
Tell HN: Today's the day that YC invites applicants to interviews - philco
Goodluck everybody!<p>What are you building &#x2F; what idea did you apply with?
======
dtawfik1
This is a bit of a tangent, but if you don't get in, don't read into it too
much. The rejection could be due to many factors. It could very well be that
you were rejected by the stage of your company. You may not have built out
enough, or haven't had enough validation yet. I know a solo founder who didn't
get in, but went on to raise 20m plus for his company (tuition.io). The fact
that he was a solo founder and that he was still developing the product could
have been the issue of why he was rejected. He went along to create a company
that has 50+ employees. This is all to say you really have to develop the idea
and see where your traction is to validate your idea. YC is a great
organization to have backing you, but it's not always perfect in selecting
great companies. Learn from the rejection, and apply those lessons, but commit
to building a company.

~~~
ganeshkrishnan
Traction is where the action is.

Don't convince investors about your startup. Convince your customers.

Customers don't care about virtue signals that investors care about: solo
founder, your mrr , your qualifications etc.

1% is building the product, 99% is in the execution

------
YazIAm
An authoring platform enabling authors/journalists to "open source" their fact
checking. That is, making their fact checking reviewable and reusable.

Here's a demo article on net neutrality! [https://sourcedfact.com/a/net-
neutrality-how-we-got-here](https://sourcedfact.com/a/net-neutrality-how-we-
got-here)

When it comes to media, trust by brand is breaking down. Media outlets can't
expect their audience to just trust their assertions because of their big name
anymore. That used to work when there were only a handful of outlets that any
given person would be exposed to, making it possible to assign mental trust
values to these outlets.

To re-earn their audience's trust, outlets have to start "showing their work",
in other words making their fact-checking openly and collaboratively
reviewable.

Good luck all!

~~~
yash1th
This is really great. Good luck!!

------
philco
Ok, We'll start :) We're building the world's first bank that is a true
fiduciary. Our mission is to enable the 70% of Americans who have less than 5k
in savings, and the 76% who can't pass a financial literacy exam achieve
financial independence.

How?

We only offer one product - a smart checking account that acts as a financial
advisor + planner. (Think of your finances on autopilot).

For every other product or financial service, we refer you to the best in
class offerings by other companies.

Need a loan? We'll find a new loan at the cheapest terms possible, or
automatically look for refinancing opportunities as your financial condition
improves. Need to plan for retirement? We'll find the best retirement service
providers that suit your needs.

Check us out on fixbanking.com.

Goodluck everyone!

~~~
crabasa
Love this idea. I discovered FI(RE) a couple of years ago, and it changed my
life. When I think of the number of tools I use to manage my finances and the
amount of time I devote to it, it's no wonder more people aren't excited about
taking control of their finances. Good luck!

~~~
philco
FI(RE) is great - Happy to hear you found something that works with your
mental model and you can follow. So many of us don't yet!

------
crabasa
A professional network for developers. LinkedIn minus the bad parts.

Our goal for developers is to help them better manage their careers.
Developers will be able to use this tool to build their professional brand,
network more effectively, and when they're open to it, get compensated for
engaging in phone screens about highly targeted job opportunities.

Our goal for tech companies is to completely replace recruiting agencies (who
charge up to 25% of the salary of a landed hire) by providing hiring managers
with the tools to connect directly with the right developers.

Here's an early prototype of our profile product:
[https://www.fizbuz.com/u/jesswest](https://www.fizbuz.com/u/jesswest)

We're pretty early, but already have 150+ developers signed-up on our wait
list and are onboarding new folks every day. Feel free to check us out!

[https://www.fizbuz.com](https://www.fizbuz.com)

~~~
philco
Love the name!

~~~
crabasa
Haha, thanks! I'm always surprised when a developer doesn't "get" it. Haven't
we all been asked to implement FizzBuzz?

[http://wiki.c2.com/?FizzBuzzTest](http://wiki.c2.com/?FizzBuzzTest)

~~~
philco
haha, maybe that'll be the first screening test you can put on someone's
profile.

I've been a fan of Upwork having tests for freelancers and then publishing
their score on their profiles. You should also check out Harj Taggar's
company, TripleByte - he was super involved in YC back in the day. (He may
still be, but not sure!)

~~~
crabasa
I'm very aware of Triplebyte, but what we're building is different. Those
startups focus on building recruiting and evaluation tools. The company is
their primary customer, and a developer will probably only have a Triplebyte
account for a limited period of time.

Fizbuz places the developer first, and we want to build tools for developers
that help them manage their career and brand over the course of decades. We
will work with companies looking to hire as a byproduct of helping developers
accomplish a goal (i.e. getting a job).

Doing the right thing for the developer is our #1 principle. Which is why we
will never implement anything like InMail.

~~~
philco
Having a mission and sticking to it is something I relate to in a big way. I
hear you on the InMail ban.

Do you think you'll eventually start building mentor networks?

~~~
crabasa
One of the top feature requests we have is help finding a mentor. It's a key
use case we want to enable.

------
orarbel1
Anima App: [https://www.animaapp.com](https://www.animaapp.com) \- We empower
UI/UX designers.

Why is it important to empower designers?

We believe that user experience creates revolutions. There were smartphones
before the iPhone, yet the mobile revolution started by the innovative user
experience that Apple invented.

In our mind, more power to designers will lead to better and better digital
products, which will result in more revolutionary products.

Our tools empower designers to express their vision in their language, rather
than communicate their vision via mock-ups.

Today we provide tools for Sketch like Auto-Layout, Launchpad, and Timeline.
Each of these gives designers more power to own their creations, we automate
the front-end work.

Our toolkit is used by more than 70,000 designers and in well-known teams in
Apple, Google, Facebook, Netflix and more.

If you use Sketch and haven't heard about us, try us out :)

~~~
philco
We use Anima at Novi! Great product :) Love the transitions beta.

~~~
orarbel1
Great to hear! Thank you!

------
opensports
OpenSports: [https://opensports.net](https://opensports.net) \- we make it
really easy for sports organizers to run their organizations, collect money,
handle waitlists, waivers etc.

If people in the Bay Area want to go to SPIN tonight and drink and play ping
pong while we wait for the results to come in please comment and we'll see if
we can setup a last minute event.

Also, if you want to see our hack from the YC Hackathon last weekend here is a
link
([https://www.facebook.com/OpenSportsInc/videos/21414657827534...](https://www.facebook.com/OpenSportsInc/videos/2141465782753440/))
to Sequel Dan (we made an Alexa app that wrote SQL to query questions against
our staging database almost as fast as we thought of them)

Good luck to everyone!!

------
thepra
An online web service that greatly automates and improve the renting process
for both sides, the business and the user, for the end result of stop wasting
everyone's time of searching from half thought filters and incomplete results
(on the user side) and make businesses work for the user\client by providing
potential candidates for their offerings. I applied the idea of "stop wasting
everyone's time" from a long and nauseant experience of researching for a
living place in a big city.

Thought: Nowadays many business models are kind of lame, they just wait for
the end user to find their offerings and get in touch with them (often to even
get further basic info about the offer that wasn't available on the offer
page). But because the amount of information is growing really quickly
nowadays(plus duplication of it in different places), you can't really expect
a single human being with limited brain memory getting able (in a sane and
stress-free way) to go through every single business of interest to find what
you're searching for, especially when the data is updated/added day by day.
Simple and stress-free platforms(mostly about research for goods or services)
for the end user and engaging businesses on the other side at the service of
the client will be in great demand in the near future, in my appealing.

------
dvt
Good luck everyone :)

As a solo founder this time around, I built Rap Genius for movies & TV shows:
[https://www.spoiled.tv](https://www.spoiled.tv)

~~~
jacobwal
Looks great! I'm a huge fan of content like Alt-Shift-X and Every Frame A
Painting, do you hope to move in that direction over time? Not necessarily
yourself, but providing tools/space for creators to produce it?

~~~
dvt
Yes! I loved Every Frame A Painting when it was still on and I think
spoiled.tv is the perfect space to get to experience that kind of content.

~~~
jacobwal
Other than telling friends about it, anything users can do to help?

~~~
dvt
Let me know if there's a show you're a superfan of and would like to
contribute to! Right now, I only have a few shows up, but I take requests if
you email me at david@spoiled.tv

For example, my sister is re-watching Battlestar Galactica with her boyfriend
and she wants to contribute to it.

------
benjismith
I applied with Shaxpir (pronounced exactly like "Shakespeare"). It's an online
writing platform for fiction authors. I like to describe it as a "Github for
Literature".

[https://shaxpir.com](https://shaxpir.com)

Besides the basic text-editing, cloud-sync, and ebook publishing tools you'd
expect in a platform like this, there's also a big linguistic model of
literary prose, which helps authors analyze the vividness of their writing,
and make meaningful comparisons against the authors they admire.

Anyone online can explore the public version of that model, at
[http://prosecraft.io](http://prosecraft.io), but subscribers of Shaxpir can
actually analyze their own writing according to the exact same model, getting
realtime feedback on the linguistic metrics of their prose.

I launched my beta about 3 years ago, and this is the 3rd time I've applied to
YC... I applied to the original Fellowship, in the fall of 2015, and then to
Winter 2016 class.

Fingers crossed!

And best of luck to everyone else who applied!!

But even if you don't get accepted this time around, just KEEP WORKING!
Eventually, you'll find a way!

------
Hernanaracena
We're building a MacOS app that helps you stay focused and beat
procrastination.

The app holds your to-do list and automatically adds a timer function. The
timer is activated when your to-do item has a number at the end. As in: "Get
to zero inbox 30" That means the task is "Get to zero inbox" and the allotted
time is 30 minutes. If that's the top item on the list, the timer starts
instantly and automatically, with the full task appearing on your menu bar
(This description comes from Mike Elgan 1)

You can check us out at
[http://www.tryeffortless.com](http://www.tryeffortless.com).

Wishing you all good luck!

1: [https://elgan.com/blog/two-free-apps-that-take-
productivity-...](https://elgan.com/blog/two-free-apps-that-take-productivity-
to-the-next-level)

------
Immortalin
KloudTrader. [https://KloudTrader.com](https://KloudTrader.com)

We are trying to build a better trading platform. Our platform allows non-
programmers to do algorithmic trading. We are bringing sentiment analysis,
machine learning and a smarter portfolio manager to the masses.

------
benjismith
Has anybody heard from YC yet?

In the past, I've gotten a rejection email midday (2pm pacific), but now it's
after 9pm pacific, and I still haven't heard one way or another...

~~~
hoofhearted
Nothing yet.

~~~
beluis3d
Just heard.

~~~
benjismith
Yeah, I got mine a little after midnight too...

------
crubier
Sterblue: [http://www.sterblue.com/](http://www.sterblue.com/) \- We automate
inspections of industrial infrastructure (Power grid, Wind turbines, solar
panels and so on) using drones and AI.

One integrated automatic solution for data collection and data analysis, using
off-the-shelf-drones, with 98% detection precision, and 200% productivity as
compared to other drone inspection solutions. Purely software.

Good luck to all !

------
adtac
Out of curiousity, does the number of views on your unlisted YC video matter?
Youtube analytics tells me there was just 1 view from California on 02-Apr,
and that could be "this guy is a totally awesome, just call him for an
interview" or "wtf is this, straight reject" lol.

Guess I'll find out in 24 hours.

~~~
philco
I read somewhere that depending on how they access the video on the
application portal, it may or may not count as a view. So no sweat on views!
Goodluck!

------
jijosunny
Buy Me A Coffee
([https://www.buymeacoffee.com/](https://www.buymeacoffee.com/)) - helping
thousands of creators receive tips/donations and to share exclusive content
with their audience.

Good luck all!

------
faplllc
www.tothetens.com We are building a marketplace, where users can share and buy
products from the photos and videos. We are starting with fashion and beauty
sector.

------
afaqkhan
How do i submit my post over ycombinator.when ever i post something it says
"Sorry, your account is too new to submit this site." plz help. My blog
[https://phoneworldz.blogspot.in/](https://phoneworldz.blogspot.in/)

