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YC’s 2016 Holiday Gift Guide

ycgiftideas.com

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Re: YC’s 2016 Holiday Gift Guide

#111

Post by larrywright »

qmalzp wrote: post #102
xiaoma wrote: post #30

The thing that really strikes me about this list is how nearly everything on it is offered at a premium price. One thing I loved about the tech world while I was growing up was that it was consistently doing more with less. Wikipedia displaced Encyclopaedia Brittanica by being both better and free. Hotmail was a clear win over AOL and Yahoo's offerings and then Gmail was faster and handled spam better while giving mo…

"Amazon and Netflix broke down even the movie industry and ended the $70 per tape movie sale price." Is that a typo? When were movies ever $70?

In the 80s and early-to-mid 90s, most movies weren't offered for sale to consumers. Big blockbuster movies sometimes were, but those were the exception. Places like Blockbuster or your corner video rental store bought VHS movies for around $70/ea and then rented them to consumers for $3 or so. That changed somewhere around the late 90s, when people began buying movies on VHS and DVD, and the price dropped significantly.

Source: I worked for a small video store in the early 90s.

Re: YC’s 2016 Holiday Gift Guide

#112

Post by toomuchtodo »

outworlder wrote: post #96
VLM wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ironically the most obvious pivot for the company is anti-EV range anxiety-as-a-service where they'll do something like triple A specifically for EVs by rolling up in a truck with a 500 HP giant diesel generator and fast charge your EV anywhere in a service area, eliminating range anxiety. Honestly you could probably run something like that without any capital expense at all by just collecting monthly premiums and ad…

Well, that's exactly what I thought when I read about that service. Since I drive a Leaf, a gas fill-up would be useless to me. Many EV owners would object to having their car being charged by a dirty diesel generator. Plus, if we are hauling a giant generator, what about a giant battery pack? Someone will have to do the math on that. As well as a "rescue" vehicle, it could be very useful as a temporary "mobile quick…

AAA has service trucks with generators for EVs on them. An AAA membership is something like $100/year.

Too late Silicon Valley! Go growth hack something else!

https://electrek.co/2016/09/06/aaa-ev-emergency-charging-tru...

Re: YC’s 2016 Holiday Gift Guide

#113

Post by euyyn »

fpgaminer wrote: post #36

Somewhat 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…

My thought is: Don't give them something they need (as they'd buy it anyway, if they haven't already), but something they would fancy but probably would restrain themselves from getting.

Re: YC’s 2016 Holiday Gift Guide

#114

Post by fpgaminer »

eggbrain wrote: post #98
fpgaminer wrote: post #36

Somewhat 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…

I think the main reason it's unsolved is that there's a lot of personalization that needs to happen. If you (as a son, let's say), can't figure out what to give your dad, how can a site? The reason why a lot of holiday guides give common or useless stuff is because they have to generalize across age ranges, ethnicities, locations, and preferences. The best gift guide would also probably be one that gets to the core o…

Yes, that's definitely true, it's not a simple task by any stretch of the imagination. I think the experience gifts is perhaps a more viable option. For example, a mystery dinner type deal (mystery theater + dinner) I think is a good gift for a lot of friends and family. Cooking classes are pretty general too. I've been gifted cooking classes before and they were really fun (they focus on making it date night sort of deal so it was geared towards couples). But both of those I've had challenges gifting. I couldn't find any well reviewed mystery dinner type deals, and the few good cooking class type things I found did not offer a gifting option. Buying tickets to events, like concerts, is tough too, again because they don't generally offer gift options. If I could buy a "blank check" sort of ticket to the local playhouse, that'd be nice.

My big gripe is the sites that get mostly there. They ask questions about the intended recipient, like age, gender, and tastes. At the end of it, though, the recommendations are really bland. I don't mind sorting through a list of possible gifts, with only a few good results. But the results I get are the kind of generic "gifts" you see on the end-caps of Kohl's during holiday season. As I mentioned, people generally already have what they need. Gifting often comes down to finding something the person wouldn't have otherwise thought about. So it's necessary to show unique options. Again, the accuracy doesn't need to be terribly high. If I only find one good option amongst 40, that's fine. Instead I get 200+ kitchen stand mixers...

Re: YC’s 2016 Holiday Gift Guide

#115

Post by madamelic »

VLM wrote: post #47
thaddeusmt wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"Yoshi brings the gas station to your gift recipient, refueling their car regularly wherever it's parked. Any commuters on your list will thank you for removing the hassle of the gas station from their lives forever." I get it, filling up your car is a chore, if your time is super valuable... whatever. It's hard to fill the YC portfolio every year with only companies working on "big problems", I'm sure. But it really…

Ironically the most obvious pivot for the company is anti-EV range anxiety-as-a-service where they'll do something like triple A specifically for EVs by rolling up in a truck with a 500 HP giant diesel generator and fast charge your EV anywhere in a service area, eliminating range anxiety. Honestly you could probably run something like that without any capital expense at all by just collecting monthly premiums and ad…

Not to mention the irony in using a diesel generator to re-charge electric vehicles meant to save the environment.

Re: YC’s 2016 Holiday Gift Guide

#116

Post by CPLX »

aaachilless wrote: post #108
CPLX wrote: post #14

I always wonder how people can say things like this: "They've created a wifi-enabled immersion circulator called the Nomiku so every home chef can prepare simple, Michelin-starred meals." I mean, I bet that literally zero Michelin-starred meals have been prepared with this device. And the phrase "Michelin" or "Michelin-starred" is trademarked and has a clear meaning. If I was a marketer for this company I would feel…

With regard to the comments after the aside: The former model has become a “fad” because of technological progress in e.g. logistics and predictive analytics. The wording “send some stuff to you every month you don’t get to pick the stuff but trust us” belies the fact that this is actually a very difficult problem with a very interesting solution. If some instance of this model succeeds it will be because it managed…

> More generally, building a profitable, sustainable organization of human beings is intrinsically useful and interesting. This last part is less a reply to your post and more a response to a cynical (in my opinion) tone throughout this discussion.

I do understand this view, and I share it to some extent. It's easy to be cynical and it's hard to try to make things work. I understand that far more now in my old age than I did back in the fuckedcompany.com days, for example.

With that said, I think people who espouse this view can be a little oblivious to the downsides of frivolous investment bubbles in tech. If you take a million dollars of investment and do something like take cases of wine, open the bottles and pour it into little glass size vials, and mail it to people for a couple months before realizing that service is not really useful to anyone, then that's a real life tragedy.

Asset bubbles are bad and have real life consequences.

Those million dollars belong to someone, often someone's retirement fund or similar. That million dollars can help people. It can help them directly, by giving to those in need, or more relevantly, it can support business ideas that aren't frivolous, people who aren't privileged graduates of prestigious colleges or connected to hot incubators.

Maybe a system that is funding that idea but leaving so many prospective entrepreneurs and ideas completely out of the system, is somewhat broken. Maybe we're allowed to notice it and find it problematic if we want to.

Maybe we can say hey this is disappointing because it is.

Re: YC’s 2016 Holiday Gift Guide

#117

Post by logfromblammo »

jordanlev wrote: post #57
koolba wrote: post #2

Unless 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…

Eh, if I get cash I feel compelled to put it in my bank account and use it for normal daily expenditures (bills, etc)... but with a gift card I feel like I have permission to buy things that are just fun (especially if it's something like an iTunes gift card where you can't even buy something useful if you wanted to, unlike Amazon).

Worse still is a paper check. I have to deposit that in my checking account to spend it. Once it is in there, it immediately becomes indistinguishable from the cash used to pay the utilities. Here, I want to buy you three cans of tuna, 75 kWh of electricity, and 4 gallons of gasoline. Enjoy!

At least with cash, I could theoretically put it in a special envelope that is exclusively for fun expenses.

Also, cash-equivalent gifts are a great way to tell your friends and family "I value our relationship at exactly $x/year." You can so easily compare it to previous years, and with what they typically give to you.

But the worst gift of all is lottery scratch-off tickets. Here, I spent exactly $X to give you an amount of cash that is very likely to be between $0 and $X, but is probably just $0 or $1.

Re: YC’s 2016 Holiday Gift Guide

#118

Post by [deleted] »

Aloha wrote: post #110
david_mitchell wrote: post #89

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What came to mind when I saw the list was what is might say about the founders that YC is selecting. You could easily conclude from this list that it's rich peoples kids creating solutions to imaginary problems - "Oh, how could my poor feet possibly survive the arduous journey from my front door to the uber in an off the shelf pair of shoes? I need a tailor!". I think we should give them the benefit of the doubt thou…

As someone who has perpetual trouble finding well fitting dress shirts off the shelf - the MTailor thing seems interesting. You do raise something valid - I suspect they're selling affluent customers, because they're easier to reach, and are willing to try something novel.

[deleted]

Re: YC’s 2016 Holiday Gift Guide

#119

Post by logfromblammo »

frakkingcylons wrote: post #100
VLM wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ironically the most obvious pivot for the company is anti-EV range anxiety-as-a-service where they'll do something like triple A specifically for EVs by rolling up in a truck with a 500 HP giant diesel generator and fast charge your EV anywhere in a service area, eliminating range anxiety. Honestly you could probably run something like that without any capital expense at all by just collecting monthly premiums and ad…

> I wonder what a 500 HP generator at full battery charging blast sounds like in a residential neighborhood at 2am. I think you had a good idea with the on-demand EV charging, but I would imagine they'd have a truck with a high-capacity battery (like Tesla's Powerwall) which could be charged via solar panels.

> could be charged via solar panels.

...but would actually be charged via grid power or internal combustion engine generator 99% of the time.

Re: YC’s 2016 Holiday Gift Guide

#120

Post by IanCal »

Aloha wrote: post #110
david_mitchell wrote: post #89

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What came to mind when I saw the list was what is might say about the founders that YC is selecting. You could easily conclude from this list that it's rich peoples kids creating solutions to imaginary problems - "Oh, how could my poor feet possibly survive the arduous journey from my front door to the uber in an off the shelf pair of shoes? I need a tailor!". I think we should give them the benefit of the doubt thou…

As someone who has perpetual trouble finding well fitting dress shirts off the shelf - the MTailor thing seems interesting. You do raise something valid - I suspect they're selling affluent customers, because they're easier to reach, and are willing to try something novel.

You can just buy a shirt and get it tailored by someone who can actually see you and try pinning it in different places.
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