"Infection resistant materials" are sorely needed, especially in catheterization (which seems to be the initial use case). I wish the team all the success in the world, even if they don't make it to YC this time around.
[deleted]
Poll: Apply HN Runoff – Which two startups should YCF fund?
91–100 of 288 posts
Re: Poll: Apply HN Runoff – Which two startups should YCF fund?
#92Let me be the first to say what a lot of my startup/YC dork friends are only going to say privately on Slack:
If you're not going give Pinboard one of the two HN/YCF slots, because Maciej is HN-famous or too well-established, then just make a third slot for him. This is the cheapest access you will ever get to Maciej Ceglowski.
YC came up with an interesting idea and actually tried it. Something interesting happened as a result. Let's see where it goes!
Re: Poll: Apply HN Runoff – Which two startups should YCF fund?
#93> (Unnamed): Infection-resistant materials for preventing infections Why not give it a temp name for now? Seems strange to leave it unnamed
That was my bad, I forgot to list it on the application. We've been using the name Feynman Nano as a way of paying respect to the godfather of nanoscience and the first nanoscience entreprenuer (or so I've been told, haven't been able to verify).
Re: Poll: Apply HN Runoff – Which two startups should YCF fund?
#94Earlier quoted context omitted.
"Septiphobic Materials" seems to be free
While that's a technically accurate name (in much the same way an "oleophobic" coating can help keep oil off lenses), I don't think you'd want to build a company around something with "phobic" in the name.
Have no fear for fear is here?
Re: Poll: Apply HN Runoff – Which two startups should YCF fund?
#95Edit: This may have come across as too terse to pass the not-just-civil-but-nice test so I've added more explanation to my choices I wasn't following the initial wave of submissions so here's my fresh-eyes take on the finalists. I'd particularly like to see other people's assessments of the whole field (vs individual submissions) Not Ambitious Enough: These are in competitive spaces -- even if they delivered on their…
Bcoates,
At Utiliz we have spent a significant amount of time looking at the energy market, average usage and addressable customers and our estimate on savings is more than a few dollars. Kevin came up with this idea after saving a few hundred last year through frequent switching. We estimate we can save the average household on the order of $150-300/year, at a cost of $30. It's free money, and that doesn't include the time we save people having to do it themselves. The bigger ambition is that by doing this we rationalize the chaotic consumer electricity market, force bad suppliers out, reduce electricity rates through broker negotation on our increasing client book, and finally help states deliver on the promise of deregulation. That is the moon shot
You can categorize the potential customers into 4 main cohorts: (1) Educated and spend time every few months finding the best plan and enjoy it - we will never get these guys (2) Educated and spend time every few months finding the best plan and hate it - we will win all of these - Kevin lives here (3) Educated and keep forgetting to switch on time - we will win all of these - Tom lives here (4) Not educated and need to better understand the whole process - this is a massive cohort where we can probably win 25 - 50%
Happy to continue the discussion
Tom
Re: Poll: Apply HN Runoff – Which two startups should YCF fund?
#96Let me be the first to say what a lot of my startup/YC dork friends are only going to say privately on Slack: If you're not going give Pinboard one of the two HN/YCF slots, because Maciej is HN-famous or too well-established, then just make a third slot for him. This is the cheapest access you will ever get to Maciej Ceglowski. YC came up with an interesting idea and actually tried it. Something interesting happened…
This is the cheapest access you will ever get to Maciej Ceglowski.
But do they want access to Maciej Ceglowski? They didn't want access to me, even after I promised that I would refrain from providing any marketing advice; and I'd like to think that I could be a helpful member of the community.
(Which, incidentally, is why you don't see Tarsnap on this list. I figured that since YC had decided that they didn't want to award a fellowship, the best possible outcome of submitting Tarsnap here would be that YC gets pushed into funding someone they didn't want to fund... and I want to see Apply HN be a success, so I didn't want to sabotage it like that.)
Re: Poll: Apply HN Runoff – Which two startups should YCF fund?
#97Earlier quoted context omitted.
I fully expect Krewe to become a unicorn. Who wouldn't want a group of great friends in their neighborhood they could see all the time and build a tight-knit community around? The most valuable thing any of us has is the close relationships with the people we know. If Krewe succeeds in helping you have more of those relationships, then that's worth more than anything you could ever buy in a store. Your best friends a…
I admire your optimism, but statements like "Who wouldn't want X?" are inherently naive. When you ask people if they'd want X, they generally answer yes. What matters is what people will actually do , and I don't think it's possible to build a product like yours without a very keen understanding of that.
I'm well aware. I don't often pitch it like that. It's only in the context of whether Krewe can be a unicorn do I bring it up. There are 60 million people in the US alone who say they're lonely. I think it's safe to say that those people could use a few more friends they have access to. But I haven't found it to be a hard convince any one else how much better their life would be if they had many more close connections. The problem is just getting enough people to listen.
Re: Poll: Apply HN Runoff – Which two startups should YCF fund?
#98Edit: This may have come across as too terse to pass the not-just-civil-but-nice test so I've added more explanation to my choices I wasn't following the initial wave of submissions so here's my fresh-eyes take on the finalists. I'd particularly like to see other people's assessments of the whole field (vs individual submissions) Not Ambitious Enough: These are in competitive spaces -- even if they delivered on their…
+1 on the problem with a law startup. A couple of years ago I went to some law firms and asked about their need for search over all their documents. They weren't really interested in it as they can bill out s librarian at $125/hR while paying them $45/hr. So they actually make money on this.
That isn't to say this can change in the future but until then it is a very hard market to crack.
Oh and lawyers are cheap, many of them still use word perfect as why pay to upgrade?
Re: Poll: Apply HN Runoff – Which two startups should YCF fund?
#99[deleted]
Re: Poll: Apply HN Runoff – Which two startups should YCF fund?
#100Earlier quoted context omitted.
The obvious outcome is that issuing a g-buck is going to immediately result in depleting USD reserves by a dollar as soon as the g-buck is spent. It's kind of the opposite of that. Every time a GD is spent, it protects our USD reserves by resetting the expiration time on the GD. Anything that inhibits immediate redemption for USD is going to inhibit adoption. I don't think adoption is a huge obstacle. The plan is to…
Many business have a net-30 policy, so they will not mind sitting on the GD for 30 days until they convert to 30 dollars. I'll copy a comment from other user: > What happens if there's a "bank run" where everyone waits for their GD to mature rather than spending it? In a normal "bank run", the people are afraid that if they don't exchange the bad currency now at a discount, they will get a worse exchange later. But i…
In a normal "bank run", the people are afraid that if they don't exchange the bad currency now at a discount, they will get a worse exchange later. But in this case there is a guaranty that waiting only 30 days they will be converted to dollars.
Hmm. Not exactly. Initially, this is true, but that's just an early part of the bootstrapping process. Further down the road, the total amount of GD will be greater than the amount of USD in our reserves. At that point, if everyone decides to sit on their GD at once, not all of it will convert because we would run out of USD reserves.
But this is what makes Greshm Dollar shine. If people don't trust their GD to convert to USD in 30 days, the only way for them to get rid of it is to spend it. By spending GD , they cause the GD's expiration to reset thereby protecting our USD reserves.