
Startups that launched at Y Combinator S16 Demo Day 2 - pouwerkerk
https://techcrunch.com/2016/08/23/yc-demo-day/
======
jrudolph
Is it just me or does anyone else think that many of the startups from Day 1
and Day 2 are well beyond the "seed" stage that YC claims to target? I get
that YC is a perfect program to prepare a company for raising significant
investment, so it makes perfect sense for the startups to join even at a later
stage. Also derisks YCs investment on the standard terms (i.e. 7% of a later-
stage company for 120k$ is a better deal than 7% for 120k$ at an entirely
unproven company).

Example: Ohmygreen claims it's a logistics company (which implies CapEx unless
they rent, which eats margins) and already has 800k MRR. Doesn't quite fit my
definition of "seed" stage.

~~~
michaelheinrich
Hey guys, I founded ohmygreen and here are my reasons for attending: 1)
community of other high quality founders which leads to helpful friendships
and discoveries of new ways of thought 2) yc is a forcing function, e.g.,
experimentation with new business models, focus on growth, etc 3) it makes
everything easier (hiring, fundraising, etc) => every little edge helps 4)
long term investment: who knows, I might start another company with someone I
met at yc or invest in yc companies 5) additional customers we might not have
had access to (easy to reach out to any yc company) 6) while we're not quite
seed stage, we bootstrapped a couple years and I wanted to scale things faster
in order to bring healthy and blissful living to more people

We were at a stage where yc wasn't necessary but a very helpful catalyst. I
hope this is helpful, happy to answer more.

~~~
ones_and_zeros
I think it is a no brainer given your reasoning but I think it is fair to say
you would have done it without the cash investment. I think this is just a
testament to how far yc has come from an incubator taking 7% and giving 20k
(or was it even less?) to some unknown hacker types with a paper napkin
prototype.

YC is more of a "business club" than an incubator from some points of view, I
don't blame either side and is probably the reason they are diversifying with
various programs to ensure they aren't missing out on the unknown hacker with
a paper napkin prototype.

~~~
michaelheinrich
I can say that it wasn't an easy decision, I had to mull it over a few times
and talk to various advisors, alumni, and friends about it. In the end it was
very worth it!

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somenomadicguy
Legalist just makes me sad, but I guess there's nothing more American than
suing for absolutely anything. It's like the founders were looking for a
business model that was even more parasitic than patent squatting.

As a nomad, airfordable is the best of the bunch to me. It almost balances out
the karma of Legalist.

~~~
3pt14159
You think their parasites because you don't trust the American judicial
system. That is fair, but the fundamental nature of what Legalist does is
actually quite good. Justice shouldn't be denied to someone just because they
can't afford to afford the legal fees. Sure, lawyers can take clients on
contingency, but they are often cash-poor because law school is expensive, so
the rate of return needs to be much higher to justify the risk and delayed
payment. Investors, on the other hand, lack the information necessary to judge
whether or not a case has merits because they usually don't have the right
background knowledge about the law or the domain of the case.

If Legalist were launching from, say, Canada or the EU I'm not so sure it
would be so negatively received; and I would certainly want it to exist if I
were a poor person with mercury poisoning.

~~~
somenomadicguy
Perhaps I'm just too cynical in my old age, this feels like at best it is
about turning the legal system into a market opportunity, not seeking justice.
At worst it can be a tool, as with the Thiel case, to profit off of exacting
revenge. There is no market opportunity for investors to join in on a defense.

The timing seems to be an opportunistic response to the Gawker lawsuit. Thiel
has validated this sort of a marketplace, and being who he is, it's caught the
attention of our opportunistic, objectivist start-up community.Of course the
next step is to make this sort of market opportunity accessible to less
wealthy investors. Version 2 will be crowdsourced for-profit lawsuits. 5,000
people each invest $2k in a lawsuit against Facebook and see a 1400% return in
two years.

I feel that this is a direct result of Thiel validating this marketplace, so
let me respond to your "If" argument with my own.

If Peter Thiel weren't a cult of personality type associated with our
community, but rather he were the CEO of Fox News, Donald Trump, or Martin
Shkreli, he would have been absolutely demonized in the HN! community.

We are going down a slippery slope that can use "might is right" to destroy
competition, freedom of the press, and freedom of speech. You should see what
this same mentality has done to the business world and to the press here in
Türkiye.

Class-action lawsuits are already the protection of the poor against mercury
poisoning, done on contingency by lawyers who stand to reap huge profits. Now
this takes the risk away from the lawyers and turns that risk into a high
profit opportunity for a smaller subset of investors.

~~~
endswapper
Unless we decouple the market-based economy from society, in general,
everything is a market opportunity, and technology (not Theil) is currently
the best test of this point.

So, we can work together with a diverse array of stakeholders (even the ones
we deem less 'x') to effect societal change, or we can focus on myopic,
circular debates that defend our comfort level. Our choice.

Shrkeli was defending the economic justification for the EpiPen price
increase. He is probably the last person you want to align yourself with
unless you concede to being nothing more than a market vulture - not sensible
for the maker of the EpiPen. Yesterday/today, the maker is proposing greater
efforts to ease the financial burden for those who can't afford it.

Greater access to resources within the legal system, i.e. SimpleCitizen.com,
or Legalist, is better for society. If you think of society as an algorithm,
it is beneficial to test the variety of available perspectives to determine
which provides the greatest societal benefit (not just profit). I think this
should be a priority as individuals and enterprises.

------
probe
What's really interesting about this batch (and previous two) is this new
blend between digital and physical.

In the decade of the 2000s, the big companies that succeeded were all
software/web in nature - with Google, FB, LNKD, TWTR, etc. you engaged with
them solely on the screen and their revenues derived primarily from
advertising and taking advantage of your eyeballs.

If you look at the new monopolies in the first half of this decade (ex. Uber,
Airbnb, Palantir, etc.) they're bleeding into the physical world and providing
value in a very tangible way (ex. literally moving you from point A to point
B). It's no surprise that many of them are staying private for even longer;
physical problems require human engagement and it's just a harder problem that
requires more attention.

I believe a lot of startups, investors, and partners have subconsciously
realized this and now see the potential that new technology has in impacting
the physical world through digital portals and digital means. Expect this
trend to continue.

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netvarun
The TechCrunch writers seem to have gotten the wrong chat platform under
Meesho's description.

Empirically I don't know of any friends in India using WeChat. Let alone
selling products through it. WhatsApp, however, is omnipresent.

Just checked Meesho's website ([http://meesho.com](http://meesho.com)) It only
lists WhatsApp as its supported platform.

~~~
peter422
In their pitch they said WhatsApp

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ChuckMcM
This is an awesome list, I find the drone defense an interesting one too.
There have been reports of drones near Moffet being commandeered and then sent
into the Bay. Seemed like it would invoke a lawsuit, but if law enforcement
was doing that, I could see it working out.

~~~
spitfire
Drone deense/hijacking is a funny subject. Wonder how many weeks it'll take
for people to write an autopilot-on-loss-of-signal for drones.

In fact that's sort of the endgame for drones. People don't control the
drones, they tell them what to do/where to go. The autopilot figures out how
to complete that task.

~~~
dimdimdim
At the very same time it is trivial to update the drones of today to use a
secure mutual authentication mechanism which the "drone defender" cannot break
into. So, even if there is a spectrum DoS (which might be illegal to do for
anyone apart from law enforcement) its not that the defender will take over
the drone.

This is a cat n mouse game where the drone creator always has an advantage.

~~~
ryandamm
Yeah, but GPS isn't a handshake, and most commodity drones rely on it. You
can't take it over, but you can probably blind it.

~~~
mhowland
It's been spoofable (and jamable) for some time...but serious PIA to do and a
huge FCC no-no as it's tough to focus.

[http://news.utexas.edu/2013/07/29/ut-austin-researchers-
succ...](http://news.utexas.edu/2013/07/29/ut-austin-researchers-successfully-
spoof-an-80-million-yacht-at-sea)

------
zaroth
Flex sounded fairly interesting, but I wonder how they can sell without more
review. I was expecting more standardized forms and language on their site
than I got. The 'How it Works?' / 'Is it Safe' FAQs seems not nearly technical
enough. No known expiration date, really? As a guy am I not meant to fully
understand how the device works?

Obviously the 'Try it Free' should have a way to email your wife, right? Or
are men not supposed to recommend feminine hygiene products to their wives?
One for $3.95 (shipping cost) per address is a great marketing tactic.

Anyway, I get a kick out the fact this is a YC funded startup.

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pragone
I'm really confused about "RigPlenish". One, who the hell is taking 40 minutes
to write their chart? Second, I fail to grasp they can create a meaningful
patient record (a legal document providing critical insight into the patient's
history) through automation. If they're trying to undermine the process of
creating the patient record, they're doing a disservice to the patient and to
future healthcare providers of that patient.

~~~
Nupur
Hi, I am the co-founder of RigPlenish. Charting is only part of the paperwork
involved. In addition, for charting we cannot compromise on the required
information in order to get NEMSIS compliance. If you have more questions,
happy to chat over email (nupur@rigplenish.com).

------
spitfire
There's actually some interesting companies in this batch. Particularly the
ones going after boring, but lucrative markets.

------
hkmurakami
>Quero Education is an ed-tech startup out of Brazil that is promising to help
solve under-enrollment issues at Brazilian universities. Contrary to what most
of us would think, coming from schools challenged daily by a lack of
professors and dormitories, enrollment at Brazilian schools would need to
double to just match the number of available seats.

This is perplexing to me at first glance so hopefully someone from the country
can shed some light on this issue. In the states, if anything, we've oversold
the college education (and advanced degrees like law degrees) to the point
where a great number of students are unable to attain the careers (implicitly)
promised by these degrees. They are often crushed by a mountain of debt and
struggle to pay it back over a lifetime. Prospective students have finally
caught onto this (hooray Internet!), and many lower tier law schools are
shutting down.

Brazil, according to this blurb, does not have this problem. In fact it has
the opposite problem of not enough students? If this were the States I'd be
quick to dismiss it as "the schools don't provide value to students, thus they
are underenrolled, and they should shut down." But this is probably not the
case -- are prospective students genuinely missing a great opportunity to
educate themselves and set themselves up to greatly improve their lifetime
earning potential? Would love to get a local perspective here.

~~~
iurisilvio
Techcrunch did a nice interview with them, asking some of your same questions.

These private colleges have a lot of government support through financial aid
to poor/black/minorities attend a college. These colleges are profitable even
with empty seats. Filling these empty seats for half of the price is awesome,
but they won't crash without it. The company behind most of these colleges
merged with another one this year and their stocks (KROT3 and ESTC3) are
growing fast (50%+ this year).

[https://techcrunch.com/2016/08/19/quero-education-an-
online-...](https://techcrunch.com/2016/08/19/quero-education-an-online-
college-marketplace-in-brazil-looks-to-educate-u-s-investors/)

------
throwawayReply
> Oleg Rogynskyy and his team at People.ai want to help companies understand
> what sales teams are doing on a daily basis. People.ai integrates with
> calendars, phones, and emails and logs sales activity that leads to closing
> deals. The idea is that sales teams can track best practices from top
> performers and close more deals.

I'm all for taking human bias out of learning, but isn't there a great danger
of cargo-culting a sales team based on this? Perhaps diversity is important to
generate both long and short term growth, as well as the fact that there's a
danger that if everyone is operating in a more similar manner that activity
shifts from growth to a zero-sum game.

~~~
wastedhours
Agree with this. I work in a place where the team's split into 4 quadrants,
all looking at different areas of the marketplace (and different levels of
interaction) - whilst best practice is shared between them, knowing that each
quad will do different things and function in different ways is key to
widening reach.

------
aaronbrethorst
Interesting, when did Yahoo sell off the Jumpcut.com domain name?

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jumpcut.com](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jumpcut.com)

------
rajeck
Meesho caught my eye- but surely there is a typo in its description: "Over 50
million small businesses sell over WeChat in [India]"

There are only 50-70 million WeChat users outside of China in total -
according to WeChat themselves. [http://bit.ly/2bUmiBE](http://bit.ly/2bUmiBE)

~~~
danieltillett
This is wrong - it is Whatsapp. This is just more of the quality proofreading
we have come to love from Techcrunch.

------
losteverything
Vetcove - my own knowledge says this is just another attempt to centralize.
Vet care is too expensive and this doesn't address the cost

Robby is directly in what I do. Although I can't see how it will work yet I
believe certain things.

Towns need to declare whether robotic driverless "Vehicles" can exist on their
taxpayers' roadways. Like cell towers, towns need to make rules before Robby
or similar non-human machines are sharing common free (roadways) and private
(houses and land) space with taxpayers.

Property owners are fickle.

Dogs are a significant obstacle.

~~~
eitally
Vet care is not remotely expensive (compared to human medical care, which is
completely outrageous). Vets are required to have the same amount of training
as MDs (BS + 4yr DVM + Internship + Residency + optional further
specialization training & fellowships), yet the starting salaries are in the
$100k range. I'd argue that $3-5k for a major surgery is good value. The
problem is insurance companies. By shifting the payer away from the consumer,
prices over the past few years have started unpleasantly blowing up.

~~~
losteverything
<Vet care is not remotely expensive

Absolutely false if one has to worry about money. Insurance is a puny
percentage at the practice I know and the hundreds of pet owners I chat with
daily.

< $3-5k for a major surgery That is a lot LOT of money in my mind. Remember
this is your pet.

Usually the cost is sticker shock especially for Specialized Care and there is
no alternative. People do not expect to have bills of $500, $1,000, $1,500 and
more for routine things. [ The surgeon charges $8 a minute ]

~~~
garry
That you guys are discussing veterinary care and insurance shows that you
don't actually know what Vetcove does. They actually are a B2B marketplace for
veterinary supplies used by vet clinics. Consumers don't use it at all, and it
certainly has nothing to with pet insurance. It saves clinics a lot of money
already.

A reminder that it's fun to comment from the armchair, but you should at least
learn what the business actually is before you do.

~~~
losteverything
When I typed "centralize" I implied it was b2b. I wish you well.

The vet I know in the top 10 income (county level usa) thrives on markups.

When someone says costs are affordable for the average pet owner I have to
speak up. So I assumed your startup would not have a large impact on downward
prices since its b2b. In fact it may increase overall vet profit and do little
for the average cost of a uti treatment, for example.

I commented because I have a direct interest in this business.

------
TeeWEE
Huh? LookLive has gone bankrupt and was then partially bought, and know the
new owners are like 'look what we built'.. And now its in YCombinator? Wtf?

------
canonicalcoder
I think UtilityScore has a promising business model in offering free
residential energy guidance that is supported by the promotion of energy
efficient products. I've been hoping to see something like this for a while.

I'd like to share that the Department of Energy supports a suite of open
source software tools that are useful in making these kinds of whole building
energy predictions. Some of this may be applicable to the UtilityScore team in
making more detailed and accurate predictions.

At the core is a simulation engine called EnergyPlus
[https://energyplus.net](https://energyplus.net), and around that DOE also
supports a middleware called OpenStudio
[https://www.openstudio.net](https://www.openstudio.net) that aids in
assembling detailed and complex energy models more easily.

For commercial buildings there is an Asset Score tool very similar to
UtilityScore built on top of OpenStudio. The asset score tool even has a web
API. This tool stops short of making specific product recommendations as that
is outside the domain of a publicly funded project like this.

EnergyPlus accessed through the conveniences of OpenStudio is becoming a
shared platform for many different use cases beyond asset scoring. The large
HVAC manufactures are using these tools as the foundation for their next
generation equipment sizing tools, energy audit tools are leveraging
OpenStudio for simulation [http://www.simuwatt.com](http://www.simuwatt.com),
utilities are beginning to coalesce around the platform for quantifying
utility incentives
[http://aceee.org/files/proceedings/2014/data/papers/5-603.pd...](http://aceee.org/files/proceedings/2014/data/papers/5-603.pdf),
and the state of California embedded this framework into the commercial energy
code known as Title 24
[http://bees.archenergy.com/software.html](http://bees.archenergy.com/software.html).

Full disclosure I am a National Renewable Energy Lab employee and principle
developer of OpenStudio with a vested interest in the platform. That said I
think there could be some synergy in leveraging OpenStudio models in the
UtilityScore process. Our charter is to support commercial tools exactly like
this while not directly competing.

------
source99
Can someone explain why their are so many startups concentrating on India? Is
it in part due to the overall expansion of the internet and economy?

~~~
ryandamm
Large population, favorable demographics (entering its 'demographic surplus'
phase), lots of untapped potential?

Also: English-speaking, personal and professional ties to SV? Solid
educational system, history of in-sourcing US-based IT and tech development?

Or maybe it's just a big love-fest for Narendra Modi. I have no idea.

~~~
hackuser
> Solid educational system

My impression is the opposite, but maybe I'm misinformed ?

~~~
hnarayanan
The system is heterogeneous, tracking wealth distribution inequality, but can
be very good.

------
inthewoods
OneChronos is the most interesting to me reviewing their overview/FAQ of their
technical approach. Somewhat reminds me of the Jim Simons/RenTec patents.

------
chejazi
After skimming both techcrunch articles, it seems like there were more
hardware startups on day 1.

------
kkt262
Simple Pickup is in Y Combinator. Nice!

~~~
confiscate
Ah I can't find them on the list! Where are they? It's awsome Simple Pickup is
in YC!

~~~
confiscate
Oh it's Jumpcut. Way to go! Goooooooo Jumpcut!!

Yo that photo of Jumpcut -- the guy in the photo does not look like Jesse at
all. Bring back the real Jesse!

------
Azuolas
looks promising

