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Startups that debuted at Y Combinator W17 Demo Day 2
21–30 of 132 posts
Re: Startups that debuted at Y Combinator W17 Demo Day 2
#22"Enterprise sales" is a very interesting problem. There are 4 companies in this batch that are attacking it from different sides:
(1) Scribe – Automating sales development representatives
(2) Upcall – Outbound calls as a service
(3) Clover Intelligence – Voice analytics for sales
(4) Riley – Lead qualification as a service
B2B businesses rely heavily on sales - a great sales team can make or break the company. But for folks with a predominantly technical background, sales as a function, remains at best a mystery, and at worst something they make fun of (because sales people are often different from technical people - there is a lack of understanding between the two).
It is great to see more technical people entering "sales" and are trying to understand it.
Sales is often (mis)understood as a slick-smooth-talking meeting/phone call that magically convinces an unwitting customer into paying for a product. Companies like the 4 mentioned above, and several others that are playing in this space, are attempting to bring data and rigor to this space.
It would be a net better outcome for everyone -- less annoying calls for a prospect and more focused approach for the seller.
I am fascinated by the intersection of analysis, software, and sales. I wish the best to these companies!
edit: formatting
Re: Startups that debuted at Y Combinator W17 Demo Day 2
#23I wish you could bet on the odds of some of these succeeding in 3 years or so. Someone should start a startup that does this and get into Y Combinator to be super meta. random commentary below: * FloydHub – Heroku for deep learning * It's unlikely in my eyes that a company with enough data worth doing deep learning for is going to outsource the actual model building. I'd be interested to hear counter examples. * Tetr…
I had the idea for upcall several years ago around the time a similar enterprise service that went through YC (elasticsales?) was starting up. So I am biased but it is a good idea. Sales and marketing is about targeting the appropriate customer so no one on either end wants to waste time. Spam would be calling everyone and hope someone buys what you are selling. So upcall is great for B2B startups without a budget for sales hires. (Maybe startups will also focus on sales from the beginning rather than shying away from it like VCs complain about.)
Re: Startups that debuted at Y Combinator W17 Demo Day 2
#24The ones that debuted on Demo Day 1 https://techcrunch.com/2017/03/20/yc-demo-day-winter-2017/
Re: Startups that debuted at Y Combinator W17 Demo Day 2
#25As podcasts become bigger and bigger I've been afraid of something like Breaker succeeding. Thanks to RSS/Atom it's currently a very open medium. Anyone can start putting out content and I can consume it on any device and app I choose, download episodes for on-the-go and offline listening, transfer the files easily between devices—even to "dumb" MP3 players that never had an app ecosystem—and move my subscriptions around with the common OPML format. There's no tracking or analytics peering over my shoulder, unlike so much of modern media that's become enslaved to data: as a listener I consider this a feature.
I'm quite willing to pay for podcast content, and I do. I've been a paid subscriber to The NoSleep Podcast ever since they started offering the option, at $20 a season. They use a service called Nanacast, which collects my payment and gives me a unique RSS feed URL that I can add to any podcast app. No arbitrary centralization or gatekeepers required.
Re: Startups that debuted at Y Combinator W17 Demo Day 2
#26I wish you could bet on the odds of some of these succeeding in 3 years or so. Someone should start a startup that does this and get into Y Combinator to be super meta. random commentary below: * FloydHub – Heroku for deep learning * It's unlikely in my eyes that a company with enough data worth doing deep learning for is going to outsource the actual model building. I'd be interested to hear counter examples. * Tetr…
We (skymind w16) build dl models on prem for customers after licensing our deployment software. We sell to fintech,telco, retail, car makers, plane makers and device makers. On prem and connectors to sap turned out to work.
Flynn will be great for education and proof of concepts.
Re: Startups that debuted at Y Combinator W17 Demo Day 2
#27>> "YC’s recently developed Investor Match system"
Here's a YC blog post on this: https://blog.ycombinator.com/investor-day-software/
Re: Startups that debuted at Y Combinator W17 Demo Day 2
#28> "Tress – A social community for black women’s hairstyles" I wonder what would black women say if there was an app "Social community for white women's hairstyles", would not it be considered racist?
This breaks the HN guideline against bringing up same-old flamewars. Please don't. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
Please don't start with this flimsy retort. GP has a legitimate question that happens to contain race as an important factor to his hypothesis
Re: Startups that debuted at Y Combinator W17 Demo Day 2
#29Earlier quoted context omitted.
This breaks the HN guideline against bringing up same-old flamewars. Please don't. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
This actually is a genuine question with good answers! It is not like he brought the topic out of thin air PS. I also didn't know such market exists
I agree with you that some of the answers were surprisingly fine, but credit for that goes to the answerers. Trollish questions typically lead to useless spats.
Re: Startups that debuted at Y Combinator W17 Demo Day 2
#30I wish you could bet on the odds of some of these succeeding in 3 years or so. Someone should start a startup that does this and get into Y Combinator to be super meta. random commentary below: * FloydHub – Heroku for deep learning * It's unlikely in my eyes that a company with enough data worth doing deep learning for is going to outsource the actual model building. I'd be interested to hear counter examples. * Tetr…
Upcall is definitely not a spamming service (no robotcalls or autodialing service), but a human-powered platform supplementing SDR and CSR at companies looking to scale their outbound leads efforts and customer retention/engagement. Upcall is a SaaS/API which connects clients with work from home U.S. based callers, making calls within a specific context (qualify lead, welcome user on a platform, collect feedback, reactivate user, etc...).