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

YC: Requests for Startups

ycombinator.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

411–420 of 582 posts

Re: YC: Requests for Startups

#411

Post by jaredmclaughlin »

hef19898 wrote: post #212
animal_spirits wrote: post #172

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think this is an interesting take and something I've been relatively close to personally. I have a family member who owns one of those 100k Brother CNC machines, a robotic arm and some vice clamps and is starting a small manufacturing business with it out of his garage. While this isn't something that an average American can do, it can allow distribution of manufacturing to places that don't need a 500 acre lot, an…

Mass manufacturing is cheap because of economiea of scale, that means large volumes. The best a small shop can achieve, and that can be highly profitable if done right, is small batches, prototyping or serving as a sub-contractor for the big ones. None of which actually drives final product prices dibe, and is already done extensively.

This is only true with the current level of technology adoption. The economic lot size will trend towards a single unit as technology adoption improves.

Re: YC: Requests for Startups

#412

Post by wslh »

burkaman wrote: post #236
Animats wrote: post #221

Most of those take a lot more time and money than YC usually offers. There are some opportunities in "New Defense Technology". Something like a low-cost replacement for the Javelin anti-tank missile based on off the shelf phone camera parts ought to be possible. Of course, once that's out there, every insurgent group will have some. "Explainable AI" is really important. "Stablecoin finance" is mostly how to make sure…

> Is it possible to build a cell phone in the US? Definitely possible, this one is mostly US-built: https://puri.sm/products/librem-5-usa/

Robotics? The Japanese way?

Re: YC: Requests for Startups

#413

Post by jaredmclaughlin »

emseetech wrote: post #242
dukeyukey wrote: post #230

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> it does nothing for the American worker to bring manufacturing back if it means huge buildings with skeleton crews and machines that effectively run themselves I don't think that right. It still means goods are being produced in America, which means: 1. Greater security of production against geopolitical threats, and 2. More goods being produced overall, meaning cheaper goods. Even without significant employment, t…

> Greater security of production against geopolitical threats I address this in the second paragraph. > More goods being produced overall, meaning cheaper goods. I'm not convinced cheaper, more abundant goods are the top problem to solve right now. Especially as wants get cheaper, needs are getting much more expensive. And low and stagnant wages at the bottom means survival becomes increasingly difficult, despite che…

These things don't live in a vacuum. Those big skeleton crew shops open the door to innovation at higher levels of abstraction in the supply chain.

Namely, it requires more of a model basis - materials and tolerances in the 3D model. That enables better design automation and things like defined mechanical interfaces in a machine readable format. Think DARPA FANG/AVM. It also includes a mathematically sound definition or approximation of GD&T.

End result is fewer firms, fewer employees, more productivity and lower lot sizes. That means more efficiency and adaptability with higher wages and more intense training.

It also means that designing, making and selling things becomes less capital intensive. In theory every mechanically inclined person can be creating solutions. Hardware gets a little closer to looking like software because open source can be a real thing. Etc.

Re: YC: Requests for Startups

#414

Post by mlhpdx »

9cb14c1ec0 wrote: post #371
hobofan wrote: post #342

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> We need to train up hundreds of thousands to become CNC machinists What? Are you suggesting that aluminium phone cases nowadays are created by an army of trained CNC machinists? And not programmed once by a (few) dozen engineers per model of the handful of existing phone models and then executed by highly automated factories and an army of "low-skilled" workers.

Completely automated machining cells have been a thing for a long time.

True, but hiring CNC programmers is a significant limiting factor in growing such businesses.

Re: YC: Requests for Startups

#415

Post by jaredmclaughlin »

hef19898 wrote: post #15
duxup wrote: post #12

>Bring manufacturing back to America That one is interesting in that I wouldn't naturally think of manufacturing as a common start up idea.

Manufacturing is capital intensive to begin with. An dgiven how little the average HN crowd, assuming the average HN applicant is somehwat similar, knows about manufacturing, well, the answer to that can inly be AI? Right?

The answer is a lot simpler, but takes a lot of grunt work and hard selling.

Re: YC: Requests for Startups

#416

Post by jaredmclaughlin »

Fomite wrote: post #392
frob wrote: post #367

Today I learned that YC not only funds military companies, but encourages new startups to focus on killing machines and spying. And to point to the spy firm Palantir as an example of a model company shows how morally bankrupt YC truly is. Anything for a buck, right? All this while those same defense firms are currently making tens of billions of dollars supplying hardware to kill hundreds of civilians a day right thi…

Move fast and break things* *By things we mean people.

Travel to foreign countries, meet interesting people, kill them and break their stuff.

Re: YC: Requests for Startups

#417

Post by mlhpdx »

madeofpalk wrote: post #381
Ensorceled wrote: post #353

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah, this one is weird, the middlemen are there because we allow rent-seeking behaviour whether by insurance companies, complex corporate structures that have taken over practices, PBMs, etc. etc. Those aren't going away if we make things "more efficient" with technology, there is too much money to be made in the inefficiencies.

There’s only one way to ‘eliminate the middle man’, and that’s universal health care

So there are no middle(people) in Medicare? Or the defense industry? Single payer may just as likely future calcify the structures.

Re: YC: Requests for Startups

#418

Post by mlhpdx »

shmageggy wrote: post #324

> We have a fair chance of avoiding catastrophic climate change if startups offer commercial solutions to decarbonize society or remove carbon from the atmosphere. Either this is sloppily phrased, or the SV techno-optimist kool-aid is way stronger than I would have thought plausible. Does anyone seriously believe that a reasonable solution to climate change has exactly one thing on the list and it's "more climate tec…

Indeed. On the other hand there is absolute certainty that very, very large sums of money will be made mitigating the current and future impact of change. Maybe decarbonization matters and a maybe not, but rising seas and changing weather aren’t getting better anytime soon and there are real, human centric problems to be solved now and for the foreseeable future.

YC is simply missing the boat here. Pun intended.

Re: YC: Requests for Startups

#419

Post by FreakLegion »

sangnoir wrote: post #405
joey_bob wrote: post #357

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We've never been accepted, but my experience with application process indicates this isn't strictly true. We're not getting any more charismatic, but they have continued to show interest in us applying. Not sure if that's what everyone gets or not.

VC notoriously rarely ever say "no"[1] - just in case. 1. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38677251

Read the thread beyond the top-most comment. It's true that there's a long tail of wannabes who play this game, but reputable VCs don't mince words.

Re: YC: Requests for Startups

#420

Post by happytiger »

happytiger wrote: post #329
hibikir wrote: post #325

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In many parts of the US, you can only construct a hospital if the other hospitals in the area agree that yes, the area could use another hospital. Imagine how easy it would be to get them to agree to let you open your hospital if they know you are a huge company trying to undercut them in price, through any technological or organizational edge. Basically every healthcare reform would be positive, either towards singl…

This is precisely it. This is how you end up with this colossally large ecosystem where things like surgery centers proliferate — with every specialist operating as an outside extension or even an inside extension and costs skyrocket for customers because you just have some many people involved in the chain of care. To boot, a lot of these networks operate their partner organizations through backend ownership groups.…

I can’t edit. Let’s ask this: what does the rebel’s guide to medical care look like?
Post reply on HN