
Updated Request for Startups - craigcannon
https://blog.ycombinator.com/updated-request-for-startups/
======
tptacek
Try to remember that this is probably just a marketing document for YC. It's
aspirationally what they'd like people to think about YC startups. There's not
much point in debating it. If you have a good idea in almost any field,
they're going to consider it.

With 25 categories, their cost to saying "we'd like YC to help end global
warming" is zero. As the world's leading early-stage investment vehicle, the
cost to them leaving out, say, adtech is also zero: the same people will apply
either way.

~~~
rayalez
Baseless cynicism is not helpful.

Technically you aren't false, this could be just a PR thing, but why would you
assume that?

"YC requests these startups because they want these startups" is a much
simpler explanation than "YC requests these startups as a marketing ploy".

I don't see a good reason to be so skeptical, so I will go ahead and take this
post at face value.

Obviously everyone should think for themselves, and if your startup doesn't
fit these categories you should apply anyway (as the article says). I'm just
saying that assuming they're being honest here is valuable to me, as a
guideline for thinking about startup ideas and YC's vision for the future.

Dismissing this stuff (without a good, specific argument) would hurt more than
it helps.

~~~
grzm
It's always interesting to see how different people read the same text. The
sentences I focussed on were:

> _" There's not much point in debating it. If you have a good idea in almost
> any field, they're going to consider it."_

And I read them as basically saying (a) if you're working on something cool
that's not on this list, don't let that prevent you from applying as it's
likely not a list of criteria; and (b) while it might be a jumping off point
for conversation, it's likely missing the intent if you spend much time
criticizing what's omitted and included.

------
endlessvoid94
> The world’s financial systems are increasingly unable to meet the demands of
> consumers and businesses.

I would love to learn more about this. Precisely what needs are the world's
financial systems unable to meet?

~~~
jjeaff
In my opinion, the main issue with many financial services today is heavy
regulation.

This may be good regulation and necessary, but it makes it very difficult for
consumers to do simple things like transferring money and setup accounts.
Especially for lower income people who tend to have difficulty getting
together all the required identification and documentation.

And it seems that any "innovation" in this regard will be companies attempting
to skirt these regulations, only to be eventually reined in when they get
popular enough to be used for fraud or other nefarious purposes.

~~~
toomuchtodo
The solution to this is simple: allow the USPS to offer banking services to
the unbanked. This is what other first world countries do, but for political
reasons, we don't do it in the US [1]. Financial regulation is not going away,
and the issues you see with cryptocurrency make it glaringly obvious why
regulations exist in the first place.

That's what's so discouraging about a lot of these issues. They're hacks
around political apathy, the chances of success are low (to this day I still
use the Standard Treasury and BankSimple outcomes as what happens when you go
up against the banking industry).

Why YC doesn't stop skirting the issue and align with political
representatives and parties that are congruent with the values they're
attempting to push through funding is beyond me. They've already chosen a side
(looking for solutions for climate change, animal welfare, support of the
arts/creators, sustainable use of planetary resources), embrace it fully. If
YC wants to create a legacy, they should aim to obsolete themselves by working
towards public policy that removes the risk inherant with becoming an
entrepreneur (funding, health insurance, derisking opportunity cost, etc).

[1]
[https://www.google.com/search?q=usps+banking+services](https://www.google.com/search?q=usps+banking+services)

[1a]
[https://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2015/10/bernie-...](https://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2015/10/bernie-
sanders-lets-turn-post-offices-into-banks/411589/)

Full disclosure: I work for a financial utility in risk management.

~~~
peacetreefrog
The USPS lost $2.7B last year, even though it has a monopoly on mail. Why
anyone would want to give it more responsibility is beyond me.

~~~
mschuster91
> The USPS lost $2.7B last year, why anyone would want to give it more
> responsibility is beyond me.

The loss comes from having to serve literally the entire country by law. A
postal service in cities is profitable - a postal service that has to serve
even the remotest ditch in the deepest desert of a flyover state with daily
mail will always incur loss. And that is what society is for: to bear the cost
of providing everyone in the country with affordable mail.

To add banking services to the unbanked (or those who do not trust the
megabanks any more, given their historic lack of customer support and
historically low image) is something that can very well be used to offset
these losses.

~~~
peacetreefrog
So the postal service loses money because it's mandated by law that it has to
serve the entire country. But mandating that it has to provide banking
services for the entire country is going to save money? Ok.

~~~
wlesieutre
When you receive a money transfer does your bank send a truck out to your
remote mountaintop cabin to drop it in your mailbox?

Providing basic banking services at a post office is not nearly as big a
proposition as delivering mail to every address in the country.

Plus banking services are touched less frequently than mail. I get junk mail
every day. I don't know the exact logistics of what they're suggesting, but I
have a hard time seeing how it could be as expensive as mail delivery.

------
justcheck
I am hesitant to ask this as it seems you only hear about young folks being
accepted into YC and succeeding. But I also know that YC thinks differently -
so here goes:

I am a 62 year old solo founder working on my fifth startup - all have been
bootstrapped and successful to varying degrees. How much does age factor into
YC's acceptance decision - if at all. What is the oldest founder YC has ever
accepted? Thanks!

~~~
icebraining
Well, the oldest founder in the 2015 Winter batch (first I could find data on)
was 66: [https://phaven-
prod.s3.amazonaws.com/files/image_part/asset/...](https://phaven-
prod.s3.amazonaws.com/files/image_part/asset/1364942/Lmk2_Us--
C7NsS4g6iJGzQbXU_8/YC-infographic_v4.png)

~~~
chvid
But most are 20-30 ...

~~~
singold
I dont have the data but probably most applicants are 20-30 too.

------
rubidium
This list always strikes me as a remarkable assembly of the cultural norms
important to the "ycombinator" demographic.

To me it reads as an eclectic mix of academic, governmental, business and
technology opinions in the guise of startup ideas. Not that there's anything
wrong with that... ycombinator is free to invest in the areas it cares about.
But it is very isolated from my own cultural experience of what matters and
makes a real difference in the world.

~~~
trevyn
> _my own cultural experience of what matters and makes a real difference in
> the world._

Could you elaborate?

~~~
steveklabnik
Not your parent, but I come from a pretty rural area, which is what a lot of
people would call the "real world." The people who live there certainly would.

Many startups are 100% irrelevant there. Take huge poster children like Uber,
for example: everyone has a car already, as it's basically mandatory. Or
smaller startups, like Slice, for example. I live in NYC. I have lots of pizza
options. I love pizza. In my hometown, there are two pizza places. You don't
really need reviews, you order from one, and if you don't like it, well, you
have the other one.

Now, that's not to say that there are _zero_ startups that do; not that
Facebook or Twitter are exactly "startups" today, but when they were, they
still had a big impact. But a _lot_ of startups are focused on "upper middle
class people who live in population centers". That's a lot of people, but it
also leaves a lot of people out.

~~~
moultano
> _which is what a lot of people would call the "real world."_

[https://www.citylab.com/equity/2012/03/us-urban-
population-w...](https://www.citylab.com/equity/2012/03/us-urban-population-
what-does-urban-really-mean/1589/)

80% of the population lives in urban areas, and this fraction is increasing,
so it's unsurprising that most companies target them.

~~~
steveklabnik
I don't disagree. At the same time, the long tail is something startups claim
to be good at, generally...

------
namanyayg
Self-taught non-US teenager here, created this with a co-founder & friend:
[https://financi.io/](https://financi.io/) \-- we're an open, anonymous, and
inclusive marketplace for creators to collect payments for their premium
content through cryptocurrencies.

It is currently being used by adult entertainers, which didn't bring in as
much money as we expected, so we plan to pivot and add nsfw filtering options
(a la Safe Search) amongst other features before applying to YC. Any other
tips to improve our application?

P.s. I wrote all the code for financi and will be happy to answer any
questions in comments or `mail@${username}.com`.

------
runevault
I find it interesting on the support creators side it is purely about easing
getting money. That is certainly important, but I feel like it ignores
exploring more ways to ease the act of creation, giving ways to increase rate
of creation or improve ability to prepare etc.

We developers create a lot of this sort of stuff to make our own jobs easier,
but other types of creatives don't necessarily have the ability to explore the
same space for their own work. I think there are opportunities there to be
explored, if we can just find the right places to inject possibility. I have
one idea I'm working towards now for writers (as that's my secondary interest
after dev) but I bet there are ways to help musicians, painters, etc as well
we haven't even begun to dream of yet.

~~~
codingdave
The problem in that space has nothing to do with money or reaching fans. It is
that to succeed as an artist via online tools, your primary skill must be
marketing. All the existing sites bring success not to the best creators, but
to the best marketers of their creations.

Or, I guess I should say, reaching fans is the problem... but it isn't
correlated with the quality of your work.

------
tayyabmh
Has YC ever provided the data around how many RFS startups get funded? What
they attempted to do (starting biz model)? What they learned? Etc. I feel like
this would be really interesting information to study.

------
cryptoz
Was RFS Water removed from the list? I tried to apply for RFS Water last year,
and while it was on this list, it wasn't in the application page dropdown when
you actually apply. I emailed YC and asked about it, and was told it would be
added shortly.

Looking now, I can't find any trace it ever existed. Was RFS Water deleted?
The URL used to be
[http://www.ycombinator.com/rfs/#water](http://www.ycombinator.com/rfs/#water).
Thanks!

~~~
katm
If you're working on a water startup, and you'd like to apply to YC, you
should still do it. You can apply to YC with any type of company -- it doesn't
have to line up with an RFS. Our blog post for water startups is still out
there -- it's just not a current RFS. As I mentioned in a comment above, this
isn't an exhaustive list of the ideas we'd like to fund.

~~~
cryptoz
Well, I think there's a lot of promise in weather modification for the
purposes of transporting fresh water long distances. I'm probably not ready to
apply right now for that idea, but if someone is out there working on that,
good job and we should chat.

~~~
anubisresources
Looking at shooting silver iodide pellets up in the sky or painting deserts
black? Lots of issues with weather modification. Virtual water is the most
cost effective way to transport water, by far, unless you have some crazy new
product

------
gustaf
I'm very excited about this. Happy to answer any questions about Carbon
Removal Technologies or Cellular Agriculture and Clean Meat

~~~
Gravityloss
I'm surprised you think carbon removal from the atmosphere is relevant.

Just from a physics perspective, a dollar invested into substituting coal
burning is likely to be many orders of magnitude more effective than first
burning the coal to CO2, diluting it to 400 parts per million in the
atmosphere, concentrating that CO2 back to some high percentage, maybe turn it
CO2 to some higher density form of carbon again etc.

Every step requires a lot of effort, capital and energy.

The best way to store carbon is coal. And it's already there, in the ground.

~~~
durkie
I think the transition to near 100% renewable technologies is a foregone
conclusion at this point: the economics of carbon-based fuels basically don't
make sense any more, and it's just a matter of transitioning away. Natural gas
has already basically killed coal and that transition is well under way, and
renewables+batteries are now starting to eclipse natural gas peaker plants,
transportation, etc.

But there's still 200 years of carbon emissions in the atmosphere to deal
with.

~~~
dbmikus
Yeah, but if you're going for most bang for your buck, improving and making
accessible renewable tech is still better value. I also think you'll have an
easier route to profitability with alternative fuel over carbon removal.

Ultimately, I think carbon removal will be a necessary technology if we want
to maintain a similar climate to what we have now, but it's farther out there.
Would be awesome to see something come out though!

------
zach
Wow, surprised to see “One Million Jobs” still here, from back when Uber was
widely praised, and even so it encountered rampant skepticism[1]. Especially
curious to see it on the same list as the “Future of Work” which implicitly
contradicts its premise.

But hey, maybe there have been some compelling pitches for it. Does anyone
have an idea for a One Million Jobs startup that isn’t another transportation
company?

[1] -
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7978163](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7978163)

~~~
Siecje
How many people make a living from YouTube? What about Twitch?

It is not only the people on the screen but people behind the scenes and
managers and more.

~~~
ac29
>How many people make a living from YouTube?

Not many: "96.5% of all of those trying to become YouTubers won't make enough
money off of advertising to crack the U.S. poverty line"

[http://www.latimes.com/business/la-fi-youtube-
stardom-201802...](http://www.latimes.com/business/la-fi-youtube-
stardom-20180228-story.html)

~~~
bpicolo
There's a whole ecosystem around it though - advertising agencies, video
production equipment, etc. Then there's things like GoPro exist largely as a
side-effect of social media networks like YouTube.

The real effects of YouTube on the global economy are pretty big!

------
buf
I've bootstrapped the last 3 years. I'm in the "supporting creators" category.
100k happy users so far.

I'm really hesitant to join YC because I feel like the personal touch of
having a dozen companies per cohort is lost. Can anyone speak to that?

~~~
tptacek
If you want to raise in the future, go. The stories you read about people
effortlessly raising 1-3MM in syndicated convertible note rounds? A
significant coefficient of how easy that turns out to be is "got accepted into
YC".

~~~
buf
Did you go through yc?

I've gone through techstars and I worry the new yc format will be more if the
same.

~~~
tptacek
Nope. We were invited for a previous startup but had no plans to raise. But I
have close friends who have gone through YC, one of whom actually did
something pretty close to a natural before/after experiment re: fundraising.

(Ironically: we have no plans to ever raise for Latacora, but because the YC
alumni network is basically our entire customer base, we'd probably do it this
time.)

------
Aissen
Does this remind anyone else of the FSF High Priority Free Software Projects ?

[https://www.fsf.org/campaigns/priority-
projects/](https://www.fsf.org/campaigns/priority-projects/)

------
jaxn
Where is the actual updated RFS with descriptions of the new categories?

~~~
gameguy43
Bump. The links are broken.

------
ausrname1
Surprised to see "Supporting Creators" on here too. I thought Patreon (and
others) had made meaningful progress on this front.

~~~
zanny
Patreon is another walled garden that can become much worse than Facebook if
left in isolation. For the investors behind it it would be great, but I don't
believe Patreon was a YC company? Which means its a huge untapped industry
with only one major player that has consistently moved towards pulling
creatives into their ecosystem and keeping them there while trying to increase
revenues.

We _need_ , probably more than in any other use case besides general social
media, a federated solution to patronage. We _cannot_ let Facebook et al
happen again with crowdfunding and recurrent subscription services like
Patreon. The kickstarter space has opened up to several options including the
original Kickstarer, Indiegogo, GoFundMe, Fig, etc. That is a healthy
competitive ecosystem and Kickstarter went public benefit so their general
dominance in the market is less dangerous for it.

Patreon sits alone, and has been growing exponentially for years. They
acquired their only ever major competitor, Subbable, in early 2015. Kofi is
about as close to a competitor as they have, but its not the same thing in the
slightest because its not automatic which is a fundamental part of what makes
Patreon work.

The mindshare of creators Patreon has acquired should be terrifying to anyone
who can see the writing on the wall about how this will just lead to a
hegemony of Patreon controlling all the amateur and hobbyist and even some
semi-professional small creative / online business ventures. And unlike most
companies their revenue is plastered right in their face - all they need is a
breakout moment into popular culture, which they really have not had yet - the
number of people actively supporting anyone else on Patreon is still a small
percentage of the whole Internet user population - but if they got that
consumer breakout moment they would be unstoppable and way more directly
dangerous and harmful in how many people are now making careers out of having
a Patreon.

~~~
Siecje
For completeness Gratipay[0] (formerly gittip) is also dead.

[0]: [https://gratipay.com/](https://gratipay.com/)

------
bufferoverflow
If I have a really good idea, why would I need YC? Starting an ICO will likely
give you 10-1000x more money.

~~~
alonmower
You don't even need a good idea! You can just find a bunch of people trying to
get rich quickly and sell them a bunch of tokens that will end up worthless!!

------
MentallyRetired
Hmm. Just started something in the creator space over Christmas vacation, and
its already profitable with over 180 brands signed on... the standard deal
fits my budget and needs... but SF is a problem for my cofounder.

------
DrNuke
Universal basic income, without knowing how YC Research experiment is going
locally but assuming it is simply not feasible globally from a financial point
of view. How make it work then? Good old collectivism works well with
scientism. Not with giving cash in hand then but with crediting day-to-day
points onto your ID card to be converted into the bare minimum food & drink to
survive, think of a k-ration, from your local supermarket or automatic
dispensing machines.

------
yalogin
I don’t see health technology in any of these lists. Is it not common in
startups? I don’t mean insurance related companies, more along the lines of
hardware companies serving the medical or health care field.

~~~
ken
"Healthcare" is #14, and it specifically mentions the areas of Diagnostics,
Medical Devices, Pharmaceuticals, and Preventative Healthcare. Does that not
cover what you're thinking of?

~~~
Balgair
Are current Start-ups cross referenced to this list anywhere? I'd love to
check out more of them in the Med-Device space, specifically, but I imagine a
listing would be useful for other areas as well.

------
YazIAm
Curious, what was the thought process behind removing the 'News' and 'Mass
Media' request for startups?

Not sure when they were removed exactly, just noticed now.

~~~
floatrock
[http://www.ycombinator.com/rfs/#safeguards](http://www.ycombinator.com/rfs/#safeguards)

"now I am become death destroyer of worlds" and all that.

------
pwaivers
It seems blockchain technology and cryptocurrency are purposely absent from
this list. Can we assume that YC is not interested in funding these types of
startups?

~~~
almostarockstar
I would say that "blockchain", as a concept, isn't a suitable category, in the
same way that "mobile application" or "website" isn't.

Blockchain is a tool. The applications are varied. There are potential
applications for blockchain technologies in each of the rfs categories.

~~~
pwaivers
Thank you for this answer. It makes a lot of sense. I suppose I was conflating
blockchain technology with actual problems that it could solve. The same
probably also applies to cryptocurrency.

------
_e
Would an applicant come off as unfocused if their bootstrapped startup
actually hit a few of the items on the RFS list?

------
yonilevy
Out of curiosity- why is detection of fake videos a hard problem? It sounds
like a classification problem that a simple NN with enough data would be able
to solve(?)

~~~
apendleton
A lot of the scariest work in fake video lately has involved generative
adversarial networks (GANs) whose whole optimization strategy as I understand
it is to try to produce videos that can fool classifier/discriminator NNs,
which are trained in parallel.

~~~
yonilevy
Right, and great point, but aren't the adversaries targeting a specific model?
Are they agnostic to setups differences?

~~~
webmaven
Some approaches target multiple models to come up with more general attacks.
It's also worth noting that manipulations that will fool humans are starting
to pop up as well.

------
hguhghuff
The issue of longevity and aging seems to be one that is given significant
attention by super rich people, who for obvious reasons would like a wonderful
life of privilege to go on for as long as possible.

~~~
adora
It's not just about living to 1000 years old. To me, it's more about solving
age-related diseases, e.g. Alzheimer's, etc.

~~~
hguhghuff
Yes of course to deal with aging you must tackle the many age related
illnesses.

But I'm pointing out, with of the vast array of health related issues humanity
faces, do venture capitalists care in particular about this one enough to put
it in their investment hitlist?

Why, for example does YC care enough about aging to want to find it in
particular, rather than say, well any other major field of human health
research?

The answer is, "how can we spend our money to get more time on earth because
after that it's worth nothing"?

Put another way "we'd like to live longer and we have the money if you can use
it to work out how".

Look there's nothing wrong With this, it's human nature. Of course you use the
means at your disposal to try to make life better, longer, healthier for
yourself in any way. All I'm noting is that this thing about aging is
something that the super rich have a particular focus on and that's why it's
in this list.

If one of the VC who makes this list had a family member with a particular
medical issue we'd likely see that here too as a desired funding area.

I suspect people are uncomfortable about this being pointed out because VCs
like to project the idea that their work is to better everything and everyone,
in Silicon Valley lingo to "make the world a better place", but this one is
self serving, whilst being plausibly argued as being for the benefit of all
humanity. And heck being self serving is OK too ... heck it's their money they
can do with it whatever they want, no need to apologize for spending on
yourself every now and then.

~~~
orangecat
_Yes of course to deal with aging you must tackle the many age related
illnesses._

Ideally it's the reverse. If you can prevent or repair the effects of aging,
those conditions become much less harmful. 25 year olds don't have heart
attacks or get Alzheimer's.

 _Why, for example does YC care enough about aging to want to find it in
particular, rather than say, well any other major field of human health
research?_

The payoff is potentially much greater. Curing all cancer would only increase
life expectancy by 3.2 years, because if you don't die of cancer when you're
75 then you'll have a stroke at 78 ([https://www.quora.com/If-we-cure-cancer-
so-nobody-dies-of-ca...](https://www.quora.com/If-we-cure-cancer-so-nobody-
dies-of-cancer-how-much-would-that-extend-the-average-life-expectancy)).
Eliminating the negative effects of aging would add many more years, plus they
would be of much higher quality.

 _whilst being plausibly argued as being for the benefit of all humanity_

Aging is terrible for everyone, rich and poor. Arguably it's even worse for
the poor; the increased medical expenses and decreased mobility and ability to
work are much easier to deal with if you have several million dollars lying
around.

