Startups that launched at Y Combinator’s W19 Demo Day 1 • Hacker News Board

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

#51

Post by QuotedForTruth » Tue, Mar 19, 2019, 8:48 PM UTC

Cenk wrote: post #24

giarc wrote: post #3

> Bento Club: Customers pre-order food from a select set of restaurants, and Bento picks it up and brings all orders to a shared pickup spot within one block of the customer’s office. Unless it's 10x cheaper, I don't see how this is any better than Uber eats, Doordash etc (that actually bring food to your door).

I thought we’d been through this? https://sf.eater.com/2017/1/10/14231188/bento-closed-san-fra...

Weren't they on the Gimlet Startup podcast too? [1] Looks to be a different company/founder though.

The other bento started out trying to make the meals themselves but couldnt make them cheap enough. They were losing money on every one sold. Eventually, if I remember right, they tried to pivot to a service like this that got meals from restaurants, but didnt fair much better. They were doing last mile delivery though if I recall.

[1] https://www.gimletmedia.com/startup/kitchen-confidential-sea...

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

#52

Post by OisinMoran » Tue, Mar 19, 2019, 8:50 PM UTC

OisinMoran wrote: post #10

Really impressed with this batch! These companies seem to be targeting a lot of really cool hard tech problems which is great to see. In particular, a lot of super cool next-gen transportation: electric planes (Heart Aerospace), jetpacks/bikes (Jetpack Aviation), hydrofoil cargo ships (Boundary Layer Technologies). Also seems to be a big focus on India, China and Africa, and a big increase in the proportion of bio/me…

Ah how did I miss putting Loonify in the next-gen transport category!? Incredible idea

Wishing them and everyone else the best of luck over the coming months, rounds, and decades

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

#53

Post by raldi » Tue, Mar 19, 2019, 8:53 PM UTC

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…

Thanks for jumping into the thread.

I took your app for a spin and was expecting to be asked to give it access to all my contacts, but was planning to click the fine-print option for "No thanks, I'll just invite people manually one at a time" .. but then there was no option, just a mandatory Enable Contacts button with no explanation other than, "Your parents are not on Basement".

I'm not gonna tell you how to keep your gate, and maybe I'm not the target demographic, but it would be nice for the app to explain what it was planning to do with that permission before requesting it.

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

#54

Post by onion2k » Tue, Mar 19, 2019, 8:55 PM UTC

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?

Uber #101: Everything is 'legal' until it's been tested in court and found not to be.

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

#55

Post by sharkweek » Tue, Mar 19, 2019, 9:00 PM UTC

raldi wrote: post #49

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.

Sorry, I don't think I mean to imply YC is having an existential crisis, but rather that I am having the existential crisis.

I worded my original comment poorly.

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

#56

Post by shafyy » Tue, Mar 19, 2019, 9:00 PM UTC

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.

The only reason they had 12k applications this time was because they incentivized every Startup School company to apply in order to potentially get $10k. I would be pretty shocked if there won't be significantly less applications for S19.

Not sure why they did that to be honest, giving someone $10k to apply is probably the best way to decrease application quality and have more work to sort through. Maybe for more data?

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

#57

Post by rfrey » Tue, Mar 19, 2019, 9:44 PM UTC

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?

Had a look through the patents. Their IP seems to be around a forward-osmosis separation process. They use CO2 in ammonia on the dilute side of the osmosis process.

So my complete seat-of-the-pants, duffer-on-the-bench guess is that they have a CO2 capture process (or use CO2 from a nearby industrial combustion process), use the CO2 in their process to separate gasoline in place of a traditional distillation process, then remove the CO2 from the gasoline by precipitating it as ammonium carbonate, which can be sequestered somehow.

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

#58

Post by 2arrs2ells » Tue, Mar 19, 2019, 9:45 PM UTC

shafyy wrote: post #56

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.

The only reason they had 12k applications this time was because they incentivized every Startup School company to apply in order to potentially get $10k. I would be pretty shocked if there won't be significantly less applications for S19. Not sure why they did that to be honest, giving someone $10k to apply is probably the best way to decrease application quality and have more work to sort through. Maybe for more dat…

What did folks have to do to get the $10k?

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

#59

Post by irq11 » Tue, Mar 19, 2019, 9:57 PM UTC

raldi wrote: post #50

irq11 wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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. T…

People like to claim that arguments like mine are cynical, but what’s actually cynical is reaching far into the past for a quote, snipping it out of context, and then extrapolating to pretend that the quote is just as relevant today.

Or said more simply: past results do not imply future performance.

Is it possible that we’re about to turn a technological corner and it’ll be like the rise of the web - a revolutionary new media platform - all over again? Sure. Maybe I’m wrong. But I’m pretty informed, and I don’t see a web-like technology where everything is done and working, and just needs to be explored. There’s no green-field tech on the horizon where simple refinement is going to open up new industries. We’re back to waiting.

Today we’re increasingly focused on stuff that might not even work at all (e.g. fusion), or that has huge technological or societal barriers that are unsolved (e.g. robots, electric cars) It’s a different world, and even if something revolutionary comes around the corner next week, right now the playing field is fairly competitive.

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

#60

Post by jamesjyu » Tue, Mar 19, 2019, 10:22 PM UTC

nck4222 wrote: post #32

AznHisoka wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I haven't gone through anything that has resembled dark burnout, but I also share a similar sentiment. Years ago, I would be amazed at all the cool startups and tools people were building. Now, my reaction is more.. "OK, so what? You build AirBnb for X... so what?"

>You build AirBnb for X... so what? I can't stand this template anymore. There's probably a natural cycle/rise-and-fall for these things. 1) Problem identified, "how do i quickly and efficiently describe the purpose of what we're doing" 2) "[existing popular company everyone knows] for [different market that it can be applied to]" is passed on to others to solve that problem. Phrase becomes popular, more people start…

The good startups use this formula as a shorthand to communicate an idea quickly, but don't religiously pin their real strategy on this. Once you dive in one layer deep, these analogies break down pretty quickly.