

YC West Coast Demo Day Roundup - jamiequint
http://www.techcrunch.com/2007/08/16/y-combinator-demo-day-the-summer-startups/

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zach
I'm always fascinated by the folks who flip a U-turn on their startup like
Cloudant. I have to assume it happens far more often in the YC environment.
When you're just kind of holed up in your bunker and spring something on the
world after you've brought it to alpha, I don't think it's so common to throw
out what you're working on even if it's for the best.

I had a half-year-long entrepreneurial experience when I was 23, but it was
basically just me, in the spider hole, coding, and never finishing the
product. I was trying to make something technologically cool and didn't know
(or care to know) a thing about the business aspect. It was a huge waste from
a learning perspective, much less a money perspective, although I did enjoy
it. I lacked a co-founder, investors, much of a clue about the market and
guidance, but what was fatal was that I was missing feedback and a deadline.

I think startups are painfully difficult to assess without a structure that
provides honest feedback and a real deadline. I think it's greatly to YC's
credit that they have teams that radically alter their focus like Cloudant
did, however it turns out.

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acgourley
Cloudant is cool, just hope that router doesn't get you banned from those
sites that specifically ban IP's for using download accelerators (IE making
too many simultaneous requests).

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nickb
That's a valid worry. I know for a fact that using Fasterfox will get you
banned on many sites (I got banned for using it myself). I hope Cloudant guys
expose some settings to help with that.

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zach
Y'know, after seeing "Cloudant" a few times, I'm starting to want to pronounce
it _en francais_. Clou- _dant_. Clooo- _dahhn_. Okay, sorry.

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rams
Damn, I am working on a python script to do simultaneous range requests and
'am hoping to release it as open source by October. @work, lots of ISOs get
transferred over the network all the time; even on a fast network, it's a pain
with uncached images. @home I download OS iso's quite often. This is a great
source of pain for me and I am pretty sure for a lot of other people as well -
hope the Cloudant guys pull it off. But they need a way to figure out how to
throttle bandwidth usage.

BTW, is there such a thing as universal mind ? How come you think about
something and very soon you find out someone else doing something with more or
less the same idea ;-)

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juanpablo
It is because, for each problem/annoyance you have, there are certanly many
other people in the world who have it too.

In addition, many of them are exposed to a similar environment so it is
probable that they come up with similar solutions.

Anyway, it doesn't matter how many are they, but how many have the will to
make it happen. That is what makes all the difference.

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staunch
Tip for Cloudant: market your product in countries outside of the US. In
Japan, Korea, and some parts of Europe people have very high bandwidth
connections but high latency to the US. A high bandwidth delay product means
multiple connections is a _massive_ win for largish files. I'd go so far as
saying you should totally ignore the US entirely. Market it to foreigners as a
way to download faster from the US, where so much content is hosted.

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rams
[http://www.flickr.com/photos/11585518@N04/sets/7215760148516...](http://www.flickr.com/photos/11585518@N04/sets/72157601485163904/)

The photos on this page have a few interns - Does YC take interns ?

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jey
I think you're referring to the TechCrunch interns.

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rokhayakebe
My winners are Anywhere.fm and Dropbox. The minute anywhere goes mobile they
will truly change the way we listen to music or anything audio. If you think
about it one day people will laugh about the Ipod. I never really grasp the
concept of putting all your songs in a box. It is like carrying all your
savings in a briefcase rather than a debit card. Anywhere will soon ( i hope)
start streaming your tunes using edge, gprs or wifi enabled phones. wacth out
Jobs.

