Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Y Combinator Demo Day Roundup

techcrunch.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

31–40 of 52 posts

Re: Y Combinator Demo Day Roundup

#31

Post by cperciva »

pg wrote: post #29
cperciva wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sure -- my point was just that taking a 3% cut of $0.10 payments means that TipJoy needs to get very very big before it will be making much money. Can TipJoy get big enough fast enough?

Tipping is just the initial form of micropayment they've implemented. Eventually they plan to support all forms. Could being able to charge people small amounts for digital content be big? Yes.

Tipping is just the initial form of micropayment they've implemented.

Well, that changes things. :-)

Re: Y Combinator Demo Day Roundup

#32

Post by ivankirigin »

cperciva wrote: post #31
pg wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Tipping is just the initial form of micropayment they've implemented. Eventually they plan to support all forms. Could being able to charge people small amounts for digital content be big? Yes.

Tipping is just the initial form of micropayment they've implemented. Well, that changes things. :-)

I know you might expect this from a cofounder, but I think Tipjoy is going to be huge.

Re: Y Combinator Demo Day Roundup

#33

Post by ivankirigin »

cperciva wrote: post #28
pg wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You can't tell much from the numbers of a startup this young. They've generated more revenue than Google had at the same age.

Sure -- my point was just that taking a 3% cut of $0.10 payments means that TipJoy needs to get very very big before it will be making much money. Can TipJoy get big enough fast enough?

PG is right - we'll be doing much more.

You can give far more than $0.10. That is just the default. It is really simple to give up to $10, and we might raise or remove that limit.

Also, we earn interest on money in our system. That makes the earnings closer to 6%. But we don't take a cut per tip, only on cash-out. This means that if A tips B who then tips C, each of those tips is overhead free. If C cashes out, we take a cut. The potential for a zero overhead transaction system is huge.

Re: Y Combinator Demo Day Roundup

#34

Post by ivankirigin »

tx wrote: post #21

My favorite is TipJoy. The problem was in the air, PG himself teased everybody with it, but yet nobody took the trouble of actually tackling it. Neat approach, nice execution. Bravo! Another big one, I think, is SnapTalent. The existing system of finding people to work is pretty much an "offline approach" ported over the net. SnapTalent actually uses the technology to improve the effectiveness of the process. I only…

Thanks!

Re: Y Combinator Demo Day Roundup

#35

Post by ivankirigin »

dskhatri wrote: post #17
Readmore wrote: post #15

I'm really interested in TipJoy, it sounds like they finally came up with a system for micro-payments that could work.

Tipjoy seems to be gaining in popularity: It's already being filtered out by some enterprise firewalls (unfairly, in my opinion) being labelled as a Pay-to-surf site!

Thanks for that heads up. It's the exact opposite: "pay for what I surf".

Does anyone know if there is some automated reason this might have happened?

Re: Y Combinator Demo Day Roundup

#36

Post by mhartl »

nextmoveone wrote: post #24

My votes go to: -RescueTime (So freaking valuable!) -Kirkland North (definitely going to grow their userbase quickly! (once they launch)) -Chatterous (Because I had a very similar idea) ------------------------------------------------- My notes are to: -insoshi (you have an indirect competitor, lovdbyless, it's a rails based opensource social network maker thing) -deluux (my first interpretation of what you guys do w…

-insoshi (you have an indirect competitor, lovdbyless, it's a rails based opensource social network maker thing)

Interesting. Our app is also in Rails, so it could actually help us a lot to have another project with complementary code. Any idea what their license is? There's almost nothing about them yet on Google. (I found the site of the guys who make it, but they don't list lovdbyless yet.)

Re: Y Combinator Demo Day Roundup

#37

Post by antiismist »

pg wrote: post #23
antiismist wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As counterpoints, myspace, flickr, and digg were not hacker projects. edit: removed google from the above list.

Flickr was sort of a hacker project, in that like Blogger it was a side project of a group who thought they were working on something else.

It depends on how you define a hacker project. That is a fair characterization if you say that a hacker project is something that doesn't come out of a normal business process, regardless of the corporate structure that surrounds the people hacking away on it.

Re: Y Combinator Demo Day Roundup

#38

Post by nextmoveone »

mhartl wrote: post #36
nextmoveone wrote: post #24

My votes go to: -RescueTime (So freaking valuable!) -Kirkland North (definitely going to grow their userbase quickly! (once they launch)) -Chatterous (Because I had a very similar idea) ------------------------------------------------- My notes are to: -insoshi (you have an indirect competitor, lovdbyless, it's a rails based opensource social network maker thing) -deluux (my first interpretation of what you guys do w…

-insoshi (you have an indirect competitor, lovdbyless, it's a rails based opensource social network maker thing) Interesting. Our app is also in Rails, so it could actually help us a lot to have another project with complementary code. Any idea what their license is? There's almost nothing about them yet on Google. (I found the site of the guys who make it, but they don't list lovdbyless yet.)

Hey no problem, I can give you their contact info...I am putting my contact info back in my profile now.

It was supposed to be released under MIT license.. from what they were saying.

Re: Y Combinator Demo Day Roundup

#39

Post by sharpshoot »

SwellJoe wrote: post #30

If I were a betting man, SnapTalent would be the first I'd put coin on. I didn't actually think much of it (and, in fact, I think when I first talked to them early in Winter08 they didn't even have any useful code written yet...but maybe I'm misremembering), until they'd actually launched. It really looks great, though--a perfect way to handle the tech jobs market, which is a HUGE industry in and of itself. Monster a…

Hey Joe, Thanks for the comments. We're starting out in tech but will be moving to other verticals eventually. The other key advantage we have is that as the web's traffic is more international and as we add advertisers from different countries we can serve Ip targeted ads on the same publishers and be extremely local at the same time.

We have a global and pretty ambitious vision - its how hotjobs started, we're aiming to be even bigger in this phase of the web.

Re: Y Combinator Demo Day Roundup

#40

Post by SwellJoe »

fallentimes wrote: post #5

Not a lot of love in the techcrunch comments, but I guess that's to be expected.

No better or worse than usual (actually maybe a little less hostile than the last three batches--I know Winter07 had more hostility in the comments, although this one may catch up by the time all is said). TC comments are always full of also-rans and never-was entrepreneurs who are spitting vitriol, and they come out in force for the YC demo day roundup.
Post reply on HN