Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Startups that launched at Y Combinator’s S18 Demo Day 2

techcrunch.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

71–80 of 97 posts

Re: Startups that launched at Y Combinator’s S18 Demo Day 2

#71

Post by segmondy »

claudiulodro wrote: post #61

What is up with listing the pedigree of the founders? I noticed it on the demo day 1 article, also. Does being an ex-FAANG employee correlate with successfully running a startup, or is it just the easiest signal VCs have for "This person is probably smart"? It seems like a lot of YC's current model is to throw money at ex-FAANG employees with ideas.

It's one of the data signals for success. An ex-FAANG employee is more likely to succeed than a non ex-FAANG, not only are they most likely smarter than average, they also probably have experience in dealing with more complex systems, and also possibly a more valuable network in terms of poaching their ex coworkers.

It's just one of those things in life. :-D

Re: Startups that launched at Y Combinator’s S18 Demo Day 2

#72

Post by RobLach »

haaen wrote: post #70

Great batch. I'm especially impressed by the hard tech companies that produce atoms. But unfortunately, on demo day 1 there was a company that makes the world uglier and is supporting the massive ongoing trend of middle class and sometimes even upper class people imitating an aspect of the underclass. On demo day 2, there was a shamelessly partisan company that makes the world worse. It wants to get more people to su…

Which companies are you referring to?

Re: Startups that launched at Y Combinator’s S18 Demo Day 2

#73

Post by Jhsto »

claudiulodro wrote: post #61

What is up with listing the pedigree of the founders? I noticed it on the demo day 1 article, also. Does being an ex-FAANG employee correlate with successfully running a startup, or is it just the easiest signal VCs have for "This person is probably smart"? It seems like a lot of YC's current model is to throw money at ex-FAANG employees with ideas.

Anecdotal, but a Google recruiter once approached me. He told me I have a weird work history. According to him, this was because I had not targeted FAANG after graduation, but instead worked in smaller companies. This was while I was living in Silicon Valley. I guess VCs might see it the same way as the recruiter - only weirdos would say no to dosh.

Personally, I think it is much the opposite -- if you worked in corporations for your whole life, how does that relate to running a startup? I think it's a general consensus that most programmers expect a job description. These people do not usually make great startup founders, because the obscurity of direction and lack of significance for coding early on might startle them.

Re: Startups that launched at Y Combinator’s S18 Demo Day 2

#74

Post by lacker »

thisisit wrote: post #5

I have been reading YC lists for so many years. And this list has set a record for number of facepalms. Companies like Papa are stuff of nightmares. While others like AnchorUSD, SparkSwap etc seem like an attempt to ride a wave which was been gone for long.

AnchorUSD seems promising to me. There are a lot of problems with Tether, and a trustworthy stablecoin with low transaction costs has an obvious value proposition and doesn't really exist yet.

Re: Startups that launched at Y Combinator’s S18 Demo Day 2

#75

Post by jcomis »

segmondy wrote: post #71
claudiulodro wrote: post #61

What is up with listing the pedigree of the founders? I noticed it on the demo day 1 article, also. Does being an ex-FAANG employee correlate with successfully running a startup, or is it just the easiest signal VCs have for "This person is probably smart"? It seems like a lot of YC's current model is to throw money at ex-FAANG employees with ideas.

It's one of the data signals for success. An ex-FAANG employee is more likely to succeed than a non ex-FAANG, not only are they most likely smarter than average, they also probably have experience in dealing with more complex systems, and also possibly a more valuable network in terms of poaching their ex coworkers. It's just one of those things in life. :-D

based on what evidence?

Re: Startups that launched at Y Combinator’s S18 Demo Day 2

#76

Post by bobmarley1 »

onion2k wrote: post #14
toomanybeersies wrote: post #12

I'm not in SV, and very much outside the startup community in the rest of the world these days, especially since I no longer work in a coworking space. I have to say, some of these legitimately look like parodies, like something out of the Silicon Valley TV show. Emojer cannot be a legitimate company with real funding. It just can't.

Emojer cannot be a legitimate company with real funding. There's a very clear exit route to selling to a phone manufacturer that wants to add more "fun" functionality to its camera app..

Must be fun spending years in academia getting your Phd in Machine Learning and Computer Vision only to create an Emoji app. How much talent is being wasted on worthless trash like this??

Re: Startups that launched at Y Combinator’s S18 Demo Day 2

#78

Post by bobmarley1 »

claudiulodro wrote: post #61

What is up with listing the pedigree of the founders? I noticed it on the demo day 1 article, also. Does being an ex-FAANG employee correlate with successfully running a startup, or is it just the easiest signal VCs have for "This person is probably smart"? It seems like a lot of YC's current model is to throw money at ex-FAANG employees with ideas.

How else can you convince someone to fund another useless product if you don't tell everyone the founders went to Stanford and worked at Google??

Re: Startups that launched at Y Combinator’s S18 Demo Day 2

#79

Post by wyattk »

eaenki wrote: post #37

I can't help but wonder what would happen if YC and all its influence was to be focused on only a bunch of startups per year doing truly far fetched things - namely space, biotech, finance, robotics, computing and VR. Is focusing on social networks for grandkids, instant food, the 50th sticker app and countless B2B products truly worth it when it could be directed towards the former? Who could possibly, genuinely wan…

I get the point you're tryin to make, but, then again, who are we to judge what is and is not worthy, especially this early? A lot of "unworthy" things have been extremely value to us as a society in hindsight, let alone things that have stemmed from them.

> countless B2B products truly worth it?

"B2B" is a very vague and extremely overarching term. Computers, internet, and cell phones were all, at one point, very much "B2B".

> Who could possibly, genuinely want to work at such places?

For starters, I can imagine some people would fancy having a large impact on the world and the subsequent 10-12 figures attached to their name from all the value they created. Microsoft was "B2B", Amazon was an online bookstore (some people would imagine "instant food" in a category close to that), etc. It can be hard for many to see the value of something at its origin and not be able to see how that would shape a society, let alone an exponentially changing one. I think Peter Thiel would call some of these things "secrets".

Re: Startups that launched at Y Combinator’s S18 Demo Day 2

#80

Post by _sentient »

chatmasta wrote: post #44

There are maybe, maybe 10 promising companies in the mix these past two days. YC has really lost its prestige by diluting its batches so much, IMO. There are better pathways to funding nowadays for promising startups that don’t require surrendering 7% equity.

I was at Demo Day, and couldn't disagree more.

If you actually believe that, go ahead and pick the ten companies you think are worth something, and I'll take the "unpromising" part of the batch. We can put a five year bet into longbets that the top ten companies of my group will outperform your ten companies, as scored by either exit value or value of last round raised.

Picking winners is hard, and most great companies today looked dramatically different when they were first getting started.

Post reply on HN