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Y Combinator Summer 2013 Demo Day, Batch 1

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Re: Y Combinator Summer 2013 Demo Day, Batch 1

#41

Post by pessimizer »

huhtenberg wrote: post #35
jasonkester wrote: post #11

I remember a time when this very TechCrunch article would come out and I'd read through it with a sense of dismay at the sheer unadulterated badness of every single idea. Things have changed. An example: Teleborder charges $5,000 per visa application, ... gathering documents, collecting information, and sending information to the government. This is one of those ideas where you just stop and wonder why nobody has run…

> This is one of those ideas where you just stop and wonder why nobody has run with it before. Hahaha... seriously? You have never heard of "immigration lawyers" and "travel agents"? This is exactly the service they have been providing since the dawn of time.

That's like sneering at Amazon because bookstores. Or sneering at Excel because ledger paper.

Re: Y Combinator Summer 2013 Demo Day, Batch 1

#42

Post by c0mpute »

jasonkester wrote: post #11

I remember a time when this very TechCrunch article would come out and I'd read through it with a sense of dismay at the sheer unadulterated badness of every single idea. Things have changed. An example: Teleborder charges $5,000 per visa application, ... gathering documents, collecting information, and sending information to the government. This is one of those ideas where you just stop and wonder why nobody has run…

One thing going against them is how h1b gets consumed. The 2013 cap (last year, not thing year) distribution indicates more than 40k out of 65k worker cap was filled by outsourcing company. (source: http://www.myvisajobs.com/Reports/2013-H1B-Visa-Sponsor.aspx). I am sure the number is similar even this year just as it has been the last so many years.

Even the other often abused visa L1 is primarily filled by outsourcers (I am trying to find some numbers on this but hard to find).

The outsourcing companies have been filing h1 for less than 1k lawyer fee (outsourced too!). 5K seems too high for someone to take note . The best law firms themselves charge about that here in USA.

I think this company can help out the startups in the bay area that are clueless how to sponsor a H1 (all the legalities of it) and makes it simple to them perhaps doing everything online from get go. That won't be more than 15/20k per year. So even the best case they are probably seeing a $1million dollar run rate per year (Which might be great for a 4/5 member startup?).

They should diversify into other areas - tax (for immigrants)/corporate (hiring/transfers) - which will have more incidences to charge.

Re: Y Combinator Summer 2013 Demo Day, Batch 1

#44

Post by Ecio78 »

confluence wrote: post #38
prawn wrote: post #32

Liked this comment on the SpoonRocket story: "Reminds me of a tactic used by my father's friend, who owned a pizzeria. He noticed that about half the orders were for large pepperoni pizzas. So he had his drivers always carry an additional large pepperoni pizza in the car, and he'd call them mid-route if an additional order came in. It usually did, so thankfully very few cold pizzas died, and he sold more pizzas per h…

> Almost all programming [pizza delivery] can be viewed as an exercise in caching. -- Terje Mathisen Extra food in the car is like the L1 cache of the food world. Now that I think about, I'm pretty sure that every company in the world is just an exercise in caching.

And in the case of food processing, cache "expiration" is definitely something to take into account :)

Re: Y Combinator Summer 2013 Demo Day, Batch 1

#45

Post by adamhooper »

k-mcgrady wrote: post #3

Prim: interesting and I'm sure useful for a lot of people. I hope they're right that they can eventually lower prices though because that seems very expensive. Also is there a trend towards or away from using laundromats? Where I'm from it's unusual not to have your own washing machine and I wouldn't move anywhere that didn't have one. RealCrowd: Really interesting startup but with the recent housing crisis they may…

Founder of RealCrowd here - thanks for the comments. We're focused only on commercial assets now that produce stable cash flow - think of a starbucks or an office building in SoMa that has consistent monthly income from rental payments. Homes should be viewed as shelter, not as a primary vehicle to create wealth.

It will be very interesting to see where the JOBS Act goes and how we can incorporate pure crowdfunding into our platform. Bringing access to this class of investment is what we're after and we're really excited to do so!

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