Launch YC S21: Meet the Batch, Thread #6

#1

Post by dang » Thu, Aug 12, 2021, 2:01 PM UTC

Welcome to another "Meet the Batch" thread for YC's S21 batch. The previous thread was https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28128957. The original announcement is at https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27877280.

There are 6 startups in this thread. The initial order is random:

Kodex (YC S21) - Easy responses to government data requests - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28156465

HeyCharge (YC S21) - Low-cost EV charging in multi-user buildings - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28156463

Parallel Bio (YC S21) - Improving drug discovery by replacing animal models - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28156464

Secoda (YC S21) - Company data discovery tool for teams - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28156461

Oneistox (YC S21) - Skill-building, cohort-based courses for designers - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28156462

Zeit Medical (YC S21) - Early detection of stroke - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28156466

Re: Launch YC S21: Meet the Batch, Thread #6

#2

Post by Etai » Thu, Aug 12, 2021, 2:01 PM UTC

Hey HN, I’m Etai, together with Andrew a co-founder of Secoda (https://www.secoda.co). Secoda is a collaborative workspace for data teams that makes it easy to share metadata, queries, charts and documentation with any employee.

Companies store a growing amount of knowledge in BI tools, data warehouses, data pipelines, queries and documentation. Because these tools are not connected, it has become more difficult to manage all of this. Even with great practices, organizations still struggle to get value out of their data - up to 73% of all enterprise data goes unused. One of the big contributors to this problem is that organizations create data silos by not documenting and centralizing their data knowledge in a single place where every employee can access information about data.

Today, most data teams end up documenting all this data with Google Sheets or Confluence, which get outdated quickly. Because data documentation is outdated and hard to find, employees struggle to discover, understand and use it. This overwhelms data teams with repetitive questions about how to use and where to find company data.

In our last roles, Andrew and I had a hard time understanding context around different data resources. It was difficult to understand which table to use, what dashboard to trust, who to talk to about a particular metric or why we changed our pricing model. All of this data knowledge was in our data teams head and it made it really difficult to try to work with data. It would take around 2 weeks to get an answer to any data request because the data team was so backed up with questions. This sucked.

Secoda is unique because it's focused on helping the data team curate knowledge for the less technical employee. Data teams can use the tool to curate knowledge for specific departments or roles so that only the right people are able to see the data knowledge that they should see. We currently integrate into data warehouses, BI tools, dbt as well as Airflow and once teams connect their data to Secoda, they can get a comprehensive view of all their data knowledge in one place.

We’d love to hear your feedback or experience with the problem that we're solving and would be thrilled if you would sign up at https://secoda.co to let us know what you think!

Re: Launch YC S21: Meet the Batch, Thread #6

#3

Post by imharkunwar » Thu, Aug 12, 2021, 2:01 PM UTC

Hi HN—we’re Harkunwar, Vipanchi, Chaithanya and Mehul from Oneistox (https://oneistox.in/). Oneistox offers online cohort-based courses for designers, architects and engineers to advance their professional growth.

Online learning by watching pre-recorded videos does not work for design and architecture. Learning design is an iterative process that happens through communication over drawings, sketches, screen visuals and physical prototypes. It also depends greatly on being exposed to how your peers are addressing the same problem and understanding approaches from the experienced. No LMS (Learning Management system) in the world caters to this way of communicating while learning. There is also very little quality curated content online on design, architecture and construction subjects, and no space which upskills you in these fields sufficiently for career growth. Meanwhile, demand for designers has been growing at 21% annually over the last 5 years but only 1/5th of this demand has been met.

We felt the skill gap when we were in grad school. What we were being taught was last revised 35 years ago. 80% was also by the faculty that was non-practicing in architecture—hadn’t built anything in their life. Institutes were doing nothing to address this in India. We researched deeper by talking to professionals abroad, and found that this problem came out to be global, especially in developing and under-developed nations.

We've built a new, cohort-based, project-based LMS specifically to learn design subjects for feedback over drawings, sketches, screen visuals and physical prototypes. Our learners work in groups of 2-6 on live projects and create concept designs to executable drawings from scratch. Project-based learning and peer-to-peer interaction in cohorts increases completion rates by 12x! So far we've had over 2000 learners from 27 countries upgrading their skills in subjects like Building Information Design, UI/UX, Sustainable design, Computational design, and others. We connect course graduates to industry professionals for hiring. We look forward to your feedback!

Re: Launch YC S21: Meet the Batch, Thread #6

#4

Post by ChrisCarde » Thu, Aug 12, 2021, 2:01 PM UTC

This is Chris and Robert from HeyCharge (https://heycharge.io/). We're developing low-cost EV charging for indoor environments like underground parking garages.

Current indoor EV chargers are expensive to buy, install, and operate, especially because they need internet connections and cloud-based backends. They're also unreliable, because even if the charger's internet connection works, the user might not have one on their mobile device while underground.

Our chargers don’t require an internet connection, they don’t require any setup other than an electrician to wire power, and our charger and app work together, even when underground and outside of mobile network coverage. This makes them cheaper and more reliable.

We exchange cryptographically-signed, single-use tokens between the charger and our mobile app. We provide tokens proactively to users whenever they have mobile network coverage, meaning they have a supply to use when underground in front of their charger. The charger doesn't need to connect to the internet, only to the user's phone. It provides a charging session in return for a token. After charging, a token is sent in the reverse direction, where it’s eventually sent to the back end. We only provide a replacement token to the user in return for them bringing a complete charge session report. The user’s app and device is an untrusted intermediary in this design, making the system resistant to abuse.

I (Chris) got my career start at UC Davis working on EVs in a graduate research group under the inventor of the modern plug-in hybrid, Dr. Andy Frank, followed by experience at Google, Mercedes-Benz R&D, and E.ON Energy. I finally brought my first plug-in car home to a Munich city-center apartment in late 2017 and realized just how difficult and expensive installing EV chargers in these buildings was. We started HeyCharge to bring EV charging to users like me, living in apartment buildings. We are deploying hardware to our first pilot sites now. Looking forward to your thoughts, questions, and comments!

Re: Launch YC S21: Meet the Batch, Thread #6

#5

Post by rdifazio » Thu, Aug 12, 2021, 2:01 PM UTC

Hey everyone! We’re Juliana and Robert, co-founders of Parallel Bio. We're improving drug discovery by replacing animal models, in the hope of making cures for humans, not mice.

The biggest reason why 92% of new drugs fail is that drugs are currently discovered in mice, which are not realistic models of human disease but are used due to the challenges of working in humans. We've created a human ‘immune system in a dish’ to discover drugs more likely to work in patients.

Robert has a PhD in immunology and is intimately familiar with the ways in which people are failing to recognize the importance of the immune system in diseases and the failures of trying to model it adequately. Juliana has a MSc in bioengineering and for the last 5 years has been working on developing mini-organ models in an effort to more accurately model human disease.

Both of us have always recognized a gap in the pharmaceutical industry that everyone seems to acknowledge exists, but few people are working to fill, which is using humans and human systems to treat disease. Since it is not always possible to test drugs directly in patients, there is a critical need for human systems to test drugs on that will predict downstream success in the patient.

Our immune organoid is a 3D system that has all of the features of a human secondary lymphoid organ. It contains all of the cells (B cells, T cells, NK cells, etc), structures (germinal centers, LZ/DZ, etc), and function (somatic hypermutation, antibody and cellular response, etc) that you would expect to see in a secondary lymphoid organ. It matches the genetic background of the patient from which it’s derived, meaning it also models diseases that patients have. And because it exhibits the same functions as a human immune system, you can test drugs and vaccines as if you were testing them in actual patients from the start. It's also easier to work with than mice.

People are currently using our platform as a new way to produce antibody therapies, to test vaccine candidates, and to test new treatments for diseases like multiple sclerosis.

Re: Launch YC S21: Meet the Batch, Thread #6

#6

Post by _2rxu » Thu, Aug 12, 2021, 2:01 PM UTC

We are the founders of Kodex (https://www.kodex.us). Kodex makes it easy for companies to process and respond to subpoenas from governments around the world.

Government agencies subpoena user data from thousands of companies around the world, and companies largely rely on email, fax, and spreadsheets to manage them. At a previous job, we would frequently see companies struggle to comply with legal orders, because they lacked the internal resources or expertise to automate the process of working with government agencies. Even multi-billion dollar companies had this problem. At scale, it is enormously burdensome.

Somewhat surprisingly, companies have all independently learned to comply with these requests in almost the exact same way. Regular ticketing systems don't work for this, so companies have adopted a web of Zendesk tickets, spreadsheets, and emails just to manage the intake of requests. To respond to requests, they typically send unsecured emails. The fact that this inefficient and insecure setup is so common suggests that these companies' needs can be met with one product, rather than custom solutions for each company.

Kodex automates the entire process of parsing, analyzing, and responding to subpoenas by providing companies with their own online Government Request Portal. It is similar to the Law Enforcement Portal that Facebook made for themselves, but it is a resource for every other company to use.

I think most people who haven't lived this problem assume it is only an issue for big tech, when in reality big tech are the only ones who can afford to build their own internal tools to alleviate their pain. If any of you have felt this pain, we'd love to speak with you! And your comments and questions are welcome.

Re: Launch YC S21: Meet the Batch, Thread #6

#7

Post by ycorvar » Thu, Aug 12, 2021, 2:01 PM UTC

Hi there! We are Orestis and Urs from Zeit Medical (https://www.zeitmedical.com). We enable fast stroke detection at home.

90% of strokes go untreated due to stroke recognition delays. Many patients live in fear that a stroke might happen and go unnoticed for hours, particularly if they are asleep when it starts. Stroke is currently impossible to detect based on symptoms. Unlike a heart attack, there is no distinct pain. There is a compelling need for a monitoring/alert system that will enable fast access to treatment.

Orestis has a PhD in Biotechnology and Bioengineering and has spent a decade developing wearable health-monitoring technologies. Urs is a pediatric critical care physician. Both founders have done research at Stanford. We've also both experienced the never-ending fear of another stroke in our families. We decided to do something about this problem--only 10% receiving treatment is just not cutting it!

We have a stroke detection algorithm which has been clinically proven in operating rooms. We're pairing it with commercially available brainwave sensors to create a smart headband that enables immediate stroke detection at home. The sensor pairs with our app and if a stroke is detected it alerts caregivers abs 911. This is different from other technologies that aim to improve patient transportation (once the patient is in the ambulance) or door to needle time (once the patient is in the hospital). The longest delays occur prior to calling 911, so this is the critical phase for making a difference.

The headband pairs with an app to analyze the brain’s electrical activity in real time with our stroke-detection algorithms. Brain activity metrics are already used in the clinical environment, but so far this know-how has remained siloed within the hospital. Our headband runs on AI that emulates the ability of expert neurophysiologists in digesting brain activity information to infer whether a cerebral injury is taking place.

We have recently kicked off a 15 person human factors study to assess overall system adoption and compliance. We also offer a sign up to get it first once our technology is cleared by the FDA. We look forward to your questions and comments!

Re: Launch YC S21: Meet the Batch, Thread #6

#8

Post by michaelbuckbee » Thu, Aug 12, 2021, 2:10 PM UTC

ChrisCarde wrote: post #4

This is Chris and Robert from HeyCharge ( https://heycharge.io/ ). We're developing low-cost EV charging for indoor environments like underground parking garages. Current indoor EV chargers are expensive to buy, install, and operate, especially because they need internet connections and cloud-based backends. They're also unreliable, because even if the charger's internet connection works, the user might not have one…

The idea of using tokens is very clever and I can see how that could really reduce the complexity of getting a charger implemented. I'm curious about the overall business model here, do the sites hosting the chargers make money from this or is it more like an amenity?

Re: Launch YC S21: Meet the Batch, Thread #6

#9

Post by ramraj07 » Thu, Aug 12, 2021, 2:12 PM UTC

rdifazio wrote: post #5

Hey everyone! We’re Juliana and Robert, co-founders of Parallel Bio. We're improving drug discovery by replacing animal models, in the hope of making cures for humans, not mice. The biggest reason why 92% of new drugs fail is that drugs are currently discovered in mice, which are not realistic models of human disease but are used due to the challenges of working in humans. We've created a human ‘immune system in a di…

Exciting to hear this! Do you have any references to the type of work (if your own isn’t published) that closely resembles the organoid models you use?

How finicky are these organoids to maintain? It used to be true that organoids are harder to maintain than super large mouse colonies by a long shot!

What validation are you doing on your immune organoid to confirm they work correctly for the assay you’re trying to do?

How do you emulate the various ailments in these organoids? You mentioned MS, are you able to emulate MS like conditions (or even EAE) in these systems?

Re: Launch YC S21: Meet the Batch, Thread #6

#10

Post by Rastonbury » Thu, Aug 12, 2021, 2:14 PM UTC

ycorvar wrote: post #7

Hi there! We are Orestis and Urs from Zeit Medical ( https://www.zeitmedical.com ). We enable fast stroke detection at home. 90% of strokes go untreated due to stroke recognition delays. Many patients live in fear that a stroke might happen and go unnoticed for hours, particularly if they are asleep when it starts. Stroke is currently impossible to detect based on symptoms. Unlike a heart attack, there is no distinct…

Is there anyway to put this technology on my wrist on into a t-shirt, or even implant? I like the idea I have higher risk factors for stroke, but I'm not too keen on wearing a headband nightly.