Launch YC S21: Meet the Batch, Thread #4 • Hacker News Board

Re: Launch YC S21: Meet the Batch, Thread #4

#21

Post by xmaayy » Thu, Aug 05, 2021, 2:24 PM UTC

edgyquant wrote: post #12

kkajla wrote: post #10

We’re Aditya and Karan, the co-founders of Warrant ( https://warrant.dev/ ). We build APIs and infrastructure to help developers implement authorization and access control in their apps. Implementing flexible authorization that grows with your application is difficult. Many products only need authentication early on but eventually require authorization; however, adding complex authorization to a mature, high usage pr…

I think this is interesting but I’m missing something. To me at least this doesn’t sound simpler than just using oauth to authenticate and then having a roles table etc on the backend to authorize. What would you say is the killer feature that would change my mind about this?

I think its a service that acts as your roles table. So your service would query warrant with a user and an action and it would return whether that's authorized? I'm also a bit confused why someone wouldn't use something like Ory[0] at any scale where modularizing this out was important.

[0] https://github.com/ory

Re: Launch YC S21: Meet the Batch, Thread #4

#22

Post by xmaayy » Thu, Aug 05, 2021, 2:26 PM UTC

martinlykkesuhr wrote: post #5

GamerPay ( https://gamerpay.gg/ ) is a scam-free marketplace for gaming skins and assets. 46% of gamers trading skins have been scammed more than once for either their money or their skins (survey of 5,000 gamers). 50% of gamers are under 18 and this their first online trading/cash experience. We solve this problem by integrating with Steam and making use of escrow, validating all trades. We are regulated by European…

I know there are a lot of disparate services like SkinBaron[0] for individual games. Is your value-add that you're regulated / you can act as a middle-man for any steam items?

[0] https://skinbaron.de/en

Re: Launch YC S21: Meet the Batch, Thread #4

#23

Post by kkajla » Thu, Aug 05, 2021, 2:28 PM UTC

edgyquant wrote: post #12

kkajla wrote: post #10

We’re Aditya and Karan, the co-founders of Warrant ( https://warrant.dev/ ). We build APIs and infrastructure to help developers implement authorization and access control in their apps. Implementing flexible authorization that grows with your application is difficult. Many products only need authentication early on but eventually require authorization; however, adding complex authorization to a mature, high usage pr…

I think this is interesting but I’m missing something. To me at least this doesn’t sound simpler than just using oauth to authenticate and then having a roles table etc on the backend to authorize. What would you say is the killer feature that would change my mind about this?

Thanks for the question! A couple of things that we think are killer features of Warrant:

- The flexible access control modeling. Implementing a basic RBAC scheme isn't too difficult with a couple extra database tables, but going further than that (fine-grained access control, inheriting access, etc.) is quite a bit of effort. With Warrant, you can model anything from RBAC to fine-grained access control and everything in between.

- End-to-end SDK support. There are many authorization libraries out there, but all of them seem to forget about the frontend. Warrant provides SDKs for authorizing access to your backend as well as a React SDK to make it easy to show/hide pages and components in your React app.

Re: Launch YC S21: Meet the Batch, Thread #4

#24

Post by ibaikov » Thu, Aug 05, 2021, 2:38 PM UTC

martinlykkesuhr wrote: post #5

GamerPay ( https://gamerpay.gg/ ) is a scam-free marketplace for gaming skins and assets. 46% of gamers trading skins have been scammed more than once for either their money or their skins (survey of 5,000 gamers). 50% of gamers are under 18 and this their first online trading/cash experience. We solve this problem by integrating with Steam and making use of escrow, validating all trades. We are regulated by European…

But this is against TOS, isn't it?

Re: Launch YC S21: Meet the Batch, Thread #4

#25

Post by WasimBhai » Thu, Aug 05, 2021, 2:41 PM UTC

aladhubhai wrote: post #8

We are Ali and Omair of Abhi ( http://abhi.com.pk/ ). We are a financial wellness platform in Pakistan, focusing on providing early wage access to the salaried class. Most employees in Pakistan live paycheck to paycheck, not having savings for emergencies or random bills. Many pay their bills late, as payroll disbursement often does not coincide with bill cycles, incurring hefty payment fees. Fewer than 20% of the po…

Very happy to see a startup from Pakistan, here! Best of luck to Abhi!

However, how many employers have signed up with you? What kind of salary ranges are you targeting?

Re: Launch YC S21: Meet the Batch, Thread #4

#26

Post by Nadya » Thu, Aug 05, 2021, 2:47 PM UTC

ibaikov wrote: post #24

martinlykkesuhr wrote: post #5

GamerPay ( https://gamerpay.gg/ ) is a scam-free marketplace for gaming skins and assets. 46% of gamers trading skins have been scammed more than once for either their money or their skins (survey of 5,000 gamers). 50% of gamers are under 18 and this their first online trading/cash experience. We solve this problem by integrating with Steam and making use of escrow, validating all trades. We are regulated by European…

But this is against TOS, isn't it?

Since when did rules/laws start mattering for vc-backed startups? Continue paying fines until you're large enough to bribe, I mean lobby, for the law to change. It's just cost of doing business.

It's very difficult to go after/shut down sites that breach ToS like this. See nearly every gold-selling site for any MMORPG in existence. They do sometimes get shutdown eventually but typically after many years and they often re-open with a new brand name.

Re: Launch YC S21: Meet the Batch, Thread #4

#27

Post by ignoramous » Thu, Aug 05, 2021, 2:49 PM UTC

kkajla wrote: post #10

We’re Aditya and Karan, the co-founders of Warrant ( https://warrant.dev/ ). We build APIs and infrastructure to help developers implement authorization and access control in their apps. Implementing flexible authorization that grows with your application is difficult. Many products only need authentication early on but eventually require authorization; however, adding complex authorization to a mature, high usage pr…

Congratulations on the launch, Aditya and Karan.

Building SaaS from India (assuming that you eventually will) is always going to be advantageous [0] given the comparatively lower wages and access to a global client-base. Apart form that, in what ways does warrant differentiate itself from authzed.io, another YC-backed startup? I see that both these services are influenced by Zanzibar, but I am particularly curious if DevX is warrant's focus? If so, what might be the current competitors missing?

Thanks.

[0] Given the Indian SaaS ecosystem is up and running and there does not seem to be dearth of talent, community (https://archive.is/B5OHl) or capital (https://archive.is/ZXvzL).

Re: Launch YC S21: Meet the Batch, Thread #4

#28

Post by kkajla » Thu, Aug 05, 2021, 2:52 PM UTC

xmaayy wrote: post #21

edgyquant wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think this is interesting but I’m missing something. To me at least this doesn’t sound simpler than just using oauth to authenticate and then having a roles table etc on the backend to authorize. What would you say is the killer feature that would change my mind about this?

I think its a service that acts as your roles table. So your service would query warrant with a user and an action and it would return whether that's authorized? I'm also a bit confused why someone wouldn't use something like Ory[0] at any scale where modularizing this out was important. [0] https://github.com/ory

That’s correct, Warrant would act as your authorization service, where you can store access rules for your system and check against them at runtime to protect access to your application. Roles are a common access control model, but you can model much more complex use-cases like fine-grained access control as well.

Re: Launch YC S21: Meet the Batch, Thread #4

#29

Post by jheinvirta » Thu, Aug 05, 2021, 2:56 PM UTC

m12k wrote: post #16

jheinvirta wrote: post #4

We are Jan and Anahi of Perfekto ( https://www.perfekto.mx/ ). We offer imperfect produce in Latin America, helping to reduce food waste as otherwise the food would be thrown away. We offer a subscription box, delivered to your doorstep. We started with fruits and veggies as 54% of them are wasted in Latin America, mainly due to two reasons: strict industry standards around aesthetics (too ugly, too small, too big, b…

First off, congrats for tackling a problem like this! I'm wondering if there isn't also a big opportunity in selling this imperfect produce to food factories? Consumers have to be on board with big/small/misshapen veggies, but if I'm buying a strawberry jam, where the strawberries were chopped up in a factory, then it really doesn't matter what shape they had originally. Frankly, I'm kinda surprised if an obvious opt…

Thanks! And love your thinking. To be frank, we have not had the chance to get enough insights on how strong the 'beauty standards' are in food factories. We know from one local chips maker that they do get potatoes that are too small for them and hence cannot be made use of. So it depends on the type of food product we talk about, but defenitely the standards in the food factories are lower than in the B2C space. We actually think we can start creating products like jam ourselves with fruits that are so mistreated that we cannot even include them in our produce boxes.

That said, the problem is also a bit educational. 1) many people don't know that imperfect produce is actually very common (as in supermarkets only perfect fruits&veggies are displayed) 2) some people think that imperfect produce is imperfect as they were genetically modified (which is not the case).

And lastly, the problem is also due to the existing supply chains. Supermarkets do not only optimize for looks but also size, for logistical and pricing purposes.

Apart from that, we do not only tackle food waste by offering imperfect produce but further only offering seasonal produce and shortening the existing supply chains.

Re: Launch YC S21: Meet the Batch, Thread #4

#30

Post by ibaikov » Thu, Aug 05, 2021, 2:56 PM UTC

Nadya wrote: post #26

ibaikov wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But this is against TOS, isn't it?

Since when did rules/laws start mattering for vc-backed startups? Continue paying fines until you're large enough to bribe, I mean lobby, for the law to change. It's just cost of doing business. It's very difficult to go after/shut down sites that breach ToS like this. See nearly every gold-selling site for any MMORPG in existence. They do sometimes get shutdown eventually but typically after many years and they ofte…

Honestly it's just bittersweet that YC does due dilligence like this for gaming startups. I mean some of them are cool businesses (like this one), but I'm a little salty since selling items not through steam is absolutely against valve's TOS. Remember that startup that wanted to do an mmo with thousands of players, VR etc etc and the demo was a compilation of free assets in UE4..?

Ok, now back to work.