"A monthly subscription to The Flex Company will make a relieving gift for any ladies on your gift list who suffer from menstrual bloating, cramping, or leaking."
I couldn't make this up.
YC’s 2016 Holiday Gift Guide
61–70 of 229 posts
Re: YC’s 2016 Holiday Gift Guide
#62Unless there's a significant financial incentive to do so (ex: 2-to-1 match), don't give people gift cards. Gift cards are the biggest scam ever pulled by the retail industry, or more specifically, perpetuating the idea that giving cash is taboo. The one exception would be giving a preloaded credit card to someone who otherwise doesn't have access to one (ex: a niece/nephew that's far away) and only if there are no f…
I don't think gift cards are a big conspiracy from the retail industry that primarily perpetuated the idea that cash is a bad gift. It seems more likely that cash became unpopular independently. And for good reason! Trading cash during holidays really ruins the fun! Perhaps the retail industry was just responding to demand - the market may just want gift cards!
The asinine "maintenance fees" and validity periods are absolutely a scam from the retail industry. Fortunately most of the worst practices are outlawed under CA law, but that's not the case in every state.
Re: YC’s 2016 Holiday Gift Guide
#63Earlier quoted context omitted.
I am commenting on the narrow selection that YC itself assembled. I realize there are many YC companies missing from this list, and from the consumer goods and services industry in general. But if this [ahem] curated list leads to the kind of generalizations I made, the list itself may share some blame for that. If appeals to "basic logic" and wait-for-the-pivot are YC's best shot at getting me excited about the 2016…
> I am commenting on the narrow selection that YC itself assembled. That's patently untrue. You commented on YC.
At least the way the comment read to me, gamache's meaning was closer to "this is bad marketing for YC / this dilutes the brand" than "YC doesn't fund anyone solving real problems".
Re: YC’s 2016 Holiday Gift Guide
#64Aside from the Donations section (YC's nonprofits), having much of the YC portfolio collected like this really deflates a lot of the cachet about YC, its companies, and its place at the Silicon Valley cool-kids table. I look at this list and I see problems that never needed solving, middlemen -- sorry, curators -- reselling cheap Chinese crap, and a cult of jamming Bluetooth and USB into just about anything that hold…
I get that this isn't a comprehensive list of everything YC invested in but seeing all those places listed together shocked me by how much, I don't know how to say with tact but shit YC has invested in. I'm clearly not the target audience so feel free to brush this off as uninformed but a lot of those places aren't very innovative and are just tacky sounding.
There was one listed on there that I'm familiar with, boosted boards. After seeing the Casey Neistat videos of him flying around nyc on one it looked fun but the subreddit for electric skateboards showed it comes with a lot of problems for a $1500 toy. I'm sure soon it will be a great reliable product at a lower entry point though.
Re: YC’s 2016 Holiday Gift Guide
#65Aside from the Donations section (YC's nonprofits), having much of the YC portfolio collected like this really deflates a lot of the cachet about YC, its companies, and its place at the Silicon Valley cool-kids table. I look at this list and I see problems that never needed solving, middlemen -- sorry, curators -- reselling cheap Chinese crap, and a cult of jamming Bluetooth and USB into just about anything that hold…
I get that this isn't a comprehensive list of everything YC invested in but seeing all those places listed together shocked me by how much, I don't know how to say with tact but shit YC has invested in. I'm clearly not the target audience so feel free to brush this off as uninformed but a lot of those places aren't very innovative and are just tacky sounding. There was one listed on there that I'm familiar with, boos…
And for the record, Boosted was one of my "that makes sense" products.
Re: YC’s 2016 Holiday Gift Guide
#66Somewhat related: "Gift guides" is one service that I considered unsolved. Every holiday (Christmas, birthday, father's day, mother's day, etc) I struggle to come up with gifts for the people I care about. In many ways it's demoralizing. If I care so much about someone, why can't I think of a good gift for them? There are lots of factors here, but I think it basically boils down to, as adults we generally get what we…
It takes more effort, but I look for local events that aren't far off and buy tickets to those.
Re: YC’s 2016 Holiday Gift Guide
#67Earlier quoted context omitted.
> I am commenting on the narrow selection that YC itself assembled. That's patently untrue. You commented on YC.
At least the way the comment read to me, gamache's meaning was closer to "this is bad marketing for YC / this dilutes the brand" than "YC doesn't fund anyone solving real problems".
Your interpretation is more charitable than mine. Well done!
Re: YC’s 2016 Holiday Gift Guide
#68Earlier quoted context omitted.
Your point is true, but it's also likely that the model for a lot of these companies is to start with premium so they can focus on a profitable model and get the supply chain and execution worked out while there is still wiggle room, and then move down market. This is what Uber and Tesla did, and I wouldn't be surprised if that is the most fashionable approach these days. There are probably plenty of exceptions, as w…
I seriously hope that happens with Acre. They could be amazing.
Went to check them out. Their houses are beautiful, but they truly are targeting the high end—double the price of a mid-tier-fixtures McMansion-build-quality house of similar size, at least around here. I'm also not sure how I'd get one of them built anywhere near the city here without buying a house in a no-HOA, low-home-value neighborhood and demolishing the house already on it, which'd be throwing away a ton of money on both the demo and putting such an expensive house in such a crap neighborhood. You could build one out in the country, but so much for being green (assuming you have a commute to the city).
Be nice if they could mainstream this style, but looks like they've got a ways to go.
Re: YC’s 2016 Holiday Gift Guide
#69Unless there's a significant financial incentive to do so (ex: 2-to-1 match), don't give people gift cards. Gift cards are the biggest scam ever pulled by the retail industry, or more specifically, perpetuating the idea that giving cash is taboo. The one exception would be giving a preloaded credit card to someone who otherwise doesn't have access to one (ex: a niece/nephew that's far away) and only if there are no f…
I don't think gift cards are a big conspiracy from the retail industry that primarily perpetuated the idea that cash is a bad gift. It seems more likely that cash became unpopular independently. And for good reason! Trading cash during holidays really ruins the fun! Perhaps the retail industry was just responding to demand - the market may just want gift cards!
http://nytimes.com/2007/01/07/magazine/07wwln_freak.t.html
>As for gift cards — well, let’s just say there is good reason that they are known within the retail industry as a stored-value product: they store their value very well, and often permanently. The financial-services research firm TowerGroup estimates that of the $80 billion spent on gift cards in 2006, roughly $8 billion will never be redeemed — “a bigger impact on consumers,” Tower notes, “than the combined total of both debit- and credit-card fraud.” A survey by Marketing Workshop Inc. found that only 30 percent of recipients use a gift card within a month of receiving it, while Consumer Reports estimates that 19 percent of the people who received a gift card in 2005 never used it.
Re: YC’s 2016 Holiday Gift Guide
#70Somewhat related: "Gift guides" is one service that I considered unsolved. Every holiday (Christmas, birthday, father's day, mother's day, etc) I struggle to come up with gifts for the people I care about. In many ways it's demoralizing. If I care so much about someone, why can't I think of a good gift for them? There are lots of factors here, but I think it basically boils down to, as adults we generally get what we…
A moderately interesting startup idea.
If you like the outdoors you can get county / state / national parks annual passes. I enjoy and use the heck out of my park passes. They're fairly cheap (well, not the national). Of course people who hate the outdoors, well...
There are several food delivery services I've used with mixed results. "highly processed meat and cheeze like product in a box" are kinda weird. Fruit delivery is absurdly expensive but everyone loves it. Right out of a 00s sitcom I ordered my MiL the "fruit of the month club" and she enjoyed it. Food delivery is not cheap. I'll send my mom a crate of peaches every Christmas and its like $5 per peach. But they certainly are delicious. Junk food / candy delivery is cheap. Booze delivery impacts about a zillion weird state laws and the recipient sometimes has to sign and show ID and its a circus, also relatively few people seriously drink. If you can deliver it in person or illegally ship it yourself, a hundred dollar bottle of scotch lasts me about a year at my usual consumption rate, and at the usual markup a service would probably charge $500.
With the decline in public parks and public play there is a growth in private parks and private play and there's a local water park complete with water slides and all that, my kids love that especially nice and warm in the winter and usually doesn't cost that much. Grandma used to buy her grandkids an afternoon pass to the waterpark and it was always fun. Go directly to the park to buy a certificate there's no need for the middlemen. Likewise the local suburban mall hasn't had a video game arcade in maybe 30 years now but there's chuck e cheeze and D+B and stone fire pizza company and places like that.