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Startups that launched at Y Combinator’s W19 Demo Day 1

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Re: Startups that launched at Y Combinator’s W19 Demo Day 1

#41

Post by jer_ber »

longerthoughts wrote: post #40
fernandorojo wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Fernando here from Basement. This is pretty spot on. The greater level of intimacy leads to far more interaction since you're pretty free to be yourself and post content that is meant for your actual friends to see instead of random people viewing your perfect life. The intuition is naturally that fewer friends would limit usage, but in fact, it's responsible for the high levels of interaction. As for the revenue – t…

Completely agree with your perspective on existing social platforms and think it's awesome that you guys are trying to break from ad-generated revenue. Any chance you'd go with a freemium model vs. free trial?

Jeremy from Basement here. We're considering a freemium model, maybe turning the font of people who don't pay to comic sans :)

Re: Startups that launched at Y Combinator’s W19 Demo Day 1

#42

Post by bruceb »

jatsign wrote: post #9

"VanGo: An on-demand ride service for getting your kids and teens around. The founders say that, because “moms trust other moms,” 85 percent of drivers on their service are moms and all of them are women." Is that legal?

In some circumstances it is legal to hire based on sex/gender. Say changing room assistant. Proving a job can only realistically be done by 1 gender is a high bar though.

I doubt VanGo can do that. But they are not big enough to get sued yet. Also as another poster pointed out they cater to women but don't specifically screen out male drivers?

Re: Startups that launched at Y Combinator’s W19 Demo Day 1

#44

Post by irq11 »

seizethecheese wrote: post #33
sharkweek wrote: post #2

First, congrats to everyone launching. Second, existential crisis time. I clicked the link and saw "Here are the 85+ startups that launched at YC’s W19 Demo Day 1" and closed the tab. These used to be some of my favorite articles every six months, kind of a view into what's coming next. But they felt digestible, with a few dozen startups featured each time. Now it feels like a fire hose. I'm not convinced there's goi…

For what it's worth, there shouldn't be any less signal in these batches than earlier ones. The acceptance rate this batch was the lowest ever. It's just that startups are now global and in every industry. This is more like your favorite author writing books on a lot more subjects, than just putting out a longer more rambling book.

I don’t think the issue here is “signal”, so much as it is that the arbitrage is gone.

For a brief, golden period, startups were new and innovative. You could stand out from the crowd by taking some risk and working hard. Early YC reflected this ethos.

Now, “startups” are so common as to trigger cynicism, and merely starting a company no longer offers differentiation. Every angle that can be explored is being explored, usually by multiple scrappy, identically hustling teams of millenials, and to differentiate, you need to take risks that feel increasingly long-shot to stand out (e.g. nuclear fusion! electric planes! revolutionizing drug discovery!) Even the seed-stage “accelerators” are systematized, large-scale success-mining machines for fairly well-developed companies.

Which is not to say that there won’t be successes; there will almost certainly be “unicorns” from 2019, as there have been in just about every year. But the frontier is closed, the game is clear, and it’s the same as it ever was.

Re: Startups that launched at Y Combinator’s W19 Demo Day 1

#45

Post by 3into10power5 »

longerthoughts wrote: post #17

>Basement: A social network for your close friends Seems like this would impose some serious limits on ad revenue generation (assuming that's how they plan to monetize). With only close friends the volume of friend-generated content would presumably be much lower than that of Facebook or Instagram (even if those individuals are generating more content), meaning you have a much lower threshold beyond which you start p…

How would this be different from whatsapp group?

Re: Startups that launched at Y Combinator’s W19 Demo Day 1

#46

Post by 3into10power5 »

fernandorojo wrote: post #36
_uhtu wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But also, possibly, you'd have a lot more and a lot deeper interaction. This could be the kind of app Facebook was originally, where you added your friend and shared basically anything random without a focus on getting likes. Dumb inside jokes, unfiltered photos, etc. Kinda like the texting groups friends often have these days. That's market that could potentially use some optimizaiton as texting isn't a great format…

Fernando here from Basement. This is pretty spot on. The greater level of intimacy leads to far more interaction since you're pretty free to be yourself and post content that is meant for your actual friends to see instead of random people viewing your perfect life. The intuition is naturally that fewer friends would limit usage, but in fact, it's responsible for the high levels of interaction. As for the revenue – t…

Asked the same question above also. How would this be different from whatsapp group?

Re: Startups that launched at Y Combinator’s W19 Demo Day 1

#47

Post by longerthoughts »

jer_ber wrote: post #41
longerthoughts wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Completely agree with your perspective on existing social platforms and think it's awesome that you guys are trying to break from ad-generated revenue. Any chance you'd go with a freemium model vs. free trial?

Jeremy from Basement here. We're considering a freemium model, maybe turning the font of people who don't pay to comic sans :)

Cruel but brilliant.

Re: Startups that launched at Y Combinator’s W19 Demo Day 1

#48

Post by Bricejm »

chadash wrote: post #27
Mizza wrote: post #19

Is anybody from Prometheus here? Very curious about the tech and the unit economics. Is $3 a goal, or the price today?

This seemed like the most interesting startup in the batch to me. For those who didn't want to comb through 85 startup descriptions, Prometheus claims that they can "remove CO2 from the air and turn it into gasoline" for about $3.00/gallon. If that's a number they can eventually get closer to the current cost of manufacturing gasoline, well then this is gonna be a $500 billion company.

Prometheus definitely stood out. If they can do what they advertise, states could start implementing carbon taxes per gallon on the current gasoline to make the 'CO2 neutral' gas the same price or less.

Re: Startups that launched at Y Combinator’s W19 Demo Day 1

#49

Post by raldi »

sharkweek wrote: post #2

First, congrats to everyone launching. Second, existential crisis time. I clicked the link and saw "Here are the 85+ startups that launched at YC’s W19 Demo Day 1" and closed the tab. These used to be some of my favorite articles every six months, kind of a view into what's coming next. But they felt digestible, with a few dozen startups featured each time. Now it feels like a fire hose. I'm not convinced there's goi…

I think this is more of a failure of the initial reporting than an existential crisis for YC.

Imagine if the article broke things down by industry and/or tech category and you could expend just the ones you're most interested in and see 3-5 companies in each group.

Re: Startups that launched at Y Combinator’s W19 Demo Day 1

#50

Post by raldi »

irq11 wrote: post #44
seizethecheese wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

For what it's worth, there shouldn't be any less signal in these batches than earlier ones. The acceptance rate this batch was the lowest ever. It's just that startups are now global and in every industry. This is more like your favorite author writing books on a lot more subjects, than just putting out a longer more rambling book.

I don’t think the issue here is “signal”, so much as it is that the arbitrage is gone. For a brief, golden period, startups were new and innovative. You could stand out from the crowd by taking some risk and working hard. Early YC reflected this ethos. Now, “startups” are so common as to trigger cynicism, and merely starting a company no longer offers differentiation. Every angle that can be explored is being explore…

I think it's fair to say that Silicon Valley is dead. Cheap venture capital, minimal startup cost, access to university researchers, and good inter business communications fueled an engine which turned ideas into products. You can now find venture capital elsewhere, with the discount rate being what it is. The cost of housing and office space has spiraled out of control, thanks to the environmentalists and Prop 13. The trade secrets and intellectual property mania have pretty much destroyed open cooperation. The universities remain, but aren't the driving force they used to be.

The place has a much different, more ossified feel to it than it did seven years ago.

[Note: The words above aren't mine; they were written in 1993 by the co-founder of AltaVista.]

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