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

Post by _sentient » Thu, Aug 23, 2018, 5:25 PM UTC

throwaway2018i wrote: post #88

_sentient wrote: post #80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 compani…

I'd be more than willing to do this. How do you want to proceed?

Post by eaenki » Sat, Aug 25, 2018, 6:44 PM UTC

throwaway2018i wrote: post #87

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.

As someone who went through YCombinator (my company failed), an Ivy-League and one of the tech giants——I can certainly say they're screwing up. To invoke Dyson, should you be investing in the frog or the bird? Let's see: Every single company in YCombinator's portfolio these days, with rare exception seems visionless, they're single product businesses, that's why they always exit (how many went to IPO?); which is inhe…

Post by yobw » Tue, Aug 28, 2018, 5:29 PM UTC

fsloth wrote: post #25

yread wrote: post #13

Monetizing game modding?! Nooo

That's what Roblox is basically already doing. Except it's more like "create your own game from these blocks" kind of thing, the content there seems to be of remixing lot of existing ideas and concepts. The monetization apparently works there: https://venturebeat.com/2017/07/21/the-deanbeat-robloxs-kid-...