I should have gotten into AI
YC: Requests for Startups
181–190 of 582 posts
Re: YC: Requests for Startups
#182Small comment about the "Stable Coins": > $136b worth of stablecoins have been issued to date but the opportunity seems much more immense still. Only about seven million people have transacted with stablecoins to date, while more than half a billion live in countries with 30%+ inflation. U.S. banks hold $17b in customer deposits which are all up for grabs as well. And yet the major stablecoin issuers can be counted o…
Can SDR really be traded on demand by civilians with a smartphone or computer at any time of day anywhere in the world with internet? It doesn't seem so from a quick Google search, but I don't know. If not, it seems pretty clearly quite different from stablecoins operating on blockchains.
One sure can cash in on crypto, even today! Or so I am told in various YouTube get rich quick adds. And since YC is following the strategy of selling shovels during a gold rush, them promoting stablecoims makes perfect sense!
Re: YC: Requests for Startups
#183Eliminating middlemen in healthcare In the spirit of Jeff Bezos’ “your margin is my opportunity”, we believe it’s possible to build a highly profitable business and make the system more efficient at the same time. Didn't Amazon try this and is now shutting down part of its healthcare (pill selling) play?
Health Care is one field where nobody can seriously compete with state or state navked players, aka public health care or single payer. Especially not VC backed start-ups...
What's the reason for this? Is this because of extensive regulation due to insurer/hospital lobbying and patient safety laws?
Re: YC: Requests for Startups
#184The defense-tech one is interesting. I wholeheartedly agree that more people should be involved in the space and it is critically important -- I think the war in Ukraine clearly shows the need for the Western world to be prepared to fight for freedom and democracy -- but as far as venturebackable business models go I don't really understand how many defense tech co's will fit. Most defense firms, other than perhaps P…
That's true. But I don't think revenue multiple is the right metric to look at. If you just look in terms of aggregate market cap, defense companies are some of the larger companies in the world - i.e., Lockheed Martin is valued over $100B. That's a good sign that it's possible to build a big company in the space, which is all you need.
Every single defence company today is the result of decades of mergers and decades of Cold War peak defence budgets. Not even SoftBanknhas that amount of dough to repeat that.
Lockheed Martin used to be Lockheed and Martin, MDD used to be McDonnel and Douglas, Northrop Gruman, well, you get it. Those companies were built, the were merged. And they are the first on the big defence budgets, and honestly also the only ones being able to deliver modern defence and weapon systems (regardless of delays and cost over runs).
Re: YC: Requests for Startups
#185I am building a company that falls under two categories (commercial Open Source and developer tools based on internal tools), but I would never take YC money for it. Because of that stake, they want an "exit" in some form, and the drive to that exit will pave the road to user-hostile software and make it the path of least resistance.
YC's idea is to optimize for helping founders. That means supporting what the founders want If they don't want to exit, YC's not going to pressure them.
This works out well because it's the global optimum. YC has much more success optimizing for helping founders than it would by trying to squeeze individual lemons.
Re: YC: Requests for Startups
#186Just plain marketing. In reality they will invest in incremental startups of serial entrepreneurs or well known people in silicon valley.
They became traditional corporate long ago. Shows in their recent portfolio.
Re: YC: Requests for Startups
#187I would still like to see RFS 5 "Development on Handhelds" ( https://web.archive.org/web/20140428231118/http://ycombinato... ) fulfilled. I asked sama about it in 2015: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10361215 . The state of the art has advanced since. Termux ( https://termux.dev/en/ ) on Android is a viable development environment. With a Debian PRoot ( https://wiki.termux.com/wiki/PRoot ), it feels a lot like…
Something like copilot can really help with bridging the gap created by not having a full size keyboard.
Re: YC: Requests for Startups
#188Earlier quoted context omitted.
Health Care is one field where nobody can seriously compete with state or state navked players, aka public health care or single payer. Especially not VC backed start-ups...
What's the reason for this? Is this because of extensive regulation due to insurer/hospital lobbying and patient safety laws?
Patient and health care regulation, for good reasons, but basically the number of shoulders to spread individual risks across (aka insurance). The latter is much easier when backed, directly or indirectly, by nation state households and budgets. Nothing beats the ability of controlling your own currency.
Re: YC: Requests for Startups
#189It's bizarre to me that Tesla gets cited as an exemplar for operating as an American manufacturer for physical goods, given that it's been the subject of numerous scandals regarding quality control of the physical components manufactured there, many of which I've found out about through this very site. If manufacturing comes back to the US in the form of more companies that operate like Tesla, I would guess that Amer…
Tesla has done fantastic R&D and marketing for EVs but you're right that their cars themselves has always defective rolling off the lot. I know a good number of people who have had or currently have a Tesla and every single one had to take it in after buying it to get something fixed.
Re: YC: Requests for Startups
#190APPLYING MACHINE LEARNING TO ROBOTICS Exactly what I thought would be absolutely terrific: a robot commanded by voice that poses floor tiles. That's v1. V2 builds a house. I can't think of any "toy" as exciting as this atm. Plus you pose the first tile of this and you're a trillionaire.
Tesla's robot shoupd be able to do just that already! Well, depebding on who's wearing the costume that is...