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Startup Ideas We'd Like to Fund

ycombinator.com

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Re: Startup Ideas We'd Like to Fund

#361

Post by ryankuder »

mpc wrote: post #291
ryankuder wrote: post #151

#3 New News: There has been a tendency to focus on mass audience news. This inevitably leads to incremental improvements on news delivery. Think about the news that matters most to someone running a household--it's inherently local. But newspapers can't scale to deliver this kind of news and aggregators can only aggregate what others can deliver. The real source of local news comes from the people who live there disc…

EveryBlock.com??

I think that sites like Everyblock are part of the equation. But the real question is how do you build relevancy? There are things neighborhoods talk about and things they don't. How do you bubble up the things they talk about? How do neighbors engage each other in discussion on local topics. That's what we're working on.

Re: Startup Ideas We'd Like to Fund

#362

Post by olefoo »

rich124 wrote: post #360
olefoo wrote: post #358

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Can you come up with a a one page description of the service/software that you want to build; describing in detail what it does so that someone else can implement it? Can you afford to pay someone skilled to develop it for you? If you are going to play the role of the idea guy, you had better be able to bring more resources than the idea itself if you want to be successful.

I could provide a one page combination business objectives statement and high level requirement specification, but a detailed spec would necessarily be longer and more complex in format. No, I can't fund the development effort. If I could I wouldn't need a Y Combinator Plus. I appreciate your observation about the seemingly limited value of just "the idea itself", but that's just the issue I was raising. The clear vi…

Here's the deal, if you can come up with a document that has sufficient detail for someone else to implement the idea, then you could potentially implement it yourself.

Modern web development is not a mysterious form of magic, it's most comparable to a genre of theatre that relies on some very literal actors who will stick to the script exactly.

I've seen people with no more than a community college class in web design build profitable businesses online. That's one of the great things about the current state of the art, you don't need to be a graduate of the right school, or have the right background, you just need to be willing to put in a lot of work and skull sweat.

Re: Startup Ideas We'd Like to Fund

#363

Post by jerry5 »

cturner wrote: post #356
jerry5 wrote: post #354

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Hm, I said I found FX 'inspiring', but didn't say 'inspiring for a startup'. As I mentioned elsewhere my interest is more in P2P networks, and those elude classic funding strategies. The STP I'm referring to relates to automatic roundtrips including request for quote > pricing engine > quote > order > confirmation > TMS but the real interesting part is when banks automatically back their orders with purchases from ye…

I read this to be the use-case you're aiming to satisfy: (1) getting access to a range of exotics which are only available through certain providers in addition to (2) also getting the best rate available for all ccy pairs. I think this is currently provided by 'portals' like fxall and currenex (bloomberg now too I think) where majors competitively bid on quotes when they want to and the buyer buys that which best su…

Aims (1) and (2) are correct. If there are more 'exotics' to go around and they become more easily accessbile (i.e. low transaction fees), wouldn't there be more competition on the currency market? Online retailers could quote prices in the currency of their choice and you'd get an instant quote in the currency of your choice out of that. As for the non-guaranteed quotes and the latency, I'm not sure whether someone has seriously tried to get their head wrapped around that, so there's room for innovative routing mechanisms. As for me it'd be fine to just do this as a thought experiment and then apply the results to poor man's P2P networks which are more accessible in the first place and see what comes out of that.

Re: Startup Ideas We'd Like to Fund

#364

Post by spongefrob »

If we say we're looking for x, we'll get applications proposing x, certainly. But then it actually becomes harder to judge them: is this group proposing x because they were already thinking about it, or because they know that's what we want to hear?

Why is this important? I don't recall reading anywhere that Y Combinator takes on responsibility for a persons motives when starting up a company...

Re: Startup Ideas We'd Like to Fund

#365

Post by ghs »

voidfiles wrote: post #28

I totally agree with the outsourcing of IT. My father owns a minor distribution company. That deals with spa, pool, and bath parts. No piece of software has ever come to make their life easier. I have been involved with every major software purchase and I am constantly thinking to myself, I know these people I could probably make something that would work. The biggest problem I see is that hosted apps are great, but…

"The biggest problem I see is that hosted apps are great, but these guys need the software to be up all the time."

I was the Director of IT for a $250mm startup, a little under 5 years old. We started, as almost all valley startups do, using quick books for our financials. Very quickly issues like Purchase Orders, Expense Reports, became more important so we looked to move to an online SAAS financials system - we chose Netsuite. Our internet connectivity grew as the number of our employees grew, until today, at 120 employees, we have a finance/procurement department of 10 people, and a 3 Mbit connection to the internet. Our Financial software has been on the Internet somewhere for the last 4+ years, and has never gone down. I used to be impressed that our DSL link was as reliable as our T1, until an ISP explained to me that they were probably both landing on the same equipment on the back end - just one of them was coming at me with T1 Framing.

This is just a long way of saying that Internet connectivity can be assumed now. Large (very large) companies don't think twice of oursourcing their business critical functions, and, in fact, as we transition from Netsuite to Oracle Financials, we didn't even consider hosting it ourselves - found a third party and paid them $5500/month to host it for us - access over a L2L IPSEC link.

Anybody want to form a YC company - don't worry about the Internet Part - unless you are building a real-time/nuclear/medical/navigation/flight safety product/etc..., hosted apps are the way of the future.

Re: Startup Ideas We'd Like to Fund

#366

Post by jerry5 »

cturner wrote: post #356
jerry5 wrote: post #354

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Hm, I said I found FX 'inspiring', but didn't say 'inspiring for a startup'. As I mentioned elsewhere my interest is more in P2P networks, and those elude classic funding strategies. The STP I'm referring to relates to automatic roundtrips including request for quote > pricing engine > quote > order > confirmation > TMS but the real interesting part is when banks automatically back their orders with purchases from ye…

I read this to be the use-case you're aiming to satisfy: (1) getting access to a range of exotics which are only available through certain providers in addition to (2) also getting the best rate available for all ccy pairs. I think this is currently provided by 'portals' like fxall and currenex (bloomberg now too I think) where majors competitively bid on quotes when they want to and the buyer buys that which best su…

P.S. The portals (I worked for one of those) are a step in the right direction as their convenient UI and STP lowers the cost of a transaction in terms of human effort, but other than that add little value on top of what's offered by the banks. They are at most leaf nodes in the networks as they can't hold money even intermittently and the actual settlement still takes place through the banks. So they cannot open 'new routes' in the network.

Re: Startup Ideas We'd Like to Fund

#367

Post by Robleh »

rich124 wrote: post #357

I'm sure I'm not that rare in my dreams. They might be unusual but I'm certain others share similar hopes. I have an idea for an internet based service and a faith that in its originality and focus that it could have real value, especially within organizations, corporate or otherwise. The plea comes from a sense of helplessness. I haven't programmed seriously in 30 years. My old skills with 360 assembler mock my ambi…

Hire a developer. It's what Kevin Rose did and he's just about to sell out to Goog for $200m.

Re: Startup Ideas We'd Like to Fund

#368

Post by rich124 »

olefoo wrote: post #362
rich124 wrote: post #360

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I could provide a one page combination business objectives statement and high level requirement specification, but a detailed spec would necessarily be longer and more complex in format. No, I can't fund the development effort. If I could I wouldn't need a Y Combinator Plus. I appreciate your observation about the seemingly limited value of just "the idea itself", but that's just the issue I was raising. The clear vi…

Here's the deal, if you can come up with a document that has sufficient detail for someone else to implement the idea, then you could potentially implement it yourself. Modern web development is not a mysterious form of magic, it's most comparable to a genre of theatre that relies on some very literal actors who will stick to the script exactly. I've seen people with no more than a community college class in web desi…

Given your faith in the current state of the art, what tools would you use/recommend to build either a simple Digg-like service or a threaded discussion board.

Re: Startup Ideas We'd Like to Fund

#369

Post by TweedHeads »

dmoney wrote: post #324
andrewparker wrote: post #293

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Google already fixed this. No one directly navigates to domains anymore. The SERP is a popularity-ranked page of everything that should be at the domain for the keywords you searched on.

I do. Sure, I use google and bookmarks a lot of the time, but sometimes the shortest mental route to a site is its domain name. Ironically, GMail is one of these. An interesting thought experiment would be what would happen if you removed all domain names. You own a random series of letters that you keep even if your IP address changes, but the sequence is totally non-mnemonic. Google and del.icio.us would be very im…

Disambiguation pages like wikipedia.

I personally would like to get rid of http, www and com all along

Just type a name and presto!

Re: Startup Ideas We'd Like to Fund

#370

Post by olefoo »

rich124 wrote: post #368
olefoo wrote: post #362

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Here's the deal, if you can come up with a document that has sufficient detail for someone else to implement the idea, then you could potentially implement it yourself. Modern web development is not a mysterious form of magic, it's most comparable to a genre of theatre that relies on some very literal actors who will stick to the script exactly. I've seen people with no more than a community college class in web desi…

Given your faith in the current state of the art, what tools would you use/recommend to build either a simple Digg-like service or a threaded discussion board.

This week; I'd just grab the reddit download and start from there.

If I wanted to do something that was a bit more complex I'd start with Django and use the comments application that comes bundled with as a base for the functionality i actually needed.

But if all you need is a threaded forum you're better off with a hosted solution like http://slinkset.com/

If you're starting from zero, pick up a programming language, and go to it. Make mistakes now so that you can put them behind you.

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