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

571–580 of 582 posts

Re: YC: Requests for Startups

#571

Post by frob »

jryle70 wrote: post #394
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…

Ukraine suffer from daily Russia's drone attack. How about a low cost network that detects, disables or shots down those drones before they can get to their targets? That also, and truly is, a defense system. Do you have any problems with that?

I don't see anything in YC's call saying they would only fund defensive capabilities (which is itself somewhat of a misnomer since it doesn't take much engineering to turn "defensive" tech into offensive weapons of war). YC looks like it is open to funding all forms of warfare.

Re: YC: Requests for Startups

#572

Post by frob »

9cb14c1ec0 wrote: post #373
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…

> Anything for a buck, right? So, how would the US defend itself against countries like China and Russia if no one built weapons? Everyone agrees weapons can be used in ethically horrendous ways. It doesn't follow from that, that the US doesn't need a weapons industry.

YC doesn't need to be funding the weapons industry; they're already filthy rich. This shows their greed outweighs any moral quandries around building machines of death.

Re: YC: Requests for Startups

#573

Post by google234123 »

malermeister wrote: post #228
google234123 wrote: post #180

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you believe that these elected officials have facilitated the deaths of 100s of people and the suffering of many more then... (btw I think they pretty much have fueled the drug and lawlessness epidemic in SF)

Ironically, people like Garry have actually fueled said epidemic, by contributing to ever-rising inequality, driving people to the streets, where they turn to crime and drugs.

How much drug deaths in Singapore again?

Re: YC: Requests for Startups

#574

Post by fakedang »

happytiger wrote: post #529
fakedang wrote: post #454

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> And there is also a ton of interesting businesses in generics. Can you please elaborate on this? We are currently exploring a project in the same space, and I would love to discuss.

Well I met with a company doing surgical supply and viewed their facility, and at the time (2021) they were one of only a few vial generic manufacturers based in the United States. They were mostly supplying GPOs, but there is precious little manufacturing capacity in North America for the stuff. That’s just one example. The market for surgical supply is wildly inefficient but there aren’t that many people operating…

Thanks for this. You're definitely spot on about the huge market opportunity in the US for localized manufacturing, and healthcare is one of those spaces with a really strong moat.

Re: YC: Requests for Startups

#575

Post by [deleted] »

hef19898 wrote: post #491
yaacov wrote: post #444

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No it wouldn’t. That makes no sense. You have no idea what “excludable” and “rivalrous” mean. Please read a few Wikipedia articles.

Maybe you can rephrase in a way us peasants understand your point as well without a dictionary?

[deleted]

Re: YC: Requests for Startups

#576

Post by yaacov »

hef19898 wrote: post #491
yaacov wrote: post #444

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No it wouldn’t. That makes no sense. You have no idea what “excludable” and “rivalrous” mean. Please read a few Wikipedia articles.

Maybe you can rephrase in a way us peasants understand your point as well without a dictionary?

My point is just that the words this guy is using have commonly-accepted meanings and he’s using them wrong.

Re: YC: Requests for Startups

#577

Post by arnorhs »

SteveNuts wrote: post #151
brettv2 wrote: post #51

> NEW ENTERPRISE RESOURCE PLANNING SOFTWARE Very curious if anyone knows how to pull this off. There's so much value to be unlocked but it's just impossible to break through. I've personally met three very talented founders that tried and failed (one was accepted to YC as a mid-market ERP and successfully pivoted into an application tracking system) and failed very quickly. I'm guessing an important feature would be…

Step one is to make sure it's auditable. Every auditor on the planet is intimately familiar with how Oracle EBS and SAP do certain things. If you don't have that trust built up, a customer simply won't want to take the risk and additional headache and overhead passing an audit will take.

This makes me wonder. I wonder if the real opportunity is in solutions that help auditors in one way or the other.

If the auditors are sensitive to which systems they are familiar with, it would perhaps be beneficial to the auditors to be able to understand other systems.

I'm sure there are companies that are servicing auditors, creating UiPath flows or whatever for a bunch of auditors. So there's probably already a ton of very specific solutions out there, for auditing various systems.

At least it sounds like a more solvable problem than yet another ERP

Re: YC: Requests for Startups

#578

Post by arnorhs »

mamcx wrote: post #524
nslindtner wrote: post #481

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have allways wondered why there isn't a "headless" erp-system. I have worked with cms-systems. And in this world it is accepted, you need different frontends for different tasks. Therefore a world of systems - calling themselve headless - support only the backend part of cms management. Worked with Strapi that support this kind of thinking. How come something similar doesn't exist in the ERP world ?

One major reason is that both developers/customers who ask for it think in UI first, all the time. Most developers I know are at the far-end of development practices (one of the ERPs I integrate has tables like `F0001, F0002, ...` and fields `F00001, F00002`), and this ERPs then uses old tools like Cobol, Fox, (Old) Delphi, (OLD) VB where it has a better UI history. And it causes to be very hard to build an API (you…

Well the UI-first thinking makes more sense, since in most cases you are solving process-problems, which involves "what does who do when?"

It's hard to communicate a process through a REST API. Sure you could document it incredibly well, maybe even have every part of your ui represented by an API endpoint, but ultimately, due to the number of customizations involved with each ERP view, you'd end up with some sort of bastard, which was never quite the same as the real deal.

Re: YC: Requests for Startups

#579

Post by arnorhs »

sirspacey wrote: post #565
zemo wrote: post #377

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The founders that work in defense are mission driven That's not really saying anything, since it doesn't say anything about what their mission is. Sure, you have to be mission driven to get things done and lots of good and necessary things have been accomplished by people who were mission driven, but every villain in history was mission driven too. To point at someone and say "they are mission driven" as if being m…

I think you are asking for clarification? (If not, I’m not seeking to argue the fundamental point you appear to be making that “if you fund defense you cannot be moral.”) In the order you present: >mission Im taking “moral” to mean “for a purpose of doing good.” Assuming the “doing good” is a combo of opinion on what is helpful and some feeling (such as empathy or a sense of honor), my experience with founders who se…

This is a very thoughtful and well argued comment and really informative.

I commend you for taking the time and effort to write this so well, despite the original comment being somewhat snarky and clearly opinionated.

I'm personally a pacifist and would like to end all wars, all weapons production, etc, but we currently do not have a way to enforce that over the whole world.

So the realistic view is that given that currently we have wars, need weapons, etc - it does make sense that YC would fund companies that develop new ones or new technologies in the space. Even if nobody really wants to hurt people.

Re: YC: Requests for Startups

#580

Post by chucklam2828 »

jbverschoor wrote: post #63

Small comment about the "Stable Coins": > $136b worth of stablecoins have been issued to date but the opportunity seems much more immense still. Only about seven million people have transacted with stablecoins to date, while more than half a billion live in countries with 30%+ inflation. U.S. banks hold $17b in customer deposits which are all up for grabs as well. And yet the major stablecoin issuers can be counted o…

Lyn Alden (a noted bitcoiner) has talked about SDR in a few interviews. Here’s one I can find right now: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6aUwtxMw-D0&t=882s.

SDR is fairly well known among people who study reserve currencies. While most people take for granted the US dollar as the global reserve currency, those who study it are aware of alternatives (SDR, gold, bitcoin), even though those are too tiny (right now…) to seriously get the “reserve currency” title.

FWIW, Facebook’s stablecoin (Libra/Diem) was designed as a basket of currencies like SDR. In fact, it’s not too far off to explain Libra/Diem as SDR on blockchain, but backed by its own association instead of the IMF. If you understand the geopolitical challenges facing SDR (even with its IMF backing), you can imagine why Libra/Diem got such pushback.

I had no idea you could pay for satellite calls with SDR. (I don’t roll like that…) I’d love to learn more.

The satellite call use case is interesting though. I’ve heard rumor/speculation that Starlink may accept crypto for payment. The use case makes sense. If you’re bringing internet access to parts of the world that don’t already have it, you can’t assume those users have easy access to traditional payment rails.

And this is not a unique problem for Starlink. Many internet companies I know or have worked with have users from all over the world, but in many countries those users are stuck in the “free” tier because there are too many hurdles for them to pay (or in some cases, get paid) for online services. I know of small businesses in SE Asia that would set up a company (and bank account) in Singapore just to pay (get paid) for online services. There’s a huge gap between the inexorable rise of the internet economy and the fossilized global payment system. In fact, I’m founding a startup to use stablecoin to bridge that gap.

Post reply on HN