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Has Y Combinator lost its way when the latest company is a Mac only widget?

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Re: Has Y Combinator lost its way when the latest company is a Mac only widget?

#41

did y combinator ever find its way to begin with? besides making money, have any really useful things been funded by them? airbnb is the only one i can think of that is something im actually glad exists

Reddit, Dropbox and Stipe are all quite good. I think they're doing pretty well.

Re: Has Y Combinator lost its way when the latest company is a Mac only widget?

#42
post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Indeed the founder says: >We’ve only solved a small part of a bigger problem. The SaaS platforms we use for work don't work well together. It shouldn’t take cycling through ten different apps and Chrome tabs to stay on top of everything. >We’re now looking to bring Slack and GitHub into a unified notification inbox in the menu bar. We want to better organize everything you use as we’ve done with Google Calendar.

If they build a unified notification inbox, I will pay for that. I had one of those when I used a Blackberry and I miss it as I now have to check 10 sites periodically to stay on top of things.

Yeah, I worked at BB during that time when the Blackberry Hub on BB10 came out. Shit was awesome to see internally.

Re: Has Y Combinator lost its way when the latest company is a Mac only widget?

#43
post #30

2 observations: - I happily paid for a very similar product about 10 years ago (it was full screen width and had a brilliant timeline feature but otherwise very similar. It was broken when Snow Lion or something was released. I still look for an equivalent.) - Monthly payments forever for standalone apps is a big no no in my book. I get annoyed even just writing about it. Monthly payments for feature upgrades, perpet…

> Monthly payments forever for standalone apps is a big no no in my book. I get annoyed even just writing about it.

Same. I often see good software then see they run on a subscription model and nope right out of there.

If it was a one-off reasonable price I'd pay.

Sometimes I am happy to pay a small yearly fee if it's real nice software and I wanna support the dev.

But monthly subscriptions is stupid to me.

Re: Has Y Combinator lost its way when the latest company is a Mac only widget?

#44
post #34
post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They pivoted. It happens. That doesn't tell you anything about what their plans are now.

Just ask AstroPad and f.lux who both have been targets of being 'sherlocked'. I can only see that these guys are at risk of being sherlocked by Calendar.app, Google Calendar and Calendar.exe. Wonder what their answer to YC was when they were asked about that risk.

For the curious : https://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=sherlocked

Re: Has Y Combinator lost its way when the latest company is a Mac only widget?

#45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If they build a unified notification inbox, I will pay for that. I had one of those when I used a Blackberry and I miss it as I now have to check 10 sites periodically to stay on top of things.

Yeah, I worked at BB during that time when the Blackberry Hub on BB10 came out. Shit was awesome to see internally.

That was excellent and I stuck with my Z30 for a long time because of it.

Re: Has Y Combinator lost its way when the latest company is a Mac only widget?

#46
post #9

Paul Graham: Startups at the begginning are alot more fragile than people think. It may be the case they've very little to show. I'm not seeing some tipping point here. YC has always had startups that were a bit funny or outright weak sounding -- their investment strategy pretty much means the idea must initially sound bad in the pitch. They're aiming for things that are counter intutitive to give them an advantage.

Case in point: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Justin.tv which became Twitch

And has some pretty successful alumni!

Re: Has Y Combinator lost its way when the latest company is a Mac only widget?

#47

I haven't seen a lot of "hard" startups, more like "lets chuck money at this and see if people buy it and then get out after 3 years" companies of late.

The only purpose of wealth these days is to create more wealth. These accumulated assets are not serving any productive purpose, directly or indirectly:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Financialization#Roots

>In the United States, probably more money has been made through the appreciation of real estate than in any other way. What are the long-term consequences if an increasing percentage of savings and wealth, as it now seems, is used to inflate the prices of already existing assets - real estate and stocks - instead of to create new production and innovation?

Re: Has Y Combinator lost its way when the latest company is a Mac only widget?

#49
post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Indeed the founder says: >We’ve only solved a small part of a bigger problem. The SaaS platforms we use for work don't work well together. It shouldn’t take cycling through ten different apps and Chrome tabs to stay on top of everything. >We’re now looking to bring Slack and GitHub into a unified notification inbox in the menu bar. We want to better organize everything you use as we’ve done with Google Calendar.

If they build a unified notification inbox, I will pay for that. I had one of those when I used a Blackberry and I miss it as I now have to check 10 sites periodically to stay on top of things.

Wasn't a unified place for communications, with connections and feeds from all the services you and your company used, the original goal of Slack?

Re: Has Y Combinator lost its way when the latest company is a Mac only widget?

#50

did y combinator ever find its way to begin with? besides making money, have any really useful things been funded by them? airbnb is the only one i can think of that is something im actually glad exists

> airbnb is the only one i can think of that is something im actually glad exists If you leave aside the fact that it destroyed housing in many cities, like the one I live in. A handful of landlords got richer, turists could travel cheaper (not necessarily a good thing overall), but an entire class of citizens got kicked out of the city as now no landlord wants to regularly rent their flat. If you ask for disruption,…

There's also the "ghost hotels."

https://www.wired.co.uk/article/airbnb-scam-london

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