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Holiday Gift Ideas from Y Combinator

ycgiftideas.com

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Re: Holiday Gift Ideas from Y Combinator

#111

Post by baldajan »

jl wrote: post #69

Rather than responding to everyone's complaints about the site: I whipped this together in less than a day, I was mostly focused on content, no one at YC who usually makes beautiful designs was available to help, I can't program, I'm using Strikingly, this is version 1. I'm happy to get feedback, but please go easy on me. We will plan much further in advance next year and make it easy to scroll through ideas and look…

Honestly, it's fantastic! I couldn't tell it was made with Strikingly until the end. The images used, the division of products and copy layout are done really well.

In regards to concept, I think it's great YC is promoting YC cos at every opportunity it gets. Sometimes it feels like an ad, but this time it does not. Perfectly timed "launch" of the site.

I think you've done a better job than most, in both content and design. I looked at the site a few hours ago, and was thinking of the team and the week of prep work that YC put into building this. Never could have believed it was made by a non-programmer in less than a single day until I read this.

For constructive feedback, would love if you borrow an idea from Apple's gift list. That is, categorize the products and services by topic or type. I.e. For the music lover, the hipster, painter, etc. would really go a long way once this list gets out of hand (which I suspect it will ;)

Re: Holiday Gift Ideas from Y Combinator

#112

Post by zyxley »

run4yourlives2 wrote: post #73
jdminhbg wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Compared to your ancestors 100, 1000, 10,000, and 100,000 years ago, you're hopelessly dependent on machines and technology to survive. Fortunately you can harness the surplus energy and attention you aren't dedicating to just getting by in everyday life to do more productive and amazing things.

No, not really. (I mean, I don't want to come off as a Luddite by any means, but...) I'm 40, so perhaps things have changed a bit more than those younger than me, but I can still make most food from scratch ingredients, have no issues sleeping outside in the cold, and can iron and mend my own clothes. I don't really see that much of a difference between myself and a person 100 or 1000 years ago, spare electricity, an…

> I mean, who the heck justifies a smartphone controlled grill?

Someone never properly taught to cook who panics at soft terms like "medium heat" and doesn't know what a given kind of steak should look like.

> Who's next purchase priority is a $250 blanket that you program with your smartphone to keep different areas of the bed warm?

A married couple that has regular arguments over what blankets to use and are ready to try a gimmick that might help.

> Is there really a demand for a gadget that helps with your mindfulness and tells you to calm down?

I've dealt with coworkers who absolutely could have used it, though of course the hard part would be convincing them they had a problem in the first place.

Re: Holiday Gift Ideas from Y Combinator

#113

Post by woah »

socialist_coder wrote: post #101

It pains me to see so many "first world problem" solvers. Nothing can illustrate the problem of the startup tech industry not tackling "real problems" like this list. And hey, I can't even talk; I make freemium mobile apps so it's not like I'm solving real problems either. It just sucks and I wish it was sexier and more profitable to go after real problems rather than silly stuff like e-sheets or digital frying pans…

I would dismiss a lot of stuff on that list, but not the e-frying pan. Automating cooking could be a huge labor-saver, and really help with women's rights, like the washing machine in the last century.

Re: Holiday Gift Ideas from Y Combinator

#114

Post by zyxley »

cowsandmilk wrote: post #93
run4yourlives2 wrote: post #40

I look at this site and a part of me thinks that there is a segment of the population that is seemingly incapable of doing very basic things like sleeping, cooking or buying clothes without being handheld by the computer in their phone. I'm being a little overboard of course, but I really wonder how dependent we will be on our machines to survive at all in a generation or two.

I have mixed feelings. I once had a roommate who literally could not drive 2 miles to work every day without her GPS. She turned it on every day and had been working there for over a year. Simultaneously, that bike that talks to my phone's GPS could be very useful when I'm trying to bike places I haven't been before. Of course, sometimes turning down the wrong street on my bike is where cool discoveries happen :)

> I once had a roommate who literally could not drive 2 miles to work every day without her GPS. She turned it on every day and had been working there for over a year.

You might be confusing correlation and causation here. Did she have no sense of direction because of the GPS, or did she use the GPS as a self-correction for having no sense of direction?

Re: Holiday Gift Ideas from Y Combinator

#115

Post by urs2102 »

jl wrote: post #69

Rather than responding to everyone's complaints about the site: I whipped this together in less than a day, I was mostly focused on content, no one at YC who usually makes beautiful designs was available to help, I can't program, I'm using Strikingly, this is version 1. I'm happy to get feedback, but please go easy on me. We will plan much further in advance next year and make it easy to scroll through ideas and look…

If it works, took no time, and people are using it - I think it's a job well done. Great work jl!

Re: Holiday Gift Ideas from Y Combinator

#116

Post by biot »

tlb wrote: post #86
biot wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Just buy an electric skillet for a fraction of the cost and then use one of the many cooking apps out there which already prompt you with times, etc. An electric skillet has the benefit that it will keep precise temperature without any action on your part. Pantelligent seems to have reinvented an expensive solution for a problem that was solved over half a century ago: http://www.ebay.com/sch/items/?_nkw=electric+ski…

I prefer my Pantelligent because I can clean it like a normal pan (with soap and water in the sink), instead of like an electrical appliance (wiping carefully, trying not to get most of it wet). Also, it heats up faster so you can cook eggs in 4 minutes (1 pre-heating, 3 cooking).

Many electric skillets are fully submersible and dishwasher safe. They pretty much all have removable plugs that has the thermostat control and what's left is a sealed unit. As for heating up, that's a function of your skillet vs. stove wattage which varies from appliance to appliance.

Re: Holiday Gift Ideas from Y Combinator

#118

Post by pcmaffey »

yoodenvranx wrote: post #80
pcmaffey wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why is it a bad experience to focus only on 1 thing at a time?

Because it feels cramped. Just imagine your ebook reader would only show you two lines of text at a time. Yes, you could concentrate on each line without being distracted but the overall flow is broken. Or to use a different terminology: when you read a website or a book you use two modes of "scrolling" at the same time. The rough scrolling is done by hand when you change a page of the book or when you scroll down th…

It's a different mode of attention. You're optimizing for consuming lots of information in a short amount of time.

But design that optimizes for depth of engagement almost always performs better on metrics that ultimately matter. I'm not saying YCGifts is an outstanding example of this, but to pan the design of the site (and all large font, lots of whitespace designs in general) because it's not optimized for your scan-and-pan method of consumption is shortsighted.

Re: Holiday Gift Ideas from Y Combinator

#119

Post by jdminhbg »

run4yourlives2 wrote: post #73
jdminhbg wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Compared to your ancestors 100, 1000, 10,000, and 100,000 years ago, you're hopelessly dependent on machines and technology to survive. Fortunately you can harness the surplus energy and attention you aren't dedicating to just getting by in everyday life to do more productive and amazing things.

No, not really. (I mean, I don't want to come off as a Luddite by any means, but...) I'm 40, so perhaps things have changed a bit more than those younger than me, but I can still make most food from scratch ingredients, have no issues sleeping outside in the cold, and can iron and mend my own clothes. I don't really see that much of a difference between myself and a person 100 or 1000 years ago, spare electricity, an…

> I'm 40, so perhaps things have changed a bit more than those younger than me, but I can still make most food from scratch ingredients, have no issues sleeping outside in the cold, and can iron and mend my own clothes.

I'm only a few years younger than you, and I can do all those things too. I think you likely vastly underestimate the gulf between the old-timey things you know how to do, and the old-timey things you'd be forced to do in 1915 -- the Rumsfeldian unknown unknowns.

Re: Holiday Gift Ideas from Y Combinator

#120

Post by jl »

codingdave wrote: post #99
jl wrote: post #69

Rather than responding to everyone's complaints about the site: I whipped this together in less than a day, I was mostly focused on content, no one at YC who usually makes beautiful designs was available to help, I can't program, I'm using Strikingly, this is version 1. I'm happy to get feedback, but please go easy on me. We will plan much further in advance next year and make it easy to scroll through ideas and look…

My one bit of feedback is that if this is intended for holiday gifts, you should not list items unless they are actually shipping. Pre-orders are not good gifts.

Fixed using "pre-order" category.
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