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Startups that launched at Y Combinator S16 Demo Day 2

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Re: Startups that launched at Y Combinator S16 Demo Day 2

#61

Post by wastedhours »

throwawayReply wrote: post #54

> Oleg Rogynskyy and his team at People.ai want to help companies understand what sales teams are doing on a daily basis. People.ai integrates with calendars, phones, and emails and logs sales activity that leads to closing deals. The idea is that sales teams can track best practices from top performers and close more deals. I'm all for taking human bias out of learning, but isn't there a great danger of cargo-cultin…

Agree with this. I work in a place where the team's split into 4 quadrants, all looking at different areas of the marketplace (and different levels of interaction) - whilst best practice is shared between them, knowing that each quad will do different things and function in different ways is key to widening reach.

Re: Startups that launched at Y Combinator S16 Demo Day 2

#62

Post by snovv_crash »

BinaryIdiot wrote: post #56
mhowland wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Drone defense is very interesting....but I find the concept of jamming/electronic spoofing/RF commandeering somewhat comical in this arena. (what ApolloShield seems to be doing) This is a physical threat (in the terrorist scenario) that needs to be dealt with kinetically. RF spoofing doesn't work for planed flights, GPS spoofing can work but reply attacks are wonky at best and most just will trigger a "go home" which…

> This is a physical threat (in the terrorist scenario) that needs to be dealt with kinetically. While I completely agree with you I'm curious if the pricing has come down on powerful lasers as I could see it being more economical to simply burn the rogue drones out of the sky. It would make re-targeting much faster and less of a need to keep kinetic...material on hand.

So then the terrorist coats their drone in foil, and instead you are blinding anybody who looks at the drone when you fire.

No, kinetic or nets is much better.

Re: Startups that launched at Y Combinator S16 Demo Day 2

#63

Post by dnh44 »

confiscate wrote: post #28
sidlls wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Surely you're exaggerating. You can create a toy program or even a very basic (most likely web-based application) that solves some problem in a weekend, but there really are very few lucrative companies or ideas that can be accurately "tried out" in a single weekend. If these companies are "seed" stage companies, then I'd argue it isn't that any bar has been raised, but that "seed" has come to mean something entirely…

Yes I have the same question too. The $120k for 7% is meant for seed stage startups where $120k is a Big Deal. If you already have $800k revenue each month, what is the math behind giving up 7% of your company, permanently, for $120k?

YC then has a financial incentive to help you succeed.

Re: Startups that launched at Y Combinator S16 Demo Day 2

#66

Post by mkagenius »

travoc wrote: post #41
jrudolph wrote: post #21

Is it just me or does anyone else think that many of the startups from Day 1 and Day 2 are well beyond the "seed" stage that YC claims to target? I get that YC is a perfect program to prepare a company for raising significant investment, so it makes perfect sense for the startups to join even at a later stage. Also derisks YCs investment on the standard terms (i.e. 7% of a later-stage company for 120k$ is a better de…

Risk appetite is diminishing. The shit storm is just over the horizon.

Too soon. They are doing YC fellowship for a riskier profile.

Re: Startups that launched at Y Combinator S16 Demo Day 2

#67

Post by pmtarantino »

hkmurakami wrote: post #38

>Quero Education is an ed-tech startup out of Brazil that is promising to help solve under-enrollment issues at Brazilian universities. Contrary to what most of us would think, coming from schools challenged daily by a lack of professors and dormitories, enrollment at Brazilian schools would need to double to just match the number of available seats. This is perplexing to me at first glance so hopefully someone from…

Sometimes you don't attend college because a) you are not ready (your high school preparation wasn't good, so you will likely fail), b) the costs are really high so you can't afford it. You start working on the side while you are in college, and after some months of struggling, you finally chose the job instead the education.

I am from Argentina, and this happens too.

Re: Startups that launched at Y Combinator S16 Demo Day 2

#68

Post by mkagenius »

confiscate wrote: post #28
sidlls wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Surely you're exaggerating. You can create a toy program or even a very basic (most likely web-based application) that solves some problem in a weekend, but there really are very few lucrative companies or ideas that can be accurately "tried out" in a single weekend. If these companies are "seed" stage companies, then I'd argue it isn't that any bar has been raised, but that "seed" has come to mean something entirely…

Yes I have the same question too. The $120k for 7% is meant for seed stage startups where $120k is a Big Deal. If you already have $800k revenue each month, what is the math behind giving up 7% of your company, permanently, for $120k?

For them real value may not be the money, they may wanted the advice that comes at a price of 7%.

> $800,000 monthly recurring revenue, too. Ohmygreen does 700 deliveries every month, but at its core, it’s a logistics company,

> Snacks ($21 per month per person)

Its totally possible that the major chunk of their revenue comes from just Amazon. Hence they want to expand to small companies (also known as scaling problem) hence YC would be a good fit. Twitch, YC etc etc can now order from them.

Re: Startups that launched at Y Combinator S16 Demo Day 2

#69

Post by losteverything »

Vetcove - my own knowledge says this is just another attempt to centralize. Vet care is too expensive and this doesn't address the cost

Robby is directly in what I do. Although I can't see how it will work yet I believe certain things.

Towns need to declare whether robotic driverless "Vehicles" can exist on their taxpayers' roadways. Like cell towers, towns need to make rules before Robby or similar non-human machines are sharing common free (roadways) and private (houses and land) space with taxpayers.

Property owners are fickle.

Dogs are a significant obstacle.

Re: Startups that launched at Y Combinator S16 Demo Day 2

#70

Post by seibelj »

faceyspacey wrote: post #36
w1ntermute wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You get the YC stamp of approval, which makes selling, recruiting, fundraising (everything, really) much easier. It's like asking why a genius would go to Harvard, when he can just teach himself everything.

exactly. a real genius wouldn't go to harvard. real geniuses don't need "stamps" of approval. fake geniuses do, and not to shit on Y Combinator startups, but these days they aren't that ground breaking. Though now there are more hardware startups, in terms of "app startups," every batch looks the same. The tech isn't that different from what was being done 3-4 years ago. Web app with a panel for a given industry, per…

I believe that the purpose of YC is to start new businesses. Starting a new business that successfully penetrates an existing market or creates a new market is extremely difficult. The new business brings something unique to the market. In YC's case that is usually technology. For example, if a company creates a website that brings new efficiencies to a market by applying the latest open source technology, that's a great boon to society and absolutely should be funded by YC, even if it isn't "cutting edge" in your definition.
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