
Ask HN: Tell us about your S2017 startup - merqurio
Have you applied to S2017 batch to YC ? Tell us about your company and why should be selected to the rest of us.
======
pfraze
[https://beakerbrowser.com/](https://beakerbrowser.com/)

A peer-to-peer Web browser. We let users create and host unlimited sites from
their own devices. We think the technology can support thick hostless
applications, which eliminates data silos and makes every application forkable
from the browser. No blockchains, just an improved variant of BitTorrent
called Dat [1].

We've been quiet the last 2 months but our 0.7 release is coming up, and we're
excited about it.

1 [https://datproject.org/](https://datproject.org/)

~~~
necrodome
Opera tried that in 2009:
[http://help.opera.com/Windows/12.10/en/unite.html](http://help.opera.com/Windows/12.10/en/unite.html)

Also, there is zeronet these days. [https://zeronet.io/](https://zeronet.io/)
How are you differentiating yourself?

~~~
pfraze
I loved the premise of Unite; it was a home HTTP server with dynamic DNS via
an opera-run service. Very cool idea, but it wasn't that good of a product
experience. (Maybe somebody should try it again using Electron; "node in your
browser" isn't that bad of a pitch.)

But, one of the big problems with a bunch of home HTTP servers is
availability. The crypto-p2p network lets you push to a public peer and solve
availability and improve transfer speed, without having to change the URL.
That's a pretty big deal when you consider how unreliable the edge network is.

The other really key difference is that P2P removes the service dependency;
sites/apps sync to your device, and then use device APIs to get work done.
It's a different view of the applications model, and it means recipients can
modify the application after download. This is a really big part of our focus;
all sites and apps are user-modifiable.

Zeronet made decisions with their technology stack that I disagreed with, but
it's in spirit very near to us, and I've always loved the polish of their
applications and demos. P2P is pretty competitive right now. Some projects
involve blockchains, some involve BitTorrent, some involve IPFS. We use Dat,
and there are technical reasons behind why we chose Dat, but in the end this
space will differentiate by the end-user experience.

------
malux85
[https://signalbox.ai/](https://signalbox.ai/)

An out of the box platform to make deep learning easy. It has a drag and drop
interface, connectors for common databases and blueprints for common tasks.

SignalBox is being used for: Forex trading, Genome visualizations, customer
segmentation, large recommendation systems, fraud detection, realtime anomaly
detection, bot detection and geo-dataset market prediction.

As well as the general platform I'm getting some much larger customers onboard
where we build out their entire data environment - HDP deployments alongside
SignalBox instances work great.

We are profitable, have some great customers on board, and are growing rapidly
- and most importantly making our customers happy! :) Please reach out if you
would like to work together!

~~~
ruairidhwm
This looks really cool!

------
kbyatnal
[https://www.60secondseveryday.com](https://www.60secondseveryday.com), the
fastest way of keeping track of your memories.

You get a phone call every night and record your 60-second response to the
question "How did your day go?". From there, your response is archived into
your private online journal and displayed alongside your photos, twitter
posts, check-ins, etc from that day.

Soon, you'll start getting Flashback emails (ex. "Here's what you were doing 6
months ago") with all of those cool things so you can reflect on your past.

We want to help people stop forgetting 90% of their lives.

~~~
TeeJay942
"We want to help people stop forgetting 90% of their lives."

I also saw this tagline or similar on PH, and I got to say I'm not a fan. If
you look at everyday on it's own, for most of us, it's pretty boring stuff.
Why would I want a record of that? If something hugely important happens, sure
maybe I'll want to be able to access that memory / my thoughts at that time in
the future.

But 10 years (let alone 50) from now, I might not even know what year big
events happened. And so I'll be digging through maybe 100s of hours of
recordings/text if I'm looking for a specific event.

There's definitely some product in this space that could be great, but I don't
think 60 second recordings is it, especially without some way to filter
through the boring crap. I imagine looking through my old calendar would be
more helpful than my 60 seconds of nightly drivel.

~~~
Grustaf
Of course most of it will be "drivel", but it's _your_ drivel, the drivel that
your life is made up of. For most people that _will_ be interesting, or at
least emotional, as they look back on life later on. For starters this group
includes everyone with children. Just think of all the "pointless" photos we
take of our children, they mean so much to us.

But apart from this, very soon (if not already) it will be possible to
transcribe these messages and extract some useful metadata from it, even put
together a kind of biography. That will be interesting even to sceptics like
you!

Also consider journaling, many people, that live relatively uneventful lives,
do that. This sounds like an alternative for them.

~~~
TeeJay942
I don't journal, but from what I understand, products like the 5-minute
journal ask you to journal some things you are thankful for, something
positive/good that happened today, what you could have done better, etc.

This exercise seems more about focusing your day/priorities, clearing your
thoughts and taking some time to feel some good vibes. It's not about
remembering 100% of your life.

Yeah - If I'm going to look back on life later on at things, it will be 100x
in favor of things like my kid's photos/videos vs words I spoke that were
transcribed to text.

------
Grustaf
[http://kitex.tech](http://kitex.tech)

We're building a new type of wind turbine that generates energy using
significantly less material, making it much cheaper to install. We do this
using huge fixed wing kites made of carbon fibre, and drone technology.

~~~
contingencies
Interesting area to work in.

There's huge interest in renewables here in China and a great deal of windy
Himalayan mountain peaks that have been covered with wind generators here in
Yunnan province (far southwest China) in the recent past. Also solar and hydro
is everywhere. Lots of e-vehicles too, everything from golf buggies to cop
cars to buses to taxis to bicycles to cars to old-person mobiles to tractors.

Also coming from Australia with Scottish heritage, I wonder if you could use
this to power long distance autonomous e-vehicular trucking through remote
high wind land areas?

We also have awesome high altitude lakes for kite surfing (Fuxian in
particular), I used to sail Weta trimarans there, but sold them last year.
Motor boats are banned. You guys should come visit!

+Wiener's Eighth and Final Law: _You can never be too careful about what you
put into a digital flight-guidance system._

~~~
Grustaf
We're actually in talks with a fellow Scandinavian that lives in Yunnan right
now!

When I lived in Shaolin a long time ago I did spend some time exploring
Yunnan, the mountains are amazing, some of the most stunning views I've ever
seen. This was more than 15 years ago and there seemed to be very little
interest in electrical vehicles or renewable energy, I'm happy to hear things
have improved!

SkySails have been exploring pulling large ships with kites, but I don't think
it's very practical for trucks, then it makes more sense to go via
electricity. Apart from the impracticality, there are also pretty subtle
reasons of efficiency. They did use kites to pull vehicles in Ancient China
though!

------
xetorthio
[https://sherloq.io](https://sherloq.io) We detect and stop online hate
speech, harassment and other kinds of cyberbulluying, allowing companies to
have toxic free discussions and environments.

~~~
Meekro
I tried your demo and it worked great! I tried saying similar things to see if
it was just word matching, for example:

    
    
      "You should crawl under a rock and die." -> offensive
      "You should join a rock band, that music is to die for." -> fine
    

My only complaint with the demo is that you keep trying to refresh the result
as a I type, and I quickly overwhelm whatever rate limiting you have in place
and get a "please wait before trying again" message. If you just gave me a
"submit" button rather than refreshing as I type, that would fix it.

What I'm curious about is, how do you plan to sell this? Is reddit or HN going
to pay for it? Are you going to make a paid vBulletin plugin? Something else
I'm not thinking of?

~~~
xetorthio
That is good feedback! Thanks! We are still exploring selling ideas. We are
currently integrating Sherloq with the coral project, which will allow
companies like The Washington Post use our service. We are also exploring
online games and integration with big social networks, where we can help the
companies moderate content generated on their Facebook page, for example. Also
we are trying to contact Clever, that will allow us to offer this service for
schools. As I said, lots of possibilities. Currently trying to get as much
feedback from as many users as we can.

~~~
karthik248
Disqus integration would work well for blogs and articles.

------
mars4rp
[https://cowritestory.com](https://cowritestory.com)

CoWriteStory is a platform that let users cooperate to develop a story
collectively. Users can start a story with a paragraph or more and other users
can continue the story line that they like. Users have the opportunity to
expand their favorite branch of story or create a new branch with different
story line. Writers can get feedback from users via voting and comment system
and get reputation and badges for their contribution to the community.

~~~
ryanx435
so this is actually a relatively large market for adult themed material based
on this idea and there are several different versions out there, each with its
own focus.

I think the biggest one is
[http://www.bearchive.com/~addventure/](http://www.bearchive.com/~addventure/)

which is a better version of the original addventure
[http://www.addventure.com/](http://www.addventure.com/)

there are other, non-adult, versions as well but they don't see as much
traffic.

*i just realized i definitely went to that site to check that the link was working on my work computer, so thats going to show up as a flagged site in my history now. great :/

~~~
mars4rp
it doesn't necessarly need to be adult themed. /r/WritingPrompts/ subreddit
has more than 10.5 millions subscribers!

* sorry about that, do you want me to write to your boss ?:D

------
gfmio
Automorph - AI for software development

I'm developing a programming language called Morph inspired by LISP,
Smalltalk, Eiffel JavaScript, Python (and others). It's extendible, homoiconic
and designed to be transpiled to other languages, so that you can build entire
projects with multiple applications on separate platforms from one code base.
This is then coupled with a symbolic AI engine to generate, build and deploy
applications at an increasingly higher level of abstraction.

~~~
Grustaf
Sounds like a very interesting (and ambitious!) project, looking forward to
hearing more about it!

~~~
gfmio
I will post updates here on HN :) Stay tuned!

------
zach417
Corinthian Robotics - robots that do housework

I'm building an inexpensive, autonomous robot that take cares of your laundry.
While you're at work, it will wash your clothes, fold them, and put them away.

~~~
fudged71
I'm throwing money at the screen but nothing is happening

~~~
ParameterOne
hahahaha!

------
ChrisPodlaski
Oort - the cloud, in space.

We are building an orbital communications network and linux based satellite
operating system that lets you program your small sat in widely used
programming languages, and gives you access to unprecedented, low latency
compute and storage on orbit, and enables uninterrupted connectivity to the
ground.

~~~
elastic_church
yeah you're gonna have to define low latency here

what are you doing differently to solve the predictable latency problem?
having all the processing happening in the compute cluster so that there isn't
enough back and forth to the ground to notice?

~~~
ChrisPodlaski
Yes!

------
dzenos
[https://tuiqo.com](https://tuiqo.com)

Demo video:
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vBj8ezqLCOs](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vBj8ezqLCOs)

Tuiqo - Document versioning for humans

Tuiqo allows you to work on many versions of your text at the same time, from
within one document. It is the easiest way to revise your text and organize
document versions.

~~~
Grustaf
Beautiful and sorely needed! But how do you handle versioning (if at all), as
a separate dimension of just like the "Google" vs "Facebook" versions?

~~~
dzenos
Thank you! The current features will be the building blocks for our version
control/global revisions. We’re working on it and hope to release it soon.

------
haribabug
[https://serverlessly.io/](https://serverlessly.io/) Self Hosted Serverless
computing platform for Organizations

------
lowglow
RadBots ([http://radbots.com](http://radbots.com))

We build tools for bots. Monetization, Bot-to-bot communications, Persona
temporal key/value store, and more fun stuff coming out. :)

~~~
fudged71
I'm interested in everyone having their own personal bot, and a professional
bot, and they talk with each other behind your back finding opportunities to
collaborate without violating privacy or confidentiality as they are all
sandboxed.

~~~
lowglow
Me too! You should come out to our next Hack Day on Sunday if you're in the
bay area. We have a ton of hackers into bots, ai/ml, etc.
[https://www.facebook.com/events/103581416857634/](https://www.facebook.com/events/103581416857634/)

------
bluker
[https://www.creatorarcade.com](https://www.creatorarcade.com)

Learn to make Electronic Dance Music alongside the world's most popular Dj's
and music producers.

Apprenticeship style learning that makes learning to create music fun, easy
and accessible.

Pre-launch but if anyone wants to beta some of the content let me know. : )

~~~
larriant
Hi! I'd be keen to beta some of the content!

~~~
bluker
brock@creatorarcade.com

------
arielcamus
Microverse.

We are launching a tuition-free and remote software engineering program based
on ccollaborative and project-based learning.

Our mission is to train 1 million software engineers by 2030.

Not everyone can afford to spend thousands of dollars or was born in the right
place to get access to a college degree.

On the other hand, most people don't have the superhuman willpower to learn
alone from home watching videos online for 8 hours a day during a year.

We use Collaborative Learning (e.g. Pair programming between students) to
create a learning experience that is as supportive (e.g. Mutual
accountability) as a traditional learning experience (e.g. College or
bootcamp) and as scalable and affordable as online learning platforms (e.g.
Coursera, Udacity).

~~~
android521
great. Let's turn programming into a blue collar job. Increase supply so that
we all get paid 7$ per hour.

~~~
Grustaf
Well, to the extent that a programme such as this will increase supply, you
could argue that it's currently kept artificially low because of the costs of
education in some countries.

I don't think that is quite the situation we are in though. Computer
programming is an unusually easy industry to enter. I didn't study computer
science, only started working as a developer much later and my experience is
that potential employers and definitely clients if you're freelancing care
very little about _how_ you learned it, they just want to know _what_ you can
do. A portfolio is much more important than a diploma.

This is why i really take issue with this statement: "On the other hand, most
people don't have the superhuman willpower to learn alone from home watching
videos online for 8 hours a day during a year."

If learning programming entails you watching videos 8 hours a day for a year,
I submit you are have chosen the wrong profession. You will be competing for
jobs with people who love coding, people that it would require a "superhuman"
effort to _keep_ from programming.

Anyone with a real interest and access to a computer with internet, can
_easily_ learn to program. Not so much by watching videos full-time, but by a
combination of actually programming, reading tutorials and yes, watching some
videos.

Then there are people who are not passionate about programming, people who are
not naturals but just want a decent job. I suspect this programme is aimed at
them. There is absolutely nothing wrong with that of course, but it's unlikely
that they will be competing for the $200k jobs in Valley startups.

------
dankai
[https://plan.university](https://plan.university) \- plan.uni

A free course schedule planner for college students, platform to connect with
people within classes and soon the way graduates will find the job they are
uniquely qualified for.

Write me at kaiser@plan.university if you think your college/university would
need plan.uni as well :)

~~~
merqurio
Calendar + Social network + Job search; why the three ?

I always wanted an app that by giving it the amount of hours needed to study
each class (at home or library) scheduled the whole semester.

~~~
dankai
-Calendar to solve a real problem

-Social component for growth/network effects

-Job search to make some money

That's actually a great idea! There's already someone out there doing that:
[https://liquidti.me](https://liquidti.me)

~~~
merqurio
Awesome! thanks for sharing

------
AldousHaxley
[https://www.formgraph.com](https://www.formgraph.com) \- collaborative
creation platform

The goal is to create a social media platform that does for content creation
what previous social networks have done for distribution. Create in an open
space, collaborate dynamically, and remix any other content on the platform.

------
tmatthewj
[https://typito.com/create](https://typito.com/create) \- Help creators
produce videos for web fast and easy. Provide them with simplified online
work-flows to publish videos that give better ROI on online platforms like
YouTube and Facebook.

You can check out the demo -
[https://typito.com/demo](https://typito.com/demo). The tool currently helps
with one use-case - adding good-looking motion titles, images and text
animations on your video before publishing on YouTube with a few clicks.
Adding these elements, we have seen, improve the watch time and engagement on
YouTube videos and hence give better ROI.

We went live 5 weeks back and have 15 active users (who publish more than 4
videos / month via Typito), mostly YouTube creators - the market we are
looking at.

------
jkhtaria
[http://www.poundaweek.ca/](http://www.poundaweek.ca/)

A smart calorie counter app with AI - Analyzes the foods you eat, how active
you are and the progress you make to automatically set nutrition targets
designed for you, every single week.

We've helped users lose over 20,000 lbs.

~~~
blizkreeg
how do you guys do things differently compared to MyFitnessPal? I recently
started using MFP and it's been useful in that I know how much I'm eating
(whereas previously I was just wrongly guesstimating with some mental math).

I love your concept, just curious what sets it apart.

~~~
jkhtaria
Other Calorie Counters - Set your diet targets once based on a generic
formula.

Poundaweek - Uses Artificial Intelligence to update your nutrition targets
EVERY week.

Other Calorie Counters - Don't provide any coaching. If you get stuck before
reaching your weight goal you are on your own.

Poundaweek - Learns from you and provides personalized weekly reports, so you
continue making progress towards your weight goal.

~~~
AznHisoka
FYI, you will probably hear from 1000+ more people asking the same question:
Why not use MyFitnessPal? My advice? Don't compete against them. Everyone,
from moms to entrepreneurs to wall street folks use them, know them, and
recommends them. They're too big, and you need to be 10X better to go up
against them, and even then it might not be enough.

~~~
jkhtaria
I feel like that is there biggest weakness, they are too big. There is lots of
room for advancement in this area and they are far too comfortable. There
calorie counter is also critically flawed, when a user plateaus and stops
losing weight they are left in the dark, also they may not lose any weight at
all based on there estimate and carry on eating the incorrect number of
calories for far longer than they should, this happened to me personally
before I built Poundaweek. Also the amount of calories the other apps
recommend is static, and only adds calories based off of very flawed estimates
of calories burned from exercises. Poundaweek learns and adjusts dynamically
and specifically for each individual user as well as letting you know why and
what you can do to keep on track towards your goal.

~~~
blizkreeg
I feel like you're up against an app that's synonymous with tracking
food/calories. However, if your app does indeed do what you say well, you have
something. However, in my opinion, initially you would be better off going
after users who don't use MFP or any app than convincing them to convert.
Though I'm only a two-week user of MFP, there's too much switching cost I
feel. And I'd really have to hear good things about it from others/in the news
to convince me to switch at this point.

~~~
jkhtaria
I'm going after anybody that wants to lose weight safely and consistently, the
people that don't know how much of what to eat every week and the people that
get stuck after using other calorie counters. Simply put Poundaweek works and
continues to work - It was built out my own frustrations with the other
calorie counters that stop working or never worked at all.

~~~
blizkreeg
I'm going to download and try it out. Saw some great reviews on the play
store. When is the iOS version coming out?

~~~
jkhtaria
Thanks! If I get selected by YC - sooner rather than later. It's a one man
show presently, would love to get the iOS version out this year.

------
alehul
Haul will be a city marketplace of local retailers' stock with on-demand
delivery, offering an alternative to shipping.

The goal is to offer products more reliably and quickly than Amazon or
individual companies' online stores while charging less than the user would've
paid for shipping. Each city will have a separate marketplace with immediately
deliverable inventory. The model largely prevents against counterfeits,
enables delivery within an hour, and more.

We also have plans with some retailers to offer an alternative to lugging bags
around after shopping in-store, via using "HaulHome" at checkout to have your
purchase delivered home within a timeframe you specify.

Would love to receive input from the community here!

------
ruairidhwm
[https://brandfox.io](https://brandfox.io)

A way for Instagram users to sell their photos to brands who want authentic
stock photos. We're also building an influencer search/compare/booking engine.

------
firefoxd
[https://renly.co](https://renly.co)

We connect people who have space with people who want space. For now we
started with the service industries such as beauty salons and fitness.

------
tananaev
[https://www.traccar.org/](https://www.traccar.org/)

The company is based around Traccar open source GPS tracking system. Providing
SaaS and professional services to our customers. We develop everything from
back-end to mobile apps.

Although we don't use any machine learning at the moment, GPS tracking is a
great area for it. If we get funding, that can be one of the directions for
future development.

------
chair-law
[https://appointmesh.com](https://appointmesh.com)

We make it easy to schedule group meetings with up to 10 other people.

~~~
kevinstubbs
Just curious, why is the limit 10 (and not say 11) and why have a limit at
all?

~~~
scottbcovert
Sorry, has to be
done...[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4xgx4k83zzc](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4xgx4k83zzc)

~~~
conjectures
If you hadn't, I would have had to.

------
918pitman
SnapCycle is a modular personal transport vehicle. Can be reconfigured into an
ebike, self balancing board, skateboard, and multiple variations of each. All
existing electric personal transporters utilize the same tech and components
but have only one possible configuration. Our modular system allows one to
ride a bike to work and a skateboard home.

------
LAMike
[http://www.askscip.com/](http://www.askscip.com/)

Priceline for Uber and Lyft. Location and price comparison for your ride
within walking distance.

Since transportation is usually a top 5 expense for most people, and more
people give up their car for ridesharing services, saving 10% on your rides
could save you hundreds of dollars every year.

~~~
merqurio
How are you checking the prices? Via API ?

~~~
Hydraulix989
If so, I'd be concerned about getting banned by Uber/Lyft.

------
getnorby
This is an awesome thread! Very inspiring. Has anyone that applied received an
invite to interview yet?

------
sumedhras
Super inspiring thread! has anyone else received an email asking to schedule a
video interview? Is this a good or bad thing??

------
ParameterOne
ParameterOne/Drop#

We are going to send out a "one time use" Sim Card sticker to registered
voters that you can stick on your regular sim card and Vote in the next
election from your phone. Great for absentee ballots, disabled community, lazy
people :-)

~~~
kleer001
is it recyclable?

~~~
ParameterOne
That is a great question. It is plastic, so I would assume it is but I will
confirm as well as find out if they are made from recycled material. Thanks
for the comment!

------
mrieck
[http://www.superanimo.com](http://www.superanimo.com)

HTML5 cartoon and gif editor.

It's a little buggy, but I'm trying to clean it up and turn it into a hybrid
mobile app. I did not apply to YC this time.

------
ajayk1931
[https://www.generisk.org](https://www.generisk.org)

We generate a personalized autism genetic profile to drive personalized
intervention decisions.

------
brunock222
Cool thread, very inspiring! No one else? :-)

~~~
ParameterOne
Mine ended up in the middle instead of at the end of the thread....why does it
do that?

~~~
TeeJay942
It's probably an algorithm to get you some decent % of views early on to see
what % of upvotes you get so it can move your post up or down accordingly.

