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Y Combinator presents 26 new startups

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Re: Y Combinator presents 26 new startups

#191

Post by nailer »

jonknee wrote: post #166
nailer wrote: post #162

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You probably don't use a lot of MS products. Outlook 2000 is 4 (maybe 5) versions old. At least 2010, 2007 and 2003 don't load images by default, I wouldn't be surprised if Outlook XP didn't either. More to the point: no large organization is using Outlook 2000 anymore. It's unsupported and you can get 2010, 2007, 2003 or even XP on your current license agreement.

... And yet "Outlook 2000, 2003, Express" make up 32% of all email clients found in their study. My point isn't that these are in high use, but that they are vastly over counted (and even then meaningless to try and find providers as there are plenty of people using Gmail inside of Outlook).

Aye, lumping in 2003 (which is current -1, ie, still supported by MS and most corporate customers) with 2000 and Express (which aren't supported) and weirdly omitting XP is odd.

Re: Y Combinator presents 26 new startups

#192

Post by webwright »

run4yourlives wrote: post #178
pg wrote: post #130

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You know nothing more about most of these startups than a few sentences written for investors. That you dismiss them so summarily and so nastily says more about you than them. Why don't you just wait and see how they do?

I'll admit re-reading my comment it is a little harsh and has an insulting tone, which wasn't my intent. I'm more disappointed; I don't really feel twitter and like applications really add any value in the long term. Their sphere of influence barely extends outside of a very vocal and visible extended SV community. I respect and value both YC and all your applicants. Everything I've seen highlights the enormous amoun…

How valuable in the long term do you think a classified mailing list for San Francisco is to the world? Or an online bookstore? Or a social network for a school? Yet Craigslist, Amazon, and Facebook morphed into amazing things. YC companies do things that are tractable and fundable within 3 months, which is the first test. Then, with some focused success, they grow/expand. At this point, it takes some vision to imagine what these companies COULD be in 7-8 years (which is the average time to liquidity for venture investments).

Re: Y Combinator presents 26 new startups

#193

Post by jolan »

jon_dahl wrote: post #127
maxklein wrote: post #24

My picks for the ones that will be successful from the idea only, without looking at the bios of the founders or the websites: - Notifo - Zencoder (If they drop their prices. Those prices are horrendous for the REAL market they are targeting) - Nowmov (with name change) - Crocodoc (will sell, but will not have too many users) - Gamador - Cardpool - Chromaom - Answerly - Zenedy - Data Marketplace - 140Bets

re Zencoder: thanks for the mostly kind words. We've run a lot of numbers of a few hundred thousand files on representative websites, and we chose that pricing model because it was (1) pretty competitive relative to other options, and (2) it aligns incentives with our customers well. But we'd love your input, so if you don't mind, I just shot you an email.

There's definitely some cool applications for this that I hope you get into. For instance, providing format templates, i.e.:

- encode multiple resolutions for silverlight's smoothhd streaming and generate the metadata file (http://www.cmstream.net/ used to provide an opensource way to do this but they pulled the src for some reason -- I have a src snapshot if you want)

- encode mp4/ogv for use with html5 video players like sublime (http://jilion.com/sublime/video)

- support mp3/ogg for html5 audio

- support imaging (like autorotating batches of images based on exif)

Pricing does seem a tad expensive. 6cents/minute versus ~9cents/hour for EC2. I'd probably be more likely to build my own solution just because it's cheaper.

Re: Y Combinator presents 26 new startups

#194

Post by smurthasmith »

newhouseb wrote: post #124
smurthasmith wrote: post #97

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Greplin does sounds interesting. I actually applied with essentially the same idea - cloud data indexing and search. Check it out and let me know if you want a beta invite: www.nutmegsearch.com Daniel Gross, if you are out there - let's talk.

Yeah, I actually pitched the exact same thing to PG a year ago (in interviews) and YC thought no one needed search beyond e-mail. Then again I hear Greplin was accepted to YC with a completely different pitch :)

Frankly, it seems hard to imagine NOT needing search beyond email. I really only user a handful of web services (I'm sure that number is only increasing) and I can barely remember whether I sent something in an email, as a facebook message, saved it to delicious, etc.

I started creating Nutmeg Search just so that I could find my own stuff, but the idea seemed useful so I'm trying to make it available to the world.

Re: Y Combinator presents 26 new startups

#195

Post by pg »

kirse wrote: post #189
pg wrote: post #186

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I know it's possible for a forum to do better than what you claim is all people can do, because HN itself used to do better. There's a new batch of YC startups every 6 months. The startups were about the same quality a year ago. And yet after demo day a year ago the top comment on HN wasn't a content-free dismissal with 86 points. I know both HN and the startups very well, and what's changing here is HN, not the star…

2009 Demo Day - 370 days ago (First comment with 101 points = completely dismissive and a huge rant) http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=522675 2008 Summer Demo Day - 587 days ago (First comment = snarky remark about the company logos ... sound familiar?): http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=276333 2007 Demo Day - 957 days ago (Half the thread is [dead] and full of bickering similar to this one): http://news.ycombina…

Holy cow, you're right, the one a year ago was pretty bad. This problem is older than I realized. The threads before a year ago were not so bad though. (The 2007 one is just one banned troll.)

Re: Y Combinator presents 26 new startups

#196

Post by run4yourlives »

webwright wrote: post #192
run4yourlives wrote: post #178

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'll admit re-reading my comment it is a little harsh and has an insulting tone, which wasn't my intent. I'm more disappointed; I don't really feel twitter and like applications really add any value in the long term. Their sphere of influence barely extends outside of a very vocal and visible extended SV community. I respect and value both YC and all your applicants. Everything I've seen highlights the enormous amoun…

How valuable in the long term do you think a classified mailing list for San Francisco is to the world? Or an online bookstore? Or a social network for a school? Yet Craigslist, Amazon, and Facebook morphed into amazing things. YC companies do things that are tractable and fundable within 3 months, which is the first test. Then, with some focused success, they grow/expand. At this point, it takes some vision to imagi…

Three outliers does not a trend make. I'm surprised you didn't throw google in there as well, since that one instance is all everyone ever talks about.

In 2000, everyone thought they were an Amazon. A boatload of people were wrong about that.

Re: Y Combinator presents 26 new startups

#197

Post by kunqiana »

pg wrote: post #186
kirse wrote: post #179

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I would say that what most people are doing in this thread (using all information available to them to make a best initial judgment), is exactly what you should have expected. This is basic human understanding - taking the available information and drawing a conclusion. I think it's a bit unfair to poke fun at names and such, but the commenters in this thread are performing the exact same process of evaluation and un…

I know it's possible for a forum to do better than what you claim is all people can do, because HN itself used to do better. There's a new batch of YC startups every 6 months. The startups were about the same quality a year ago. And yet after demo day a year ago the top comment on HN wasn't a content-free dismissal with 86 points. I know both HN and the startups very well, and what's changing here is HN, not the star…

How about creating a time lag for up-voting comments? The higher the score the longer you have to wait before voting?

Re: Y Combinator presents 26 new startups

#198

Post by and13 »

pg wrote: post #174
and13 wrote: post #169

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That reminds me of you making fun of Wufoo's name in this video (1:07): http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-6392191576577272336...

The difference is, I wasn't using it as the basis of a judgment about the company.

Neither was your opponent. Perhaps you should debug your Robert-Morris-inspired software-based integrity emulator.

Re: Y Combinator presents 26 new startups

#199

Post by lloydarmbrust »

fnid2 wrote: post #183
lloydarmbrust wrote: post #181

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Right. I guess I don't understand what part of all this makes you "not really impressed" with us? The other companies in the list you actually gave reasons, but with us you just keep referring to this previous conversation and I do not understand your point.

I simply didn't remember your name. Months ago when I looked at your website and commented with you here, I was impressed. I was not impressed with SI when I just read the 2 or 3 sentence description, only because of multiple coincidental reasons. First, I didn't remember that SI was your company and I was impressed with your company, so my thought was, why is this company in the list better than the company I rememb…

Got ya.

Re: Y Combinator presents 26 new startups

#200

Post by arihant »

pg wrote: post #186
kirse wrote: post #179

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I would say that what most people are doing in this thread (using all information available to them to make a best initial judgment), is exactly what you should have expected. This is basic human understanding - taking the available information and drawing a conclusion. I think it's a bit unfair to poke fun at names and such, but the commenters in this thread are performing the exact same process of evaluation and un…

I know it's possible for a forum to do better than what you claim is all people can do, because HN itself used to do better. There's a new batch of YC startups every 6 months. The startups were about the same quality a year ago. And yet after demo day a year ago the top comment on HN wasn't a content-free dismissal with 86 points. I know both HN and the startups very well, and what's changing here is HN, not the star…

How about using a Sudoku captcha? ;-)
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