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Has Y Combinator lost its way when the latest company is a Mac only widget?

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Re: Has Y Combinator lost its way when the latest company is a Mac only widget?

#291

Post by uptown »

blackrock wrote: post #78
uptown wrote: post #26

I'm more interested in their privacy policy: "SHARING YOUR PERSONAL INFORMATION: We share your Personal Information with third parties (analytics tools) to help us use your Personal Information, as described above. We use analytics tools to track our users to improve our product and provide a better experience." Calendars, like contact lists, like emails, like all of the other personal content people produce everyday…

Does Google’s Calendar app share your personal information like this?

Share like this? They are this.

Re: Has Y Combinator lost its way when the latest company is a Mac only widget?

#292

Post by dang »

beaconstudios wrote: post #52
mbreese wrote: post #25

Doesn’t YC normally invest in the team rather than the idea? From their Launch HN post: > We started YC as a video lecture platform for professors but realized it was a horrible idea. We needed a new problem. Based on the how it started / how’s it going, it looks like they started in YC with one idea and realized they needed to pivot. The fact that this is what they came up with isn’t great, but at least it’s somethi…

Apologies in advance for the nitpick, but if you're just dropping your product and doing something else that's not really a pivot. Pivoting is more like changing your plan than throwing it out - targeting a different audience, changing your product plan based on feedback, that sort of thing.

> dropping your product and doing something else

The word 'pivot' in the startup context is used to mean precisely that.

Re: Has Y Combinator lost its way when the latest company is a Mac only widget?

#293

Post by beaconstudios »

dang wrote: post #292
beaconstudios wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Apologies in advance for the nitpick, but if you're just dropping your product and doing something else that's not really a pivot. Pivoting is more like changing your plan than throwing it out - targeting a different audience, changing your product plan based on feedback, that sort of thing.

> dropping your product and doing something else The word 'pivot' in the startup context is used to mean precisely that.

Must be semantic drift then because my understanding of the definition in Lean Startup was that it was a moderate course correction based on what you learned, not throwing the whole thing out.

Semantic drift happens though, and pivot certainly sounds nicer than "we gave up to do something else", so it's liable to become a broader term out of sheer convenience.

Re: Has Y Combinator lost its way when the latest company is a Mac only widget?

#294

Post by koonsolo »

ryanSrich wrote: post #168
vbezhenar wrote: post #146

Earlier quoted context omitted.

$10/month is not a cheap tool. I'm paying $90/year for Intellij Idea which is my main development tool. IMO that cost is extremely prohibitive for most users and it's definitely not a way to get plenty of people on board to monetize it later.

I don't get when people say $X/month is too much. Too much for you maybe. But for me, if I can save 1 hour per month, that's worth $500. That's the top of what I've charged per hour for some consulting gigs. So $10/m is literally nothing for me if I can save time. Time is your most valuable asset. Money is nothing. Focus on time.

If you charge per hour, your customer will pay for that lost hour.

However, if you work on your own product, you might save more than $10 per month indeed.

Re: Has Y Combinator lost its way when the latest company is a Mac only widget?

#295

Post by koonsolo »

antoniuschan99 wrote: post #136
llaolleh wrote: post #113

Jesus Christ people. Give it a break. I hate this Reddit post. You're not going to build the next Apple today by making your first product a full fledged competitive modern computer. Remember that Microsoft started with a BASIC interpreter. Apple themselves started with a niche computer back then that sold to less 500 hobbyists at a hobbyist computer shop. The next Apple would also have to build something extremely n…

It’s not a knock on the product but moreso on ycombinator. It’s questioning why such a product is being funded (at least at this stage when it’s so niche and only available on mac) and if there’s a bigger issue in the ycombinator system funding “trivial” startups The other side of the coin could be they’re getting funded because yc likes the founders :)

The person who buys a calendar widget for $10/month, probably has some other productivity issues that he wants to pay for.

If they can actually sell a decent amount of these widgets, I can see them growing into something bigger in an adjacent space.

Re: Has Y Combinator lost its way when the latest company is a Mac only widget?

#296

Post by FireBeyond »

onion2k wrote: post #56
rvz wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Just ask AstroPad and f.lux who both have been targets of being 'sherlocked'. I can only see that these guys are at risk of being sherlocked by Calendar.app, Google Calendar and Calendar.exe. Wonder what their answer to YC was when they were asked about that risk.

Wonder what their answer to YC was when they were asked about that risk. "Apple buy hundreds of companies every year. Being bought by Apple is a potentially a valid exit strategy."

Most companies (the majority, I'd wager) who were Sherlocked were _not_ bought by Apple. Most companies basically got a "sucks to be you", that they found out along with everyone else at an Apple launch event where Apple had, sometimes shamelessly and brazenly, cloned their product. Sometimes, to add insult to injury, Apple would then remove that company's product from App Stores as "duplicating OS functionality".

Re: Has Y Combinator lost its way when the latest company is a Mac only widget?

#297

Post by csomar »

Tarsul wrote: post #290
csomar wrote: post #281

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm really talking about home-made coffee (with some milk). Even in the cheapest countries, a cup of coffee (in a cafe) costs more than $1: https://www.entrepreneur.com/article/310492 People who are surviving on a $500-$2000/year budget, are not on the market for a full-fledged IDE.

first off, you're calling bulgaria, india etc. poor countries. relatively, okay, but op was about even poorer countries. But more to the point the prices you quoted were about buying coffee in restaurants. Most people drink their coffee at home (or at work) not in shops. And it's much cheaper then. E.g. I usually drink senseo and it costs me about 25 eurocents per cup.

You might be surprised but if coffee is imported, it might actually be cheaper in Europe than in these poor countries. Import duties, corruption, bad port infrastructure... all of these issues inflate costs.

Re: Has Y Combinator lost its way when the latest company is a Mac only widget?

#298

Post by ninenines »

It also is very disheartening to see few launch HN's not even getting 20-30 up votes.

I can't even dare to imagine how demotivating it can be for the founders. I really wish YC can cater to as many startups as it can and hope the reason for this is not the growing batch sizes.

Re: Has Y Combinator lost its way when the latest company is a Mac only widget?

#299

Post by sjg007 »

They said they pivoted from a video lecture platform which isn't a bad idea. There's plenty of opportunity in that space as well. I have kids distance learning and I have suggestions to improve things massively. That we have a vaccine now probably means that distance learning will end except in the cases where people like it. But there's a massive amount of opportunity around interactive whiteboarding.

So the question is what does the status bar enable? That's the opportunity. I think of and want zapier in my status bar. I don't work for these guys but rather than dis the company let's figure out how to make them successful.

I'd give a basic product away for free and focus on integrations.

Re: Has Y Combinator lost its way when the latest company is a Mac only widget?

#300

Post by sjg007 »

barbazoo wrote: post #123
dagmx wrote: post #93

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think the best example is when Dropbox was announced and how many people scoffed at the triviality of cloning data around.

For me that's still what it's best at and what it should focus on. "Paper", Signatures, Password, to me that feels like they're desperately trying to find something to not just be a reliable external hard drive for people. Oh and of course their number one ambition, trying to convince me to upgrade to whatever more expensive plan they have.

Dropbox needs to think of what apps you can build on top of it and let people build those apps. They are a data lake. Enable advanced analytics and ML etc...

Easy peasy.

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