
YC W17 Launch: Hogaru, Elemeno Health, Playment, Hivy, and Bulk MRO - craigcannon
https://blog.ycombinator.com/yc-w17-launch-hogaru-elemeno-health-playment-hivy-and-bulk-mro/
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nodesocket
Curious how a cleaning company (Hogaru) basically identical to Homejoy that
shut down and failed can simply focus on another market (country) and still
get into YC? If it doesn't work in the US (arguably the best market in the
world), what conditions make it more likely to succeed in South America?

FYI, I spent 2 months in Chile as a digital nomad, and quite honestly most
people in South America don't have a lot of disposable income. House cleaning
is definitely a luxury item there, way less common than the US.

There is also a German startup Helpling doing the exact thing for the German
market (which in my opinion is a better market).
[https://www.helpling.de](https://www.helpling.de)

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bjshepard
The world will not be accommodating to startups associated with an
organization with obvious bad ethics. Thiel helped get a fascist into office.
AirBnb is complicit in eviction. This is less political than business advice
for anyone. The US brand is very tainted, the SV brand more tainted, the YC
brand most tainted.

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chatmasta
Isn't Playment a direct competitor to another YC company, ScaleAPI? How often
does YC invest in competitors?

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rezashirazian
Interesting to see more focus on non-American markets in this batch.

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nostrademons
I think this has been a trend over the last few batches. PG has a tweet in
early 2015 (?) where he said something like "Interesting how many YC founders
in the latest batch are international. We may have reached a tipping point."

Makes sense, we're in-between technology cycles here in Silicon Valley, and so
until the next big paradigm is invented, much of the many will be made through
diffusion of existing technology to new markets. Some of that may come through
application to domestic industries that have historically been slow on the
technology uptake (eg. Elemeno, Hivy), and much of it will be abroad (Hogaru,
Bulk MRO).

