
Silicon Valley Elite Flock To Y Combinator Demo Day  - zaveri
http://www.techcrunch.com/2009/08/19/silicon-valley-elite-flock-to-y-combinator-demo-day/
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rksprst
MixPanel is amazing. I'm using it for a client; and the info and stats
generated are extremely useful. It's a great compliment to Google Analytics;
and something I would pay for.

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jacobolus
How do you think it compares to, say, <http://www.haveamint.com/> ?

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rksprst
The usefulness of MixPanel (for me) is in the ability to track custom
javascript events. Things like changing an advertisement iris (no page
refresh) can get tracked without me having to write the tracking code. As far
as I can tell, haveamint doesn't do that (in fact, I don't see haveamint doing
anything that google analytics doesn't already do).

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callmeed
I wonder if it could also track events inside a flash movie (perhaps even just
by making JS calls via AS). That would be huge for us.

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rksprst
If you can make JS calls from AS, then yes I think MixPanel will totally work
for you.

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gwern
> HighlightCam, which we covered last month, is a service that can look
> through hours of video footage and identify when something happens. The
> company’s first product involves security cameras — it can take many hours
> of security footage and then identify the few moments when things out of the
> ordinary are happening, cutting down the footage to only a few minutes of
> important content. Soon the company will be releasing its API, which will
> allow developers to tap into the software to shorten a variety of different
> kinds of content (including things like wedding videos). The software can
> produce 20-30 second trailers automatically for any kind of video.

This is actually an interesting one, I think: one of the knocks against
[lifelogging](<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lifelog>) is that it will be too
hard to search all the hours of video, but condensed videos would be much
easier to search.

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dannyr
This batch of YC is impressive. Most are targeting a niche. My favorite is
Listia.com.

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jacoblyles
The group is very substantial this time around. Developing things like a
database optimized for solid-state drives involves non-trivial technology. I'm
impressed.

I wonder what kind of background these guys had to convince YCombinator that
they could pull it off? Many of them aimed quite a bit higher than yet another
web app.

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pg
It wasn't their background that convinced us. It was just talking to them.
They clearly knew what they were talking about.

You can't let yourself care too much about "background" when you're investing
in startups, because some of the best startups are done by outsiders.

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jacoblyles
I guess a person sounding as if he knows what he is talking about is a good
indicator that he actually knows what he is talking about.

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andreyf
It certainly depends on who's listening. The catch-22 is the Dunning and
Kruger effect. If a person sounds like they know what they're talking about,
it's either because (1) they know what they're talking about or (2) you're an
idiot. But there's a range of ignorance in which the more confident you are in
(1), the more likely (2) is.

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falsestprophet
Are there other companies operating in stealth mode?

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dwynings
Yes, 11 of the 24 (according to Dave McClure)
<http://twitter.com/davemcclure/status/3411897983>

TechCrunch only covered the 13 which have launched.

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cperciva
Does anyone know how this number (11/24 companies not yet launched by demo
day) compares to past years? I was surprised to see that it was so high.

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webwright
I think only a few in our batch were not launched by demo day. This seems high
to me too, tho only PG and JL know for sure. Paul pushed REALLY hard to get
people launched.

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profquail
I'm working hard so that I can present at the next one :)

Besides the obvious networking and investment potential, I just think it would
be a lot of fun to go and talk with everyone there!

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mahmud
A year is too long to wait for funding, specially for a tech startup. If you
have something working, don't hesitate to unleash it into the wild, you might
be surprised at what you find.

Good luck.

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profquail
I thought that Demo Day was held at the end of each YC cycle (i.e. there would
be another one around March)?

I've applied to Springboard as well though, as it starts much sooner (in about
a month), and I'm pretty close to a working alpha of my software. I hope that
I can get into Springboard or YC so that I can share my project with all of
you!

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mahmud
Go for it then! I didn't know about the March one.

FWIW, my project was a demo when I sold the first license and now I work on it
full time, hired by the client to customize it and maintain it for them.

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mattmaroon
I like a lot of the startups I've read about in this batch. So many address
clear needs that people have, and almost all of them have at least one obvious
business model (with presumably some good non-obvious ones too.)

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fallentimes
Wow the Techcrunch comments aren't very Techcrunch-like (this is a good
thing).

I'm excited to see the 13 startups that were off the record.

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matt1
Is there a video of demo day online? I'd love to watch it--previous ones too
if possible.

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catch23
I think boston.com had short snippets of a previous demo day.

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vaksel
seems like every single one of the companies listed already launched and had
coverage...wasn't demo day in the past the time for that first look?

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immad
Demo day was never about first look or press. It has always been about
investors.

It is unlike TC50 and DEMO in that respect. Though it does give some marginal
press.

Edit: I half think press should be banned from the event. I always found it
annoying giving details that only investors should hear with press present.

