
The Top 7 Startups From Y Combinator’s Winter ’13 Demo Day - nickfrost
http://techcrunch.com/2013/03/26/top-y-combinator-startups/
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dantiberian
"If it can sell a $12,000 a year license to just the top 1 percent of the 2
million U.S. e-commerce market, it could start earning $240 million a year and
help a new wave of commerce entrepreneurs succeed."

I thought that the 1% fallacy had been busted well and truly by now. Not sure
whether this was added by TechCrunch or was in their presentation.

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gav
This also ignores reality; the top 500 retailers account for around 75% of the
market, the rest make up a really long tail. After the top 1000 or so you're
looking at retailers who make around $12,000 in revenue a month.
Optimistically you're looking at $6MM a year vs. $240MM.

I'd also worry that this data is more valuable if all your competitors don't
have it. If you look at the Amazon Marketplace it's commonly a race to the
bottom.

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lazyjones
> fter the top 1000 or so you're looking at retailers who make around $12,000
> in revenue a month.

From our experience as a CSE, these numbers are way off. There's a lot more
than 1000 retailers making a lot more than $12,000 per month, even in smaller
markets than the US where not the top 500, but the top 20 or so account for
75% of the (e-commmerce) market. There's a huge number of (more than
$12,000/month revenue) brick & mortar stores out there with a humble online
presence but whose investments are focused on increasing e-commerce revenue.

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EvanKelly
As disappointed as I am that FlightCar isn't actually a flying car startup, I
love the idea. I would love to see the monetization of more of my unused
resources in the future. Why does everyone on my street own their own lawn
mower? I think this company orchestrated co-op idea is the future of a lot of
resource sharing.

I'm amazed they've gotten it off the ground considering all the potential
legal/insurance hurdles. I'd use this tomorrow if it were at my home airport.

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prawn
"I would love to see the monetization of more of my unused resources in the
future."

AirBnB for storage of furniture and household goods?

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caseysoftware
That's what Sparefoot does.

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borski
I'm really surprised not to see Zenefits on this list. We've been working with
them for the past few months and they've been absolutely incredible to work
with. They also had cheaper quotes for us than SimplyInsured.

I'd be more than happy to chat with anyone else about it, but I can't say
enough good things about Parker, Zenefits, and the crew over there.

Just my $.02.

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bradgessler
Same. I just started working with them a few weeks ago and they're awesome.

I would speculate that a Techcrunch writer has probably not felt the pain of
administering payroll and benefits for a small and medium sized company.
Nothing is worse than logging into ADP of Paychex, and that's one of many
functions that Zenfits makes suck less.

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edouard1234567
I'm a big fan of flight-car. Not only you make money renting your car you also
save money not paying for parking or a cab! They "killed two birds with one
stone" (sorry for the morbid idiom)... They mention in this article that they
are tapping into two markets, "airport parking" and "car rental" market but I
actually think that a lot of people taking a cab or a Uber could use this
service instead.

I'll try it next time I travel...

One thing is not clear to me : does a "valet" pick up my car at the airport of
do I have to drop it off at their parking near the airport?

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rujulz
Great to hear you're a fan of our service! Yes, you come to our location ~5min
away from the terminal, and we'll have a black car drop you off right at the
curb. We're working on a valet option; it's a bit more complicated as it
requires infrastructure at the airport itself, but we're working on it.

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changdizzle
i just signed up today for this thursday at 6AM - will someone be available to
drop me off at the airport then? will the parking lot be open also?

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kevinpetrovic
Yes! We're open 24/7!

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earbitscom
I would be interested to see how TCs top startups from demo day have actually
fared over time.

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graycat
On FlightCar, I would suggest:

First, we have to notice the nature of the customer 'load', e.g., on their
shuttle car/bus, front desk, rental operation, etc. That is, this load has
peaks and valleys, some fairly predictable based on airline schedules, some
based on weather, and some just 'random' things independent of anything in the
past available to be used as a predictor.

Second, for such a load, there nevertheless will be a strong effect from the
law of large numbers that as the load increases the standard deviation of the
load will become a smaller and smaller fraction of the average load. That is,
a large load is much more predictable than a small load.

Third, then, for efficiency in staffing, shuttle cars/buses, happy customers,
etc. want a large load.

Fourth, notice that the customers who leave their cars are likely residents of
the area surrounding the airport. I.e., if Joe lives in Kansas City and flies
to Los Angeles, maybe that means he wants to leave his car at the Kansas City
location, that is, use the service in Kansas City, but does not much mean he
wants to use it in Los Angeles.

Fifth, notice that a location of FlightCar in Kansas City is not in much
competition with a competitor in, say, Cleveland. That is, this business is
heavily geographically local.

So, net, for a large load, for repeat customers at a location, and to defend
against competition at a location, want to concentrate on that location and do
well there before moving to another location. So, this business can have a
fairly strong geographical barrier to entry. That is, it is basically a local
business. So, a 'big national or international rollout' should be delayed in
favor of just doing well one city at a time.

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olalonde
Does YC plan to make a financial return on its Watsi investment? If so, how do
they plan to do so given that it's a non-profit?

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pg
No. The money we gave them was a donation, not an investment in the sense of
buying stock.

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clicks
Do you anticipate having more non-profit startups in YC in the future? Are you
curious to see any other specific charity model put to work that we maybe
haven't seen before?

Watsi was pretty novel I thought (and wonderfully implemented). You must be
very proud of what it was able to accomplish.

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pg
Yes, probably. Thanks!

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kaiserama
I really like FlightCar in theory, but I'd never actually allow my car to be
rented to someone I don't know (and even to some people I DO know). I realize
they provide wear/tear and mechanical insurance, but I don't think $10/day in
gas money is worth the hassle of potentially having to have my clutch repaired
or new brake rotors installed for someone who rides both my clutch and brakes.
But maybe this is geared more for someone who buys an econobox and doesn't
care?

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emmett
I doubt they'd LET you rent a manual out. Generally rental places only allow
automatics. If you have a special car that you love, probably not great. If
you're one of the great majority that buys a Civic/Camry/Focus/etc. then it's
not like driving your car takes any special skill.

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davmre
They actually do rent manual cars: I searched a random day in April and 3 of
the 10 cars available are manuals
([https://flightcar.com/cars/SFO/2013-04-02%2012:00:00/2013-04...](https://flightcar.com/cars/SFO/2013-04-02%2012:00:00/2013-04-03%2012:00:00/)).
This seems like a great benefit if you're looking to rent a manual car, since
car-rental places don't usually offer them.

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emmett
Huh! Shows I should look before I speak!

That's very cool. I wouldn't rent my manual though, heh.

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reso
No one who's met the Thalmic guys thinks they're going anywhere but up.

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anonfunction
My favorite would have to be Watsi, which PG described as YC's first company
that’s “intentionally” not-for-profit.

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kyro
I'm really glad to see YC investing in more health startups. Paul, given the
heavy regulations and liabilities, are there any areas of health/medicine that
you guys try to steer clear of? You guys have invested in startups doing both
EMRs and health insurance, so my guess would be not really.

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rdl
I've never seen YC fund a regulated medical device (well, other than IT
systems, which are very very loosely regulated vs. something like a stent or
ortho screws), let alone a drug company.

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da3da
My guess would be this is more for capital reasons than legal ones. It is
extremely expensive to form a company of either type. I think the standard
drug pipeline costs somewhere between 10s of millions to billions of dollars
per drug. I'd imagine that the cost for medical device development and
approval is similar.

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rdl
Medical devices are 1-3 years vs. 5-15 years (orphan drugs are actually pretty
fast now), and 1-2 orders of magnitude less capital.

Medical devices would be just on the upper bound of what I think YC could do.
The right way is probably to do an unregulated "fitness" or "convenience"
product, which later has regulated-medical-device functionality. Defer the
compliance parts until the product itself is proven.

There are plenty of "small business" ($1-5mm in personal-recourse debt) type
medical device entrepreneurs. US and Israel seem to be the two big markets for
developing them. Surprisingly, a lot come from people outside the medical
professions.

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da3da
Ah, thanks for that info, I wasn't aware that the time from development to
deployment was that low now.

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rdl
There are ways to fast-track in the US and other countries.

A medical device which had applicability to the military (specifically, IEDs,
TBI, PTSD, eye/hearing protection or remediation of damage, traumatic
amputations, or prosthetics) would largely avoid the FDA, too. There is going
to be _so much money_ in improving the lives of wounded veterans from
Iraq/Afghanistan for the next 50 years, and it's going to be one of those
cases where money you earn is also related to a societal benefit.

If I were in biotech/biomed or robotics, that'd be what I'd want to do; the
only comparable-scale problems are reducing cost of care for everyone and
dealing with an increasingly elderly population.

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42tree
Anyone has any rationale why some companies still prefer to remain in stealth
mode on demo day? I'm confused by the "ideas are dime a dozen, execution is
all that matters", "do not sign NDA" and the fact that in almost every batch
of YCs, some companies still remain in stealth mode on demo day.

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gbelote
It's not because YC companies are in stealth, but announcing you're a part of
YC is a newsworthy event, and that can be used tactically in coordination with
something else. For example, launching a new product or campaign.

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frostmatthew
Surprised PayTango didn't make the list - seems to be a great way to both
reduce fraud and increase convenience.

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6thSigma
I'd be interested to know what specific things YC helped Watsi with.

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austenallred
Does anyone have any idea as to the companies that remained in stealth on demo
day?

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mrwhy2k
Well they are in stealth... so commenting on them on hacker news or in public
forums would go against the whole stealth mode concept PG put in place.

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austenallred
Fair enough. My bad.

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lquist
What's with all the hype around Watsi? A non profit oriented approach to
poverty is doomed to forever be nothing more than a vanity exercise. The scale
of resources needed to attack the problems of poverty can only come from two
places: governments or capital markets. Historically, governments have shown
themselves to not be terribly able in this regard.

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pg
They're not trying to fix poverty itself. They're trying to fix the medical
problems of people who are poor.

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lquist
The same criticism applies: attempts to solve the problems (e.g., medical) of
poverty in non-scalable ways are futile at best.

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rdl
There are a lot of people who are economically marginal but potentially rising
with the tide, who suffer a medical ailment or other specific setback, and
then end up essentially doomed (along with their kids, etc.). I mean, look at
the...50% (? I forget the real number) of bankruptcies caused by medical bills
in the US, where even poor people are essentially rich.

Solving someone's one-time problem for $500-1000 and letting him and his
family get back to growing along with the rest of their economy seems anything
but futile.

