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Startups that debuted at Y Combinator W17 Demo Day 2

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Re: Startups that debuted at Y Combinator W17 Demo Day 2

#91

Post by puranjay »

kriro wrote: post #83

The "black hair care market" is one of the curious things I've pondered about since spending some time in Africa. I think they are onto something and I think it's one of the markets where you can build a nice lead without really being noticed. I (as a Caucasian man with not exactly a lot of hair) had some very interesting discussions about hair pieces for example. I wish them the best of luck, the capitalist in me is…

I chuckled when I read the "social community for black hair dressers" line.

Then I realized this is a pretty massive niche market and these guys are smart for focusing on it

Re: Startups that debuted at Y Combinator W17 Demo Day 2

#92

Post by bambax »

> Voodoo Manufacturing

I have been using a French company that seems to do the exact same thing, for low volume and prototyping: sculpteo.com

However, for mass production (still low volumes, We need finishing (polishing, printing) and packaging, and those on-demand manufacturing services usually don't provide this, which is a shame.

Re: Startups that debuted at Y Combinator W17 Demo Day 2

#94

Post by neilk »

nandemo wrote: post #78
vuyani wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And whats so unbelievable about this stat?

According to this [0] the sum of black population, plus australoid (for the sake of the argument, let's say they will be part of the target audience regardless of how they self-identify ethnically) and mixed caucasian+black, caucasian+australoid etc is about 27% of world population. Let's round that up to 30%. Also, let's round up the world population estimate to 7 billion, and assume men are part of the target audie…

$20/month? That wouldn't be enough even for most white women.

Black women's hair appointments are more expensive; many hair salons charge a premium. Plus they use a lot of products and elixirs to change the nature of their hair. Plus, many of them wear a wig-like accessory, often of real human hair, every single day. The process of 'weaving' that into their natural hair can cost hundreds or even thousands, at the high end.

Source: black friend in college wrote an essay about this for a journal I was editing at the time, plus, common knowledge. There are some interesting cultural questions about how in North American society, natural black hair is deemed unacceptable, and this has generally been internalized by black women. If you choose to just be natural (as my friend did) you get a lot of flak from other black women.

I don't know if you can get this to work out to $500B; other industry numbers I could find are like $10B, which would be about $50/month for every black woman in the USA.

Re: Startups that debuted at Y Combinator W17 Demo Day 2

#95

Post by sumedh »

kriro wrote: post #83

The "black hair care market" is one of the curious things I've pondered about since spending some time in Africa. I think they are onto something and I think it's one of the markets where you can build a nice lead without really being noticed. I (as a Caucasian man with not exactly a lot of hair) had some very interesting discussions about hair pieces for example. I wish them the best of luck, the capitalist in me is…

You should check out https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Good_Hair

Re: Startups that debuted at Y Combinator W17 Demo Day 2

#96

Post by idoco »

anilgulecha wrote: post #32

Peer5 - This is malware on your browser, and they are abusing the webrtc protocol for their business usecase. Until they provide a clear opt-in usage behavior, this opinion will not change. Clearly if their proposition is about better streaming service/quality, this is trivially testable by how many users opt-in to their network when viewing videos. Their endpoints should be added to easylist. This is very big concer…

IMHO ads are far more intrusive than sharing your upstream bandwidth with others, they also waste your attention and incept ideas in your mind. This is why some people choose to opt-out and use ad-blockers, and that's ok.

But as long as we want to get free quality content, publishers have to see some profit (And I'm ok with that). You opt-in to many things when you visit a website on a regular basis, and tools like peer5 are just one of these things.

(Fixed typo)

Re: Startups that debuted at Y Combinator W17 Demo Day 2

#97

Post by binaryorganic »

aestetix wrote: post #84

Did they actually do anything besides donate money to the ACLU? I didn't see anything on the ACLU's website about it, which is strange given the arrangement YC usually has with companies they "fund." Did anyone from the ACLU go to YC and participate? Is there a "demo day" presenation from the ACLU? I'm very confused.

The ACLU will be part of the winter batch of companies in YC, where it will receive mentorship, a network of powerful connections in tech and a chance to present itself to investors on Demo Day.

Y Combinator will also provide some funding, though it won’t take an equity stake in ACLU because it’s a nonprofit. ACLU will not pay to participate."

SOURCE: https://techcrunch.com/2017/01/31/ycaclu/

Re: Startups that debuted at Y Combinator W17 Demo Day 2

#98

Post by sah2ed »

neilk wrote: post #94
nandemo wrote: post #78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

According to this [0] the sum of black population, plus australoid (for the sake of the argument, let's say they will be part of the target audience regardless of how they self-identify ethnically) and mixed caucasian+black, caucasian+australoid etc is about 27% of world population. Let's round that up to 30%. Also, let's round up the world population estimate to 7 billion, and assume men are part of the target audie…

$20/month? That wouldn't be enough even for most white women. Black women's hair appointments are more expensive; many hair salons charge a premium. Plus they use a lot of products and elixirs to change the nature of their hair. Plus, many of them wear a wig-like accessory, often of real human hair, every single day. The process of 'weaving' that into their natural hair can cost hundreds or even thousands, at the hig…

> There are some interesting cultural questions about how in North American society, natural black hair is deemed unacceptable, and this has generally been internalized by black women. If you choose to just be natural (as my friend did) you get a lot of flak from other black women.

You've basically identified the source of a "problem" that shouldn't even exist to begin with: an inferiority complex.

Re: Startups that debuted at Y Combinator W17 Demo Day 2

#99

Post by ghaff »

haraball wrote: post #86
mintplant wrote: post #25

As podcasts become bigger and bigger I've been afraid of something like Breaker succeeding. Thanks to RSS/Atom it's currently a very open medium. Anyone can start putting out content and I can consume it on any device and app I choose, download episodes for on-the-go and offline listening, transfer the files easily between devices—even to "dumb" MP3 players that never had an app ecosystem—and move my subscriptions ar…

Breaker's app looks good, but I agree in that I hope they won't succeed. Their monetization strategy is to "own" podcasts and have people pay for access, if I understand correctly. Which podcasts do they have lined up for this? Will those podcasts still have ads in them? When will they start charging? Too many unanswered questions for me at this point which stops me from switching from my current podcast setup, and t…

Fortunately, podcasts do seem to be one area that is apparently working reasonably well today for both producers and consumers.

Consumers get mostly free podcasts. Producers are either fine with not monetizing; the podcast is a hobby or it's in support of other activities that do bring in money. Or a pretty reasonable ad density (apparently) brings in enough money that people find it worthwhile to produce podcasts.

Re: Startups that debuted at Y Combinator W17 Demo Day 2

#100

Post by adamnemecek »

neilk wrote: post #94
nandemo wrote: post #78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

According to this [0] the sum of black population, plus australoid (for the sake of the argument, let's say they will be part of the target audience regardless of how they self-identify ethnically) and mixed caucasian+black, caucasian+australoid etc is about 27% of world population. Let's round that up to 30%. Also, let's round up the world population estimate to 7 billion, and assume men are part of the target audie…

$20/month? That wouldn't be enough even for most white women. Black women's hair appointments are more expensive; many hair salons charge a premium. Plus they use a lot of products and elixirs to change the nature of their hair. Plus, many of them wear a wig-like accessory, often of real human hair, every single day. The process of 'weaving' that into their natural hair can cost hundreds or even thousands, at the hig…

You know how half of the population lives in less than a dollar a day or so? It's impossible that 2.7b can afford $20/month.
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