mostly me too products. like... "Google.com: A search engine that looks at link popularity to find the best search results. It's going to revolutionize search." Talk to investors from the starting days of Google, and they'll cite you a dozen examples of similar sounding pitches. It's hard to tell from few liners about the future of a company.
Just because there have been successful "me too" products, doesn't mean that they are all worthwhile pursuits. It seems that Google is too often played as a trump card to support ideas that don't stand on their own as viable businesses. (Although, I'm not saying that's the case with this list)
Similarly, just because they are "me too" product doesn't mean they won't succeed. It seems that "me too" product is too often played as a trump card to discard new startups.
My picks for the ones that will be successful from the idea only, without looking at the bios of the founders or the websites: - Notifo - Zencoder (If they drop their prices. Those prices are horrendous for the REAL market they are targeting) - Nowmov (with name change) - Crocodoc (will sell, but will not have too many users) - Gamador - Cardpool - Chromaom - Answerly - Zenedy - Data Marketplace - 140Bets
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His/her comment does not read as a complain, and I believe his opinion is shared with many. The reason, as you mentioned, is the short description takes away from the service, so I am sure these companies are in fact much much more. Another problem is that all these products are version 0.1 of a much bigger version, so they need time to mature. Edit: However Zenedy's description was very good and there seem to have a…
Well whatever the reason I think I've seen it said for every bunch of startups. Its easy to criticise and I doubt there is any correlation between startups that look interesting and success. And although I'll regret being negative myself I will just say - Zenedy, really? I think if wanted to write a startup style description of a affiliate marketing site that'd be it.
As for Zenedy. I think they are following the Demand Media model, and that has proven to be a business that generates a lot of money.
Do not discount affiliate marketers. If you look at startups that operate affiliate businesses they tend to become quickly profitable (frugalmechanic, ticketstumbler etc..)
For me, it seems at first glance to be a good mix. A few pretty obvious starting business models for some, really good synergy between the groups with their ideas, and in general it seems to reflect the scope intended for seed stage start ups.
Sure not all of them are at first glance overly ambitious in trying to change the world, but I'm also not convinced that a good majority of them can't end up doing just that.
Many of them fit perfectly with YC's philosophy of "intuitive hacks" that a group could bang out and try to build traction for in a three/four month incubator time frame.
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if it helps, farmville was a near duplicate rip-off of farm town, and it's now one of the most successful facebook apps. you don't always need to have 100% unique ideas. zynga spent more money advertising, and is now profitable with something like 100+ million players.
But they had to spend boatloads of cash to acquire users. I don't think YC startups have lots of money to spend on advertising.
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.
Hey this is Alex from LaunchHear. We just finished our presentation fifteen minutes ago and we're hanging around outside the YC building now. I just wanted to say that a lot of these startups are actually really impressive, it's probably just not obvious from the three sentence descriptions. Also, a bunch of these startups are still under embargo so they aren't even being written about. Give it a year or so and then…
Pardon if that's a downer of a comment I do wish all best of luck!