

Companies That Presented at Y Combinator Demo Day 1 - eroo
http://techcrunch.com/2015/03/23/here-are-the-companies-that-presented-at-y-combinator-demo-day-day-1/

======
mojoe
Reading these dozens of one sentence summaries gives me an inkling of what it
must feel like to be an investor who is pitched to all the time -- a concept
really has to stand out to be noticed.

~~~
marrington
Yes it's really hard as an investor to 1) stay alert through hours and dozens
of startups, and 2) actually understand enough of what they do from the
presentations to know if you want to know more. Not perfect by any means, but
I certainly can't think of a better way for them to do it without taking
massive amounts of time from the founders.

~~~
thomasfoster96
Then again, isn't not being able to understand what a startup is doing a good
indicator that perhaps they aren't ready for your investment?

~~~
marrington
Certainly yes, but it usually takes longer than 3 minutes to figure stuff out.
What I really need is an hour at least with a startup 1 on 1 to know if I'm
really interested. But like I said above, that doesn't scale with so many
companies and investors. So you have to trust your instincts, but there's
often a herd mentality as investors talk to each other and try to use those
signals to help them.

~~~
drited
Would they typically hold longer form talks kind of like public company
analyst days where they get into more detail over an hour or so and several
potential investors who have dialled in grill them on what is being presented?
Apologies for the noob question, I don't deal with startups but am curious
about the information dissemination process they use.

------
BinaryIdiot
I was surprised to learn GitLab was part of the group. At my last company we
were using GitLab for quite some time, I had no idea they were in a place to
take seed money (figured they'd be looking for a higher round). Either way
GitLab is pretty cool.

~~~
swaroop
From a recent GitLab blog post[1]:

> At first glance, it might not seem obvious for our company to join Y
> Combinator since we already have 10 employees and hundreds of paying
> clients. The reason for joining was learning more about how to grow as a
> company. We were always really focussed on GitLab and of course we never
> want to lose that. But we want to avoid as many mistakes made by fast
> growing companies and to learn from the Y Combinator partners that have seen
> hundreds of organizations growing fast. There are regular events that
> feature experts in all facets of building a company, from user retention to
> enterprise sales. And it is great to hear stories from other startups,what
> they have overcame and how relentlessly resourceful they have been.

[1] [https://about.gitlab.com/2015/03/04/gitlab-is-part-of-
the-y-...](https://about.gitlab.com/2015/03/04/gitlab-is-part-of-the-y-
combinator-family/)

~~~
sytse
GitLab CEO here, thanks for posting this swaroop.

------
illinx
Not involved in the startup scene at all, but isn't "uber for laundry" a
punchline at this point? What are cleanly doing (or what aren't they doing)
that dozens of failed startups didn't do? This isn't snark, YC are saavy
investors and I'm interested to know what they see.

This article, for example, is a year old:
[http://nymag.com/news/features/laundry-
apps-2014-5/](http://nymag.com/news/features/laundry-apps-2014-5/)

Unrelated, I found it interesting that clean.ly doesn't resolve to Cleanly's
website--for that you have to go to getcleanly.com. Do -ly's confer status
these days to the point that the URL is unnecessary?

~~~
totalrobe
Apparently you didn't read that article or you would see what they are
doing...every load of laundry gets a cookie or healthy treat delivered with
it. Clearly a game-changer.

~~~
jbigelow76
The cookie is the secret, they fatten up their customers with the free cookies
and in a year pivot into an apparel ecommerce play now that their user base
has outgrown their clothes.

~~~
totalrobe
The clothes are undersized compared to average so the customer base feels
extra obese and they pivot into a social fitness tracker network and an on-
demand healthy meal provider with an IOT ordering widget.

------
kriro
Pigeonly (improved inmate to outside world communication) strikes me as
interesting. It's not very sexy but I think it's a somewhat interesting
problem domain (and sadly a growth market) where connections/talking to
people/understanding the market can give you a pretty hard to immitate
advantage. Doesn't seem very hard technically but pretty hard non-technically.

~~~
AVTizzle
This guy's story is great, too. Former inmate, was at $3M+ ARR as of Dec 2014:
[http://www.crewlab.net/pigeonly/](http://www.crewlab.net/pigeonly/)

~~~
jffry
There was an episode of Planet Money earlier this month talking about
Pigeonly:
[http://www.npr.org/blogs/money/2015/03/13/392862778/episode-...](http://www.npr.org/blogs/money/2015/03/13/392862778/episode-610-the-
prisoners-solution)

------
mstevens
When I saw this post I thought it'd be a report on the very first Y Combinator
Demo Day ever and where they are today.

I still think that'd be really interesting.

~~~
mdorazio
Same here. I'm hoping TC or even Sam Altman will do a similar post comparing
how demo day has changed over the years.

------
andyidsinga
yhat seems really cool. Saw Greg Lamp at papis.io conference late last year
demonstrating a beer recommender they built :
[http://www.slideshare.net/Yhat/building-a-beer-
recommender-w...](http://www.slideshare.net/Yhat/building-a-beer-recommender-
with-yhat-papisio-november-2014)

------
huhtenberg
> Pomello

Fellas, if you are here, - keep in mind the "keming" issue with your name when
spelled in lowercase. On the TC website with the body font they are using the
name looks and reads like Pornello. Had to re-read it to understand why the
brief didn't match the name.

~~~
cspence
Thanks for the heads up, this is a first for this issue. Not sure there is
much we can do about it at this point. Hopefully, it won't be the first thing
people's minds jump to.

------
tericho
I can't figure out how Kickback gets around the gambling legalities if they
are hosted in the US. They also say they use PayPal for withdrawals which is
shocking since gambling is against their TOS.

~~~
jtfairbank
It's a game of skill, not a game of chance, and thus isn't covered under the
gambling regulations.

~~~
cma
Doesn't that have to involve your skill in the performance, e.g. sports
betting is still illegal in more than the number of states they say they are
operating in, isn't it?

~~~
jtfairbank
You're playing the video game, so it is your skill.

------
davidw
Wow, that's a ton of companies compared to "back in the day".

It'd be interesting to have a nice summary of recent batches and where they
are to see what kinds of ideas have gotten traction. There are some there
that, from the one sentence blurb, don't sound that interesting, but I think
the YC folks and the people they invest in are smart, so there's got to be
something there.

I'm personally interested in seeing what BookTrope is doing, as it's in a
similar space to my own LiberWriter.

Good luck to all of them!

~~~
taprun
The site [http://yclist.com/](http://yclist.com/) has a list of YC companies
and where they stand.

------
bumbledraven
cindercooks.com looks cool. I love me a good steak, so I would buy one today
if it would ship today. Early 2016 though? Not pre-ordering that far in
advance.

~~~
calbear81
I personally feel like being able to cook the perfect steak by sight/intuition
is a skill worth learning.

~~~
compumike
There are now 3 YC companies making temperature-controlled cooking products,
with 3 different engineering approaches: Cinder, Nomiku, and Pantelligent
(note: co-founder). In each case, the basic tech works, and the result is
really delicious, matching and sometimes exceeding what a "sight/intuition"
skilled chef can produce. You'll believe it when you taste it!

~~~
ddebernardy
Sounds nice, but have any of you guys figured out the cleaning part of the
equation? Because if not, I'd gather most consumers will stick with their
pans. (Pros are a different story, of course.)

~~~
maxerickson
Cinder is supposed to come apart (we'll see what they launch), so you can
stick the cooking surfaces in the dishwasher.

Nomiku should not really get dirty (it only comes into contact with water).

Pantelligent doesn't make it clear if the handle will be immersible, but it
isn't that much hassle to clean a pan without soaking the handle.

~~~
ddebernardy
Good luck with that... At the very least, probe into waterproofing that pan.
You can't afford to fail this, because someone _will_ place it in their
dishwasher or soak the handle, and word of mouth will rinse off any early
adopter enthusiasm when news of broken pans hit cooking forums. Your pan would
then be about as easy to sell as a grown dog with a "moody, dirty, bites" sign
around its neck.

------
pg_bot
A group of TechCrunch bloggers posted their favorites for the first day as
well. [http://techcrunch.com/gallery/our-10-favorite-companies-
from...](http://techcrunch.com/gallery/our-10-favorite-companies-from-y-
combinator-demo-day-day-1/) I found it interesting because none of the
companies I had internally thought of as potential breakout hits made their
list.

------
yarri
Hesitate to post an AskHN about this, but which company has the 66 year old
(co-)founder? [0] Glad to see this diversity.

[0] [http://venturebeat.com/wp-
content/uploads/2015/03/xlarge_YC-...](http://venturebeat.com/wp-
content/uploads/2015/03/xlarge_YC-infographic_v4.png)

------
jbigelow76
Will somebody please sum up which ones are LO-MO-SO and which ones are MO-SO-
LO [1]

[1]
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J-GVd_HLlps](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J-GVd_HLlps)

------
cma
"like comments, but they automatically follow your code as it’s moved around
in your program"

Wait, don't comments do that?

(edit: oh, they mean like forum comments, not like source-code comments?)

~~~
timr
That's kind of a low-resolution summary of what we were saying -- you can
annotate code on omniref, and we'll carry those annotations forward/backward
in time, until the code changes.

It's part of our way of dealing with the problem that happens on StackOverflow
all the time, where the top-rated answer is completely out-of-date.

------
jedanbik
Happy to see Nomiku on the list - they ran a fantastic Kickstarter campaign,
and I hope they get the help they need to scale up into everyone's kitchen.

------
prawn
Have Apple relaxed their restrictions about duplicate functionality in apps
produced by the same developer? GroupAhead are cloning their own apps with a
seemingly fixed set of features (membership, calendar, forum, links). A friend
had his app denied with Apple saying that the new app should be rolled into
another app he had already created.

------
tdaltonc
Has anyone made a "March Madness pool" style game for YC demo day?

------
7Figures2Commas
First glance: the ratio of features to products to businesses is astounding.

~~~
Cshelton
I had the same first impression. I see many cool products, some cool
ideas/concepts, but....very few real businesses. That's how it goes though, 5
years from now, one, maybe two of these 'companies' will be around still. It's
a fun game.

~~~
onion2k
Fair comment for typical accelerators but not really true in the case of YC.
There are far more alive or exited than dead companies in YC's alumnus..
[http://yclist.com](http://yclist.com) (out of date but it's the old data
that's relevant here).

~~~
7Figures2Commas
Do you have insight into the financial operations of every company on that
list?

There are a fair number of zombie startups in Silicon Valley that haven't yet
exhausted their funding. Some even have enough revenue to keep the lights on.
But it doesn't mean they're anywhere close to having a thriving business that
will be able to sustain itself and grow meaningfully over time.

When evaluating startups, alive/dead is a lazy means of analysis. This is
particularly true in today's funding environment, where companies can raise
seven figure seed rounds and establish a fairly long runway very early on. The
real question is how many of the startups funded today will ever realistically
be in a financial position to return capital, and how much, to their
investors.

~~~
Cshelton
Exactly, I do not count, 'Hey we've made it five years now, but can hardly
break even and have no clear vision of where to go from here' as 'alive'. In
fact, by that time, the investors have probably written them off and will be
trying to figure out if they can salvage some talent from it before their
runway ends. In the end, YC or not, less than 10% of these guys will become
real companies. It's just statistics. YC may get you the seven figure round,
but if you keep your, 'product', or 'feature' as such for a few years, you're
dead.

Edit: Not trying to discredit what these start ups have done so far, it's very
hard getting to that point alone.

