
Companies from the YC Summer 2018 Batch - Sreyanth
https://blog.ycombinator.com/s18-16-companies/
======
chiefofgxbxl
Cool batch, particularly LemonBox which provides personalized vitamin packs to
buyers in China. There's a huge user base right there, and I imagine the U.S.
market is largely saturated / competitive already.

I must respectfully express my concern over: "Grabb-it Inc. turns rideshare
cars into digital billboards." There's probably a market for it as online
advertisers face an uncertain future with possible regulation, and at least
scrutiny, of social media companies, but is this really the future we want to
build? Where the only goal of some of these companies is to unrelentingly
cover every square inch of the world with ads? Surely there are lawsuits
waiting to happen when drivers, distracted from these eye-catching ads on all
the cars around them, kill people.

I am worried that our public spaces are turning increasingly hostile to our
citizens. Won't this trend continue to make the public space more unpalatable?

~~~
greglindahl
All we need is a YC-backed AR startup that removes ads from your personal
visual space. Although it might be difficult to get that tech safe enough to
be used while driving.

~~~
anoncoward111
hahahahahahah.... classic mafia extortion techniques. Create a problem, then
demand people pay you to remove it.

------
AriaMinaei
Optic [0] caught my eye. They seem to have made possible a new kind of
abstraction in code. Something that's different from both functions and
macros. It's a kind of abstraction that can be arbitrarily customized at each
call site, yet retain its identity across all of them.

Example:

    
    
      foo = do_a()
      bar = do_b(foo)
    

Example 2:

    
    
      foo = do_a()
      bar = do_z(foo)
      baz = do_b(bar)
    

Example 3:

    
    
      foo = do_a()
      bar = foo + 10
      baz = do_b(bar)
    

The three examples have strong similarity in their first and last statements.
There is a pattern there, but that pattern cannot be abstracted into a single
macro or a function. So this pattern does exist, and is recognizable to the
human eye, but the language does not allow one to express it.

What Optic seems to do is to recognize the pattern, create a single model out
of it, and allow you to re-use that pattern elsewhere, or even transform it
into new ones and re-use those new patterns elsewhere.

Again, this would be a new kind of abstraction. One whose leaks are easier to
fix. You can have your cake and eat it too!

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

~~~
addcn
Hey -- thanks for checking us out!

You're definitely understanding the premise of our parser. It evaluates a
regex-like set of rules on an AST tree to match different forms of code. These
rules can be recursive as you can see in the first example of our home page
[0]. In that example Optic matches an express js route and the headers,
parameters and responses inside it. The result is a nice json object with
shape {method, url, parameters: [], headers: [], responses" []}. OOTB the JS
interpreter couldn't do this because it doesn't encounter the calls to
req.query.param_name until that code runs.

PG wrote about building the language/abstraction to fit your problem [1]. In
an ideal world we all would do this, but in practice there's always a gap
between our program and the abstraction we describe it in. Today that gap is
only bridged by a human understanding the code. Until now...Optic is allowing
us to programmatically deal with these implicit abstractions.

We believe most of the dev tools created over the next decade will be built on
top of your code in a way that allows them to collaborate with real
developers. To realize this world we need a programatic interface to read,
generate and mutate code so we created Optic.

[0] [https://useoptic.com](https://useoptic.com) [1]
[http://www.paulgraham.com/progbot.html](http://www.paulgraham.com/progbot.html)

~~~
MediumD
I was really fascinated by this as well. I think it's a great idea. Where does
the 15 hours/per developer/per week come from. Couldn't find more information
about that anywhere on your website.

~~~
addcn
Before I started Optic I watched 20 developers code for 1 day each. I kept
logs of what they were working on and asked people to rate how they felt
throughout the process. The 15/hrs/wk is a rough estimate of what we could
automate. Our most avid users over the last month self report a little less
but I think once we add better support for a few more things we’ll catch up.

I never thought to publish those results. Sounds like something people would
be interested in?

~~~
jxub
I'm sure neither the technical-minded audience here wouldn't nor the
prospective clients wouldn't mind having a look at them at all.

------
l33tbro
I think companies like Grabb-It Labs only make the world more hellish. I
really don't understand why you would start a company like this. On my commute
each day they've started video advertising on my local bus and also in the
subway. It just really SUCKS to be bombarded with more shitty ads for banks
and big box stores.

I'm not trying to scold the founders. It just confounds me that people would
start companies like this when there's clearly no net value to social capital.

~~~
briandear
It isn’t that someone starts this sort of company, it’s that respected people
still fund them. Do we actually need more advertising companies?

------
Jemaclus
The CSPA thing is interesting to me because the founder/CEO was formerly the
head of engineering at Crunchyroll, and interviewing at Crunchyroll was one of
the worst interviewing experiences I've ever had.

Let's just say I'm skeptical. I hope it works out, but...

MacD looks interesting... but I'm kinda surprised YC would invest. A Mac n
Cheese company? Very strange.

I'm very excited about the biotech space, so looking forward to seeing how
that shakes out.

~~~
cspa
Sorry to hear it was that bad! :( I'd love to hear your experience, especially
if I was directly involved -- you can reply or email me anonymously at
james@cspa.io. If you know anything about Crunchyroll's early culture, I
always made a point to listen to feedback and improve ourselves. It'll be the
same at CSPA.

Crunchyroll's interview process definitely was not consistent, which is why I
spent my final two years there trying to improve our processes. I learned a
lot from it, and that's why we're doing CSPA :)

\- James Lin (james@cspa.io)

~~~
Jemaclus
I have no idea if you were directly involved, unfortunately, which was part of
the problem. I described my experience in another comment:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17795308](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17795308)

------
reikonomusha
CSPA [1] sounded interesting, and is something similar to what I’ve been
wanting to do, but after looking at the sample exam, I was pretty
disappointed.

I thought it would be about computer science and engineering fundamentals. It
has some of that (e.g., representation of integers, memory access speeds,
etc.) but I also noticed it’s full of completely inessential things, like
escaping XHTML, identifying valid JSON payloads in HTTP, and alignment rules
in CSS. There was heaps of JavaScript, HTML, CSS, SQL, and drawn out shell
exercises.

To be clear, I’m not claiming that’s all useless knowledge. It’s not! But, as
a hiring manager, I’d rather look for strong critical thinking skills and
strong foundational knowledge. Remembering that keys in JSON must be quoted
strings is not at all a demonstration of that.

The exam seems to be more of a “well rounded full-stack engineer” rather than
what they suggest.

[1] [https://cspa.io/](https://cspa.io/)

~~~
codingdave
I would hope that the scoring differentiates between core CS knowledge and
skills vs. details and trivia of web development, as well as any other
categories of questions. That way, the exam is useful for multiple hiring
philosophies, and the hiring manager can decide how much they care about
specific types of questions. After all, different roles at different companies
have different needs, and I'd hate to have a biased scoring algorithm take
those decisions away from a hiring process.

~~~
cspa
Excellent points -- this is something we discuss extensively. After talking
with so many employers, we found that each of them look for something
different.

Adaptive scoring algorithms and ways to let employers create custom
projections of our multidimensional data is something we're thinking about. If
you have ideas on how to build this, I'd love to hear them! james@cspa.io

~~~
ABCLAW
Hey James.

The issue you're having is that you're trying to test over 7 dimensions, with
the majority of those dimensions being irrelevant to an individual taking the
test to signal mastery of 2-3 of them.

The standard method in testing to deal with issues of this nature is to
provide people with the opportunity to test themselves on modules, rather than
taking the omnibus test so that they can spend the majority of it signalling
that they aren't good at things they don't care about. If they're good at
everything, they can sit for all of the modules. If they aren't, they aren't
wasting their time.

Additionally, this frees candidate time up to let you test people in more
depth in the areas they're actually professing skill in. From that point,
you're open to do interesting things; evaluate question difficulty/time to
completion and adjust the questions provided as the test unfolds to match the
expected skill of the applicant for instance.

As it is now, you're getting buy-in from corps that little have no skin in the
game, but I don't see how the sample test you have provides more signalling
value than an applicant having a CS degree or a list of github projects they
can discuss.

~~~
cspa
Re: custom modules. One (arguably) interesting thing we do is to only take the
MAXIMUM subscore of all 7 topics and use that component in the composite
score, ignoring the other 6 topics. This allows candidates to focus on only
certain topics if they want. Employers want someone who is strong in one area,
rather than a jack-of-all trades and master of none.

Adaptive testing
([https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Computerized_adaptive_testing](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Computerized_adaptive_testing))
is something we're looking into, and would be extremely interesting (and
challenging!) to build.

~~~
ABCLAW
Hi James,

The algo to take Core + the best other section, right? As it stands, the test
difficulty makes it pretty easy to hit 2 perfect scores, so you'll be
competing against those pretty consistently.

How does the CSPA help my interviewing process if I'm a network guru and knock
all those questions out of the park, but apply for a ML job where my knowledge
is paltry? How does my CSPA testing help me differentiate from the above guy
as a network guru when I also aced the ML section? This seems like an obvious
area the test can outperform other testing metrics.

As far as I can tell, the only value for the current scoring system is to weed
out people who are just plain abysmal at everything. Eventually people are
going to game your exam and pop up very close analogues onto google. At that
point even the floor function is dead with the added deadweight cost of the
exam still being an application requirement at BigCo.

Maybe I'm just blinded because I think having accurate skill radar charts that
test takers and employers could use for self improvement and prospect
evaluation, respectively, could be an absurdly large value add.

~~~
cspa
Yep I agree! In fact, about 50% of the people who take the CSPA, do it more
for self-evaluation than for employment purposes.

You're right, so far most of the test takers are entry-level or changing
careers. To accurately assess specialities like ops/IT, we'll need separate,
dedicated subject tests (or adaptive tests).

That said, no one has yet gotten a perfect 1600 :) . The highest is something
like 1380.

~~~
ABCLAW
Cool! Thanks for the clarifications. I'm looking forward to whatever comes
next!

------
abhisuri97
I found CSPA to be an interesting proposal. I'm currently studying CS and
Biology and found that the comparison of the exam to the "SAT" of computer
science is a bit of a misnomer. The SAT requires minimal prior knowledge to
take (albeit if you want to score well, you end up needing to study for it
through test prep books etc). I think perhaps it may be more likened to an
MCAT equivalent (or any professional school exam equivalent) because of the
need to know about certain subject fields.

Someone also brought up a point regarding the validity of testing for skills
in web development if test takers won't end up in those fields anyway.
However, when looking at similar exams (e.g. MCAT), you can make the argument
that the majority of doctors won't use Organic Chemistry or won't need to know
about the minutiae of Psychology & Sociology to be successful. The MCAT
becomes a successful discriminator of good vs bad test takers because of the
amount of work and critical thinking skills that is needed to cover the litany
of subjects tested. Similarly, the CSPA could follow a similar pattern as the
MCAT by testing a range of subjects as a means of measuring one's ability to
learn a large sample of topics.

The only thing I can really think of that CSPA can improve upon is providing
more preparatory materials. Additionally, it'd be useful to see how people end
up performing on the exam and if there is an actual "Bell Curve" like
distribution of scores that results.

~~~
cspa
Great feedback! We do have a distribution of scores for our latest exam
session here: [https://medium.com/@cspa_exam/july-2018-cspa-
results-509ace9...](https://medium.com/@cspa_exam/july-2018-cspa-
results-509ace9dd9bb)

------
wolframhempel
I have to admit that I'm missing the take-over-the-world/crazy-moonshot kind
of company among the entries. I appreciate that Y-Combinator is a commercial
institution with commercial goals and that personalized daily vitamin packs,
better SaaS conversion and AI-powered programming are all sensible iterations
on existing themes - but wouldn't there have been space for at least one next-
gen Googe/Space X/Hyperloop sort of venture? Surely someone applied that'd fit
that bill.

~~~
Findeton
They don't announce all companies from the batch, only the ones that are ready
to go "public".

~~~
eaenki
Looking at previous, recent batches, you'd be hard pressed to find startups
that look seemingly undoable/like a joke (which are usually the ones with huge
potential). For me, only Boom and a couple biotech companies make the list.

------
phkahler
Personalize testimonials to the person reading them? Did I read that
correctly? Fake reviews taylored to the reader?

~~~
reikonomusha
I take it as: “See the reviews which will skew your perception positively.”
Doesn’t sound enticing as a consumer. I just want the facts.

~~~
ethbro
Devil's advocate. A ML service offering being viewed by two users -- an
engineer and an executive.

Even with 100% truthful reviews, they're interested in different things and
need very different language.

------
syntaxing
Saddens me that there are not many mechanical hardware companies from any YC
year/season and this year is no exception.

~~~
boxcardavin
I interviewed, I've talked to several other robotics companies that
interviewed for S18. Absolutely dumbfounded that none of them made it, some of
these in the batch seem like they could never be worth $10b.

~~~
syntaxing
Do you know of any open opportunities for Mechanical Engineers on the East
Coast at these robotics company?

~~~
boxcardavin
Sorry no, I'd have to dig up my notes from the interview and I'm slammed
working on my startup. You don't wanna move to the west coast? You like
bicycles and robots perchance?

------
sattoshi
Cutting edge biotech and a mac n cheese company in the same list. Wow.

~~~
halfjoking
If only they combined their tech... they could become more powerful than
anyone could possibly imagine.

~~~
jxub
I'm sure you're only half joking... The potential synergy might be a meat idea
for a eco-friendly lab-grown patty.

------
lefstathiou
Nice batch. I think the concept federacy is tackling has huge potential. We
lose a lot of sleep thinking about security and I like the idea of being able
to tap a hive mind to help us plug security gaps our team is unaware of (and
we would pay a lot for it).

~~~
wsul
Appreciate the kind words! Reaching out now -- would love to get you into our
beta and work from any of your feedback. Finsight seems like a perfect use
case and we're excited to dig in.

------
JustARandomGuy
MAC'D sounds like an interesting idea. If some of the options were healthy
(perhaps you could pair mac'n'cheese with tomato soup) I could definitely see
myself eating here.

Open up in Chicago please!

------
ArtWomb
Congrats! These all look really great ;)

Biocontainment solutions (Synvivia) that prevent environmental contamination
of genetically modified organisms looks to be a very high demand market.

~~~
joering2
Say what??

------
UncleEntity
> Synvivia develops biomolecular ON-OFF switches to make synthetic biology
> safe for use outside of the laboratory.

Yep...then the on-off switch jumps species and the only way to survive is to
consume a particular (patent pending) brand of parsnip which can't be grown
from seed.

Pretty much the only place I could reasonably be accused of being a luddite is
in releasing GM organisms into the wild.

~~~
pazimzadeh
I definitely agree about the wild. But what about designing gut bacteria that
target parasites in your poop? Amongst many other possibilities.

You can use oxygen, temperature, and light-sensitive gene promoters and toxin-
antitoxin plasmids to make ON-OFF switches that would hobble bacterial
replication in the wild.

It's a tough problem, and my guess is you'd want to use several of these
switches together. There's no guarantee that stressed bacteria will 'run' your
programs. And you're right that the gene could move horizontally, so you'd
have to be very clever with your kill switches, and keep up with evolution.

Apart from the last resort of antibiotics, you can also selectively deplete
particular bacteria from your poop using adhesion inhibitors such as
mannosides and galactosides
([https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5654549/](https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5654549/)
\- research from my lab).

------
vyrotek
I like the idea of Grabb-It but it also does seem like it would very
distracting to have those ads playing all around me on the road.

------
jxub
The downside to Web MD might be that any charlatan may pretend to be a doctor.

When you've got the answers for common diseases from the doctor who gets them
from an app, the doctor himself is a repleacable middleman and can be anybody
with enough confidence, even if faked.

------
Fomite
"Customers pick a cheese sauce, a pasta base, add unlimited toppings like
roasted broccoli and mushrooms, and top it off with anything from truffle oil
to Hot Cheetos." \- So basically Noodles and Co.

------
Fomite
The concept of HappiLabs calls to me, and while spendy for a new lab, is
definitely less than a qualified lab manager would be.

Sadly, really only useful for wet labs.

~~~
mmt
> Sadly, really only useful for wet labs.

I'm not an insider on the terminology, but it seems a "wet lab" is what a lay
person, like myself, thinks of when we hear "a lab" (in the physical sciences
context).

What's the "dry" (or is the term of art different?) lab situation you wish it
would be useful for?

There could be a different startup opportunity, if it's scalably computer-
heavy [1]. I'm aware of computer-controlled instruments for wet labs being a
very underserved market (and presumably with high margins for the computer
portion), but that seems like a consulting/services/labor-intensive business.

[1] Around HN, that usually means software, but my background is Ops, so I
actually consider commodity hardware quite scalable, too, despite the
hardware-is-a-nightmare-we-have-to-do-cloud mythology.

~~~
Fomite
Yeah, "wet lab" is what most people thing of as a "lab". Some fields (lots of
the biology and biology-adjacent ones) use "lab" as a logical unit of
organization. So Professor So-and-So and their graduate students, postdocs,
etc. is "The So-and-So Lab".

"Wet lab" is useful to distinguish people with actual labs vs. my lab, which
is just a bunch of people with laptops.

The situation I'm dreaming of, is, for example, it not being _my_ problem when
a grad student is having trouble getting software installed on the server.
That _would_ be something I'd love a lab manager or dedicated programmer to
deal with, but for a small lab, I don't have nearly that level of funding.

~~~
mmt
> my lab, which is just a bunch of people with laptops.

OK, so it's something akin to Wikipedia's description of "dry lab".

> The situation I'm dreaming of, is, for example, it not being my problem when
> a grad student is having trouble getting software installed on the server.
> That would be something I'd love a lab manager or dedicated programmer to
> deal with

This sounds very much like IT/Helpdesk support, of the kind a programmer or a
lab manager typically wouldn't _want_ (and might not be qualified) to deal
with, either.

Is there something unique to your lab environment that you couldn't use some
kind of shared/general IT helpdesk service, perhaps focused on scientific
software users?

If not, there may well be an unmet need that a startup could fill, especially
if everyone in each lab needs identical support and they can combine it with
some kind of cloud-based service with basics pre-installed. However, if you're
looking for unlimited, individualized user support for a limited, flat fee,
that's not sustainable.

> I don't have nearly that level of funding

For a service provider, the question then becomes, do you have enough funding
for the amount of service you'd require (plus the provider's overhead/profit),
even if it's not nearly enough for a full-time person (which can be remarkably
expensive in popular tech hubs)?

Reasonable IT support to user ratios are somewhere in the 1:20-1:100 range,
which is the same range (for a 3-person lab) as HappiLab's pricing.

~~~
Fomite
"This sounds very much like IT/Helpdesk support, of the kind a programmer or a
lab manager typically wouldn't want (and might not be qualified) to deal with,
either." \- Not if they were hired with that qualification in mind.

"Is there something unique to your lab environment that you couldn't use some
kind of shared/general IT helpdesk service, perhaps focused on scientific
software users?" \- It's more there are parts of HappiLab that I could see
using (managing grant budgets, which was...an unpleasant part of my week last
week), etc. but my pain points are slightly different from those of a wet lab,
but still within the realm of "I'd prefer someone familiar with academia and
research rather than a general purpose group."

~~~
mmt
> Not if they were hired with that qualification in mind.

That's a big "if". That's why I said "typically". I think you'd find it
difficult, if not impossible, to hire someone like that, even though they
exist.

This is a conceit I often see in job postings, of listing skills that belong
to two (or more!) different specialties. It seems more common in cases where
the goal seems to be to have two specialists for the price of one [1].

> "I'd prefer someone familiar with academia and research rather than a
> general purpose group."

I'm pretty sure "prefer" rather than "urgently need" isn't compelling enough
to give a startup a enough of a competitive advantage. There's also not much
(if any) synergy with any of the rest of HappiLab's core competencies to make
sense as an addon for them.

IT services could be just another vendor HappiLab handles.

[1] Uncharitably, two full-time experts for one salary, but, charitably,
merely two half-time experts in one person, which seems likely for startups
and other cash-strapped groups.

~~~
Fomite
"I'm pretty sure "prefer" rather than "urgently need" isn't compelling enough
to give a startup a enough of a competitive advantage. There's also not much
(if any) synergy with any of the rest of HappiLab's core competencies to make
sense as an addon for them.

IT services could be just another vendor HappiLab handles."

Potentially. I think one of the things that will become more important - and
will synergize - is the number of wet/dry labs. There are an _awful_ lot of
new computational servers being bought by non-tech savvy PIs.

~~~
mmt
> bought by non-tech savvy PIs.

I'd hope that's not just viewed as an opportunity exploit information
assymetry by tech/IT services firms.

I do believe, however, that scientific computing needs are similar enough to
general computing needs that this won't be widespread (or at least not for
long). It would also mean that it would make sense for a lab services provider
to offer generic IT except as a pass-through for convenience (subject to cost-
saving disintermediation).

IOW, I doubt you're that special, but that's a good thing!

------
shawn
_For example, Mutiny can dynamically change a website’s customer testimonials
to match the visitor’s industry._

Clever idea!

------
jboggan
Has anyone used Optic yet? I'm not a Javascript developer but I'm interested
in the concept.

~~~
appdrag
It's seems very interesting, but to be honest after watching the demo video,
most of the thing "automated" (I don't see any AI here) are related to poor
practices... Some other features seems interesting, let's see how the product
evolve.

~~~
addcn
Hey, founder here, thanks for checking us out. The demo video is a couple
months old and since then we've gotten much closer to figuring out the best
use cases after talking to users. Do you have any suggestions on the use cases
you'd like to see the 'interesting features' put towards?

This is definitely the kind of product that takes several iterations to get
right so thank you for following our journey.

~~~
jaxn
Not the person you are replying to, but I have a use case that I think optic
would be good for.

I'd like to have a two-way sync between business logic code and a flow chart
for documentation.

Something like the slack push notifications decision:
[https://m.imgur.com/gallery/0p5bV](https://m.imgur.com/gallery/0p5bV)

------
person_of_color
Good luck to all. But for those who want to join Rocket Ship companies any
unicorns here?

