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New Requests for Startups

ycombinator.com

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Re: New Requests for Startups

#61

Post by icebraining »

k__ wrote: post #35
atroyn wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

From the post: "Responding to an RFS will never be the deciding factor in who we fund. "

Maybe it's a marketing stunt? I mean, they're in for the money, so they have to fund stuff, that pays out later. BUT they have to appease their critics, who say "all you fund is the next snapchat!!". With this list, they can say "Oh we wanted to cure cancer, the people who wanted funding for it just got no skills!"

They actually already have startups working on cancer, like Bikanta (YC S14).

Re: New Requests for Startups

#63

Post by seiji »

sillysaurus3 wrote: post #55
taigeair wrote: post #7

How far off is singularity? Seems like quite an interesting topic.

How far off is singularity? It seems like the question can be rephrased as, "At any point in history, have humans been able to advance technology in a substantial way simply because they wanted to, rather than by stumbling upon a way to do it?" Most technology is incremental. Take flight, for example. The glider had already been around for a substantial amount of time before the Wright brothers solved the "control pr…

In fact, there's no clear way to even define AI,

It's easy to define, but the term has been stolen by people wanting more media attention for less work.

AI is just "what we are" without all the squishy parts. AI ("hard" AI, AGI) is a fully thinking, doing, feeling software system implemented in non-biology.

I've suspected that AI is fundamentally impossible to implement on a Von Neumann architecture.

Balderdash. We haven't discovered any computation problem that our universal computing architecture can't compute because... universal. It's not "universal \ things-that-can-generate-thoughts." Universal simulation machines can simulate things... universally. Now, we may not have the software architecture discovered yet, but it's certainly doable given our current hardware.

Re: New Requests for Startups

#65

Post by gaplus »

DodgyEggplant wrote: post #14

Awesome, ambitious and inspiring list of the challenges humans need to solve to move forward. One huge issue forgotten though: animals and wild life. They also inhibit our planet and part of our lives, but many quickly disappearing.

Couldn't agree more. Protecting wildlife is like protecting nature's most valuable works of art, and it's a real tragedy that they have become so marginalized in our anthropocentric system. It would be fascinating to focus on solving problems that go beyond our own species. One of the main issues is the economics of biodiversity — how do you put a price on the preservation of an ecosystem or a species? It's certainly not a straightforward answer, but it's a question that's well-worth thinking about.

Re: New Requests for Startups

#67

Post by ericHosick »

akkartik wrote: post #32

> What comes after programming languages? I've been working on this for several years, though a startup seems the wrong vehicle for it. I think the description in the RFS is misguided: "We’re interested in helping developers create better software, faster. This includes new ways to write, understand, and collaborate on code, and the next generation of tools and infrastructure for delivering software continuously and…

I'm also surprised at this one.

The software fulfillment process has a lot of issues.

We are stuck in a local maxima and jumping the chasm to the next maxima with ideas like "what comes after programming languages" is really really hard.

Sadly, one of the biggest hurdles is self preservation because software developers don't want "software development accessible to the widest part of our society". I hate to say it, but there are Luddites among us.

So, I tend to agree that a startup is the wrong vehicle for this.

> I think we have to start with reading.

I agree with this point. People understand things differently. There should be multiple ways for people to read and understand software programs. Unfortunately, there is only one major way now and that is with source code.

I do think that tools like IFTTT are moving us towards more accessibility but it is a small step.

I like what you are working. Keep the conversation going.

Re: New Requests for Startups

#68

Post by atonse »

While I've always felt a strong attraction to YCombinator (especially the cameraderie that comes from being a part of it) and been very inspired to apply, I can't help but feel that I am in a phase of life that's simply not a good fit for YC, or at least the narrative that's pushed.

I'm no longer a mid 20-something that can live on Ramen and 16 hour days. I'm married and have a young child.

Are there YC founders in this phase of life that were able to make it work in YC? What did you do differently? Is YC interested in working with these kinds of founders? (it's certainly a different kind of "Diversity")

Re: New Requests for Startups

#69

Post by walterbell »

Would the Semantic Web (e.g. vertical knowledge graphs) qualify as AI?

We need business models which support partially-open graphs, e.g. object IDs and some metadata are open, some metadata is closed via API. Open metadata can be cached offline and standardizes models within a vertical market, driving demand for paid metadata. API revenue grows as the open graph grows.

Semi-open knowledge graphs reduce the cost of adversarial algorithms. Better to have many competing skynets than one big skynet. The open part of the graph lowers the cost of consumption. Multiple, closed annotations on the graph compete to support AI use cases, and can optionally become open as value moves to higher-order representations.

Re: New Requests for Startups

#70

Post by foobarqux »

>This seems to us like something software should help solve. We’d like to see new services that make it possible to invest in super low-cost index funds (in a normal account or a retirement account), do some customization around individual stocks, and otherwise set it and forget it.

This exists already, there are a ton of discount brokers with very competitive pricing.

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