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

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

reddit.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

321–326 of 326 posts

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

#321

Post by majani »

thinkingemote wrote: post #289
adenozine wrote: post #68

Was there ever a time where YC only boosted deeply meaningful companies that were focused on uplifting humanity? I mean, no disrespect on yc, but it performs what it says on the tin. It's a business for businesses. Idk. I have tempered expectations moreso than some I guess. You've got a point, I just wonder how egregious is TOO much.

Is it possible for any investment arm to invest in endeavours to uplift humanity?

Yup. Right now there is a rush to invest in African loan apps that have finally found ways to scalably extend credit to poor people in African countries. Hits a sweet spot between doing good and making business sense. There are also big investments in Africa into IOT companies that enable hire purchase for solar-powered home devices. Same sweet spot

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

#322

Post by bombcar »

alex_g wrote: post #253
bombcar wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A subscription has to provide SOMETHING that I consider “ongoing” to be of value to me - 1Password syncing for example, or email - before I’ll consider it. Otherwise I’m looking for another option as I can’t be five and dimed to death by little subscriptions.

Do you consider "ongoing" to be synonymous with "server costs"? As someone trying to figure out a pricing model for a currently-local-only app, I'm genuinely curious.

Not synonymous but inclusive, yes. Something like a backup app that provides the cloud stuff, 1Password sync, game servers, etc.

Continual improvement also counts as ongoing - but for many small utilities there’s only so much you can improve.

A good thing I’ve seen is a subscription where you can buy a “lifetime” for what is probably 2x expected subscription value or something.

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

#323

Post by regularfry »

Grustaf wrote: post #316
regularfry wrote: post #158

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It is, however, a way to get a validated group of people who are price insensitive (compared to you, anyway) and willing to pay money for that specific sort of tool. Whether that's enough for a YC hail-mary to work is a them-problem.

Why though? People who are price insensitive enough to pay 120 bucks a year for a menu bar widget are not your target audience, they are a tiny tiny minority.

They might be a minority. They might be a minority you're not in. So (I'm guessing) is the minority that buy genuine Louis Vuitton handbags. The question isn't the size of the market in total audience numbers, or the proportion of some arbitrary population they represent, it's the readiness with which they can be parted with a sizeable chunk of cash in aggregate.

Proving that the total addressable wallet is sufficient to sustain a YC company is a) non-trivial, and b) their problem. If there's one thing I've learned, it's that there can be remarkably large markets in remarkably unexpected places, so while yes, this one looks like a totally conventional small-software-shop play, and the 75th percentile outcome across all YC companies is crater-shaped, I'm not going to second-guess whether they might have something.

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

#324

Post by pradn »

yarcob wrote: post #280
pradn wrote: post #213

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Dropbox has the best sync clients, but that's not enough to save them from being a commodity. Dead-simple and reliable sync seems like a nice-to-have that isn't going to save them from the incredibly large footprint the likes of Microsoft already have in enterprise markets. An IT purchaser might not care much about the usability difference between OneDrive and DropBox (which I'm not even sure exists since the last ti…

Have they solved the CPU usage problems? Dropbox caused serious CPU spikes during backups, and when they didn't fix it for years I moved away.

I don't notice any special CPU issues with the Dropbox client.

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

#325

Post by jack_riminton »

mattnewton wrote: post #87
jack_riminton wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Case in point: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Justin.tv which became Twitch And has some pretty successful alumni!

I’m not sure I would use this as the example, Justin.tv was doing something a bit weird and different. Even if it didn’t pan out (which it didn’t before their pivot), it wasn’t clear at the time why it would work or not work. This product has many competitors in a crowded space, and the risk of being sherlock-ed.

Right, which was exactly what was described in the grandparent comment

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

#326

Post by 908B64B197 »

akhilcacharya wrote: post #308
908B64B197 wrote: post #267

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> "has YC lost it's way when its latest company is founded by 4 University of Waterloo students?" It's interesting to see they are branching out to smaller, lesser known more regional schools. Pretty far from their debut in Harvard/Kendall Square.

I can’t tell if this is a joke but Waterloo is the Stanford of Canada and is on par with the top American CS undergrads

Never heard of it. Must be a regional thing.

Never heard Stanford referred to as the "Waterloo of the United-States" either.

But hey, if you say so, I believe you internet stranger!

Post reply on HN