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Poll: Apply HN Runoff – Which two startups should YCF fund?

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Re: Poll: Apply HN Runoff – Which two startups should YCF fund?

#101

Post by 8note »

baron816 wrote: post #39
toyg wrote: post #24

TBH none of these look like unicorns in the making, so the only meaningful choice is really Pinboardy McPinboardface.

I fully expect Krewe to become a unicorn. Who wouldn't want a group of great friends in their neighborhood they could see all the time and build a tight-knit community around? The most valuable thing any of us has is the close relationships with the people we know. If Krewe succeeds in helping you have more of those relationships, then that's worth more than anything you could ever buy in a store. Your best friends a…

I feel like facebook could create such a thing without effort. They should already know whee you are when you're at home, so they could make groups that cluster people by location.

Re: Poll: Apply HN Runoff – Which two startups should YCF fund?

#102

Post by toyg »

david927 wrote: post #86
toyg wrote: post #24

TBH none of these look like unicorns in the making, so the only meaningful choice is really Pinboardy McPinboardface.

In 1998, Larry and Sergey took their Page Rank algorithm to the top minds of the big search engines at the time -- Yahoo, Alta Vista, and Excite -- where they tried to explain why Page Rank was better and offered it for one million dollars. They were turned down every time. They were told it was not a unicorn in the making. Don't be dismissive until you can see the future.

Yeah, I guess I was a bit too negative, sorry.

Still, Pinboard is pretty much the only one of them that could significantly improve my life in 2016, hence it gets my pedestrian vote.

Re: Poll: Apply HN Runoff – Which two startups should YCF fund?

#103

Post by CameronBanga »

angersock wrote: post #48
tptacek wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Including a startup with a founder who happens to be popular on HN doesn't seem any less in the spirit of this exercise as including a startup with a problem domain that happens to be popular on HN --- which is something you could say about a "currency for basic income" or "anonymous social network" or "new kind of database". In fact, if part of the point of this exercise is legitimizing the use of HN as a sort of de…

It will be fun to watch, for a lot of us, and that's worth something. This somewhat implies that the ApplyHN experiment is at least as much about performance art and entertainment as it is doing any sort of real entrepreneurship. That's fine and all, but let's be honest with ourselves about why we're here.

To call Pinboard performance art is to dismiss the amazing product that Maciej has built over several years.

Do I love his writing, sense of humor, and most importantly his sarcastic Twitter? Yes I do. But I voted for him because I do honestly believe that he would leverage this opportunity better than any of the other candidates in order to positively grow his site into something that could see significant growth.

I undoubtably expect that Maciej will not compromise on his values and vision for the site, even if that's a bit more difficult with investment money. But most importantly, I do think that there are many ways that Pinboard could grow without the need to compromise. That's why he got my vote.

Re: Poll: Apply HN Runoff – Which two startups should YCF fund?

#104

Post by dang »

riking wrote: post #22
goodJobWalrus wrote: post #10

How many can we vote for? I voted for 3 of them total (voting as I was reading through), but now I wonder whether only the first one will count.

Vote for all applications you approve of ("approval voting"). The only wasted ballots are no votes and all votes.

Correct and well put.

Re: Poll: Apply HN Runoff – Which two startups should YCF fund?

#105

Post by jrpt »

ph0rque wrote: post #90
harigov wrote: post #85

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I disagree about your assessment on AutoMicrofarm. If they execute it well, I believe there is a good market for such things. If it doesn't break my bank, I would love to have my own micro farm to product most of what I need, for the most part. I think its fun and I don't think I am alone in this regard.

As an AutoMicroFarm co-founder, I think you're exactly right: the idea itself is good, almost too good to be true (a concept my boss blogged about: https://medium.com/@snootymonkey/paul-graham-is-wrong-411fe0... ). I think the market will be obvious when each AutoMicroFarm pays for itself in a year (or even better, a growing season). But, that's a few orders of magnitude away in terms of manufacturing scale.

OK, I read your pitch and now I'm interested.

What sort of plants are you ideally suited for?

How important are the fish and aquaculture part?

Would it really "pay for itself" given the labor costs (time)? I mean you say it is automated, but what about refilling water, cleaning up dead fish, and whatever else comes up? Do I have to clean the fish tank?

How do you prevent animals from getting into it and eating your plants or fish?

If this becomes popular, what's preventing competitors from making the same thing, and commoditizing your product?

Re: Poll: Apply HN Runoff – Which two startups should YCF fund?

#107

Post by CameronBanga »

cperciva wrote: post #96
tptacek wrote: post #92

Let me be the first to say what a lot of my startup/YC dork friends are only going to say privately on Slack: If you're not going give Pinboard one of the two HN/YCF slots, because Maciej is HN-famous or too well-established, then just make a third slot for him. This is the cheapest access you will ever get to Maciej Ceglowski. YC came up with an interesting idea and actually tried it. Something interesting happened…

This is the cheapest access you will ever get to Maciej Ceglowski. But do they want access to Maciej Ceglowski? They didn't want access to me, even after I promised that I would refrain from providing any marketing advice; and I'd like to think that I could be a helpful member of the community. (Which, incidentally, is why you don't see Tarsnap on this list. I figured that since YC had decided that they didn't want t…

Follow up. Kinda bummed you didn't submit Tarsnap.

I understand why some believe that projects like Pinboard or Tarsnap don't "fit the spirit" of Apply HN, and that truly makes me sad.

Software like Pinboard or Tarsnap should embody great "hacker" software, and the sort of software quality that YC companies aspire to build. The concept that these ideas are less "fund-able" because they don't have more attractive splash screens or because they haven't embraced growth hacking is a real shame.

Re: Poll: Apply HN Runoff – Which two startups should YCF fund?

#108

Post by toyg »

8note wrote: post #101
baron816 wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I fully expect Krewe to become a unicorn. Who wouldn't want a group of great friends in their neighborhood they could see all the time and build a tight-knit community around? The most valuable thing any of us has is the close relationships with the people we know. If Krewe succeeds in helping you have more of those relationships, then that's worth more than anything you could ever buy in a store. Your best friends a…

I feel like facebook could create such a thing without effort. They should already know whee you are when you're at home, so they could make groups that cluster people by location.

Cue mainstream media going wild on "Facebook wants to dictate our friends! OMG SO UNCOOL!!". It would need some careful branding, easier done by another company.

Re: Poll: Apply HN Runoff – Which two startups should YCF fund?

#109

Post by jedgardyson »

bcoates wrote: post #66

Edit: This may have come across as too terse to pass the not-just-civil-but-nice test so I've added more explanation to my choices I wasn't following the initial wave of submissions so here's my fresh-eyes take on the finalists. I'd particularly like to see other people's assessments of the whole field (vs individual submissions) Not Ambitious Enough: These are in competitive spaces -- even if they delivered on their…

Hi, I'm Gabriel, one of the founders of Casepad. Your comment about our market, "lawyers are pathologically tech-phobic and by their nature are spending someone else's money and taking a percentage. Cost savings are taking money out of their pocket," is, based on our research, incorrect. We found that lawyers in the particular fields we are interested in, both young and old, are keenly interested in cost and TIME savings. In fact, most of these folks are so desperate for additional time that they would be willing to overcome any alleged "tech phobia" in order to get it.

Also, most public defenders, prosecutors, and court functionaries are not "spending someone else's money." Rather, at least in many metropolitan areas, they are salaried government or non-profit employees who are just trying to get the justice system to work.

On public defenders in particular (our first target market) I'd recommend reading a few of the NYT's op-ed series from this year which have good insight on how starved for resources and time much of our potential client base is: http://www.nytimes.com/2016/02/19/opinion/when-the-public-de... (New Orleans) http://www.nytimes.com/2014/02/19/us/public-defenders-turn-t... (Missouri) http://www.nytimes.com/2016/04/30/opinion/a-mockery-of-justi... (Fresno CA, South Dakota, Minnesota)

The folks we interviewed have said if you can save us x amount of time we would be thrilled to pay you $y per case because it will be more than worth it. We will only be able to see how much the market will bear once we're done building our product but, so far, the fact that we have been able to get a public defense firm to sponsor some of our development costs bodes well for the idea that lawyers are interested in spending on tech that saves them precious, precious time.

EDIT: I'd encourage everyone to read through the application posts. I think the Q&A in our thread fleshed out quite a few of the concerns about starting a business for this particular subset of the legal profession.

Re: Poll: Apply HN Runoff – Which two startups should YCF fund?

#110

Post by jrpt »

bcoates wrote: post #66

Edit: This may have come across as too terse to pass the not-just-civil-but-nice test so I've added more explanation to my choices I wasn't following the initial wave of submissions so here's my fresh-eyes take on the finalists. I'd particularly like to see other people's assessments of the whole field (vs individual submissions) Not Ambitious Enough: These are in competitive spaces -- even if they delivered on their…

I disagree about Eat My Dust. It's more than just "check if I'm near a superfund site" It's about checking your actual (or prepurchase) home for various hazardous materials, regardless of superfund sites. This already happens regularly today.

If you consolidated a bunch of different checks through one company, you could do a ton of really valuable things. First, it's convenience for the end user. But even cooler are what it provides for the business. For example, the data by location could be used for targeted marketing (send notices to neighbors advising them that similar homes have X problem, and they should get checked too). Or you could make the data SEO friendly, so when people search for "[local neighborhood] [problem]" it would show a map with incidences for their neighborhood. Or you could bring in service providers to compete for remedying the problem, while giving discounts and convenience to the homeowners.

It's a real problem too. I know someone who had serious health issues that were only fixed when they discovered a hazardous problem in their home.

(I voted for EMD)

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