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YC’s 2016 Holiday Gift Guide

ycgiftideas.com

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Re: YC’s 2016 Holiday Gift Guide

#181

Post by nether »

xiaoma wrote: post #30

The thing that really strikes me about this list is how nearly everything on it is offered at a premium price. One thing I loved about the tech world while I was growing up was that it was consistently doing more with less. Wikipedia displaced Encyclopaedia Brittanica by being both better and free. Hotmail was a clear win over AOL and Yahoo's offerings and then Gmail was faster and handled spam better while giving mo…

Chef Roy Choi addressed a similar issue in food, namely that they were all fixated on "feeding the rich": http://www.eater.com/2016/9/23/12981936/locol-watts-roy-choi.... I do wonder what YC startups could bring to say, people struggling in the Rust Belt of the US. FarmLogs is one awesome example but I'm sure there are other opportunities. I don't work in tech, but it does seem the community is self-obsessed and that is stunting its reach.

Re: YC’s 2016 Holiday Gift Guide

#182

Post by clock_tower »

aaachilless wrote: post #134
CPLX wrote: post #116

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> More generally, building a profitable, sustainable organization of human beings is intrinsically useful and interesting. This last part is less a reply to your post and more a response to a cynical (in my opinion) tone throughout this discussion. I do understand this view, and I share it to some extent. It's easy to be cynical and it's hard to try to make things work. I understand that far more now in my old age th…

I agree with most of this and probably shouldn't have included that last bit because I see that it might indicate otherwise and shift focus from what I think is a more important point. I guess our disagreement is that I'm not ready to label the wine delivery company as frivolous. It provides, of course, a purely luxury product, but I'm not sure that providing (or investing in) a purely luxury product is ethically or…

Frivolous or not, though, is it sustainably profitable? I'm not convinced that it could be, and I think that that's the core of CPLX's doubt as well.

A silly but profitable project can fund basic research that would be too expensive on its own; but a project that's neither particularly valuable in its own right, nor able to fund others, isn't good for very much.

(Old-style luxury goods also provide work for artisans and keep traditional knowledge alive, but I'm not convinced that that element is present here either.)

Re: YC’s 2016 Holiday Gift Guide

#183

Post by xiaoma »

dang wrote: post #67
xiaoma wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

At least the way the comment read to me, gamache's meaning was closer to "this is bad marketing for YC / this dilutes the brand" than "YC doesn't fund anyone solving real problems".

Your interpretation is more charitable than mine. Well done!

Well, I'm sure distance makes it 1000x easier! Your job is one not many could do.

Re: YC’s 2016 Holiday Gift Guide

#184

Post by andrewksu »

ashark wrote: post #179
andrewksu wrote: post #162

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Hey, this is Andrew (Acre Founder). Thanks for the comments. Price is entirely depended on location, in Kansas City (our original hometown), our homes are in the upper most price tier. In the Bay Area we are at or below market rate for typical homes and significantly under for anything comparable in quality and efficiency. In Austin and Portland (our other two focus markets for 2017) we are about at parity and a good…

Oh, right, I knew you guys looked familiar! KC as well. You've observed the same thing about this market, then—tons of very inexpensive (and usually also cheap) houses. I think it'll be easier to justify this kind of spending if/when the market proves you can recoup the added cost on resale. That's what kept us from considering some of the pricier but more eco-friendly options when we bought a new house recently.

Yeah, KC and much of the middle of the country, there is very little fat in pricing and slow growth. Our first home built in KC was for $145K. Same general concept and performance, but a much more simple/affordable material and finish package. Slim margins for a fledgling company!

We'll work at the higher end for a bit, which can accelerate our growth and allow us to make some leaps with our product and tech.

We'll then be able to come down market and offer home that are much more accessible and honestly have much more positive impact on families and the environment.

Re: YC’s 2016 Holiday Gift Guide

#185

Post by compumike »

A note to any future startup founders reading some of the broadly skeptical and pessimistic comments on this HN discussion thread:

The people commenting here are not your customers.

For every 1 person posting a snarky comment, there are 100+ simply browsing the gift guide. A few are saying "Hey, that's neat!", and a few are making purchases today or in the near future, either for themselves or as gifts. It's their behavior that you should worry about.

If you think you can make something people want, then please focus on that. Don't let your non-customers discourage you.

(Disclosure: co-founder of https://www.pantelligent.com/ -- one of the products on the gift list.)

Re: YC’s 2016 Holiday Gift Guide

#186

Post by [deleted] »

sushid wrote: post #103
joncrocks wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not this specific device perhaps, but Sous Vides (as I understand it) can form part of a commercial kitchen, at high-end restaurants. A quick google shows: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2016/09/10/michelin-restaura... - A Michelin starred restaurant, which uses a Sous Vide. They are generally quite expensive to by for home use. I won't comment on the rest, but I'd agree that the list doesn't exactly fill me with wo…

Not exactly that expensive these days. Anovas broke that barrier years ago and they retail for $99 - $125 during this time of the year.

[deleted]

Re: YC’s 2016 Holiday Gift Guide

#187

Post by mikestew »

qmalzp wrote: post #102
xiaoma wrote: post #30

The thing that really strikes me about this list is how nearly everything on it is offered at a premium price. One thing I loved about the tech world while I was growing up was that it was consistently doing more with less. Wikipedia displaced Encyclopaedia Brittanica by being both better and free. Hotmail was a clear win over AOL and Yahoo's offerings and then Gmail was faster and handled spam better while giving mo…

"Amazon and Netflix broke down even the movie industry and ended the $70 per tape movie sale price." Is that a typo? When were movies ever $70?

I remember movies selling for over US$100 when VHS first hit the streets.

The only "typo" is crediting Amazon and Netflix with the price reductions: movies were commonly $20 long before those two showed up. No, what killed the $100 movie were people going "$100 to own _Weekend at Bernie's_? Oh, hell no!" Remember, we lived quite fulfilled lives before we were allowed to "own" our own copies of movies, we weren't missing anything.

Oh, and rental stores that popped up shortly after. From my POV at the time, owning the VHS tape was reserved for the rental stores who would profit from it and the overly-privileged. The rest of us just rented at $10 a pop. Want to see it again? Go rent it again.

EDIT: somewhat related to pricing: would have to look it up to be sure, but I recall blank VHS tapes going for >$20 when they first came out.

Re: YC’s 2016 Holiday Gift Guide

#188

Post by ejcx »

xiaoma wrote: post #30

The thing that really strikes me about this list is how nearly everything on it is offered at a premium price. One thing I loved about the tech world while I was growing up was that it was consistently doing more with less. Wikipedia displaced Encyclopaedia Brittanica by being both better and free. Hotmail was a clear win over AOL and Yahoo's offerings and then Gmail was faster and handled spam better while giving mo…

This is probably an unpopular opinion, but I would call very few of these "tech companies".

None of the problems that most of these companies are solving are tech problems. Their secret sauce is not the tech, but the examples you gave the secret sauce WAS the tech.

Re: YC’s 2016 Holiday Gift Guide

#189

Post by pimlottc »

ryanlol wrote: post #73
qwertyuiop924 wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not having credit cards? It's fairly common. Even Debit cards are not the sort of things you give to kids. As for prepaid Visas, they're a relatively recent thing, and generally less known.

>Not having credit cards? It's fairly common. Even Debit cards are not the sort of things you give to kids. Must be a huge pain in the ass. With modern electronic only debit cards it's really easy to give your kids cards and makes managing money within the family so much easier. Kid texts you after school and says they need $5 to go out with friends? Sure, pull up your phone app and instantly put $5 to their card. It…

> Kid texts you after school and says they need $5 to go out with friends? Sure, pull up your phone app and instantly put $5 to their card. It's almost impossible to cleanly replicate this with cash.

Certainly this could be helpful in an emergency but what's wrong with encouraging your children to budget and plan ahead, rather than expecting instant gratification whenever they want it?

Re: YC’s 2016 Holiday Gift Guide

#190

Post by [deleted] »

Aloha wrote: post #149
sedachv wrote: post #143

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you have a sewing machine it takes less than 15 minutes to tailor a shirt down (just put it on inside-out, pin, and sew). Made-to-measure mail-order dress shirts are an idea from the 1990s AFAIK. A while back I collected some promotional offers from in-flight magazines and online and ordered a big stockpile of white made-to-measure dress shirts. With the promotional pricing it came out to less than $20 a shirt. As…

The issue in my case is not the trunk. I'm a 'gentleman of size' (6'3 300 lbs) which means to find something that fits my neck, I have to buy a shirt large enough to accommodate another large person inside of it with me. I also, do not have a sewing machine, nor do I have a good place to work, or time to do it. I've had trouble finding a place locally that will do bespoke clothing. I would rather not dress like a slo…

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