

Y Combinator Demo Day Roundup - nextmoveone
http://www.techcrunch.com/2008/03/14/y-combinator-demo-day-roundup-for-spring-2008/

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brett
I was curious where they were hosted so I thought I'd share. The script is
based on an old post by cperciva <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=65022>.

    
    
      Slicehost LLC                   6
      	tipjoy.com
      	baseshield.com
      	mightyquiz.com
      	insoshi.com
      	stanfordturf.com
      	280slides.com
      Amazon.com, Inc.                4
      	8aweek.com
      	webmynd.com
      	deluux.com
      	wundrbar.com
      SoftLayer Technologies Inc.     3
      	snaptalent.com
      	chatterous.com
      	omnisio.com
      Peer 1 Network Inc.             2
      	rescuetime.com
      	addher.com
      HERAKLES LLC                    1
      	mixwit.com
      Hollywood Interactive, Inc.     1
      	yumdots.com

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nextmoveone
My votes go to:

-RescueTime (So freaking valuable!)

-Kirkland North (definitely going to grow their userbase quickly! (once they launch))

-Chatterous (Because I had a very similar idea)

\-------------------------------------------------

My notes are to:

-insoshi (you have an indirect competitor, lovdbyless, it's a rails based opensource social network maker thing)

-deluux (my first interpretation of what you guys do was a single login for every site (like openID or w/e) but then my second interpretation was that I can show my facebook page or elements from it, on my own site? Like a widget(s)? That would be awesome!)

-joberator(i think we simply need more developers, not referrals, because, at least in S. Florida, finding a developer through craigslist, career builder or monster is NOT easy, and my CS major friends dont have any referrals, period and they are in their last year of college, so I have to wait for them to graduate which is not sufficient)

-wundrbar(dont know if this is possible, but if you could simply be an option in the dropdown that accompanies that search box in top right of FireFox and IE7, that would ROCK MY FREAKING WORLD!)

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stevenbristol
LovdByLess is launched! Check out <http://lovdbyless.com> for more info.

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lessallan
+1 for Rails

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SwellJoe
If I were a betting man, SnapTalent would be the first I'd put coin on. I
didn't actually think much of it (and, in fact, I think when I first talked to
them early in Winter08 they didn't even have any useful code written yet...but
maybe I'm misremembering), until they'd actually launched. It really looks
great, though--a perfect way to handle the tech jobs market, which is a HUGE
industry in and of itself. Monster and Dice have been fighting it out for
years, and spending millions just marketing themselves. SnapTalent allows the
world of bloggers and tech sites to market for them. Recipe for win if ever I
saw one.

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sharpshoot
Hey Joe, Thanks for the comments. We're starting out in tech but will be
moving to other verticals eventually. The other key advantage we have is that
as the web's traffic is more international and as we add advertisers from
different countries we can serve Ip targeted ads on the same publishers and be
extremely local at the same time.

We have a global and pretty ambitious vision - its how hotjobs started, we're
aiming to be even bigger in this phase of the web.

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emmett
I was putting myself in the mindset of someone looking for a job, and I was
extremely disappointed after viewing both awesome snaptalent ads that I could
not click "Browse more". I wanted to see all your listings.

~~~
smhinsey
I've been thinking the same thing for awhile. Initially I had just chalked it
up to a browser issue since I'm running webkit nightlies. This seems like a
pretty easy thing to remedy though.

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tx
My favorite is TipJoy. The problem was in the air, PG himself teased everybody
with it, but yet nobody took the trouble of actually tackling it. Neat
approach, nice execution. Bravo!

Another big one, I think, is SnapTalent. The existing system of finding people
to work is pretty much an "offline approach" ported over the net. SnapTalent
actually uses the technology to improve the effectiveness of the process. I
only hope that their users (companies) will be smart enough to recognize the
potential. If I were monster.com (are they still around?) I'd grabbed these
guys immediately.

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cperciva
_My favorite is TipJoy_

I like the basic principle of aggregating micropayments, but I think TipJoy
going to be very limited until people can actually get money out (which of
course means that TipJoy has to deal with the regulatory issues). So far
they've accumulated $1531.54 in tips (assuming their website is up to date),
which means that their 3% cut adds up to a grand total of $45.95... which
isn't going to make anyone rich in a hurry.

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pg
You can't tell much from the numbers of a startup this young. They've
generated more revenue than Google had at the same age.

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cperciva
Sure -- my point was just that taking a 3% cut of $0.10 payments means that
TipJoy needs to get very very big before it will be making much money.

Can TipJoy get big enough fast enough?

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pg
Tipping is just the initial form of micropayment they've implemented.
Eventually they plan to support all forms. Could being able to charge people
small amounts for digital content be big? Yes.

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cperciva
_Tipping is just the initial form of micropayment they've implemented._

Well, that changes things. :-)

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ivankirigin
I know you might expect this from a cofounder, but I think Tipjoy is going to
be huge.

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startingup
280Slides caught my attention - sounds like Zenter - The Sequel?

In fact, RescueTime & 8AWeek also sound awfully similar, don't they? This
raises an interesting question. As number of YC companies increases, the
chances of "collision" increases too. How is that handled?

~~~
pg
280 North comes at the problem from a different direction. They're building
infrastructure for making a new class of web-based apps that really feel like
desktop ones. They just happened to pick Powerpoint to build first. But of the
60k LOC they've written so far, I believe 280 Slides is only 20k.

RescueTime and 8aweek are also quite different: RT is for people and groups
who want to track their productivity, and 8aweek is an alternative to
blacklist-based web filtering.

Our answer to the problem of collisions is that in any large market, which we
encourage startups to be in, there is going to be room for several different
approaches.

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Readmore
I'm really interested in TipJoy, it sounds like they finally came up with a
system for micro-payments that could work.

~~~
dskhatri
Tipjoy seems to be gaining in popularity: It's already being filtered out by
some enterprise firewalls (unfairly, in my opinion) being labelled as a Pay-
to-surf site!

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ivankirigin
Thanks for that heads up. It's the exact opposite: "pay for what I surf".

Does anyone know if there is some automated reason this might have happened?

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fallentimes
Not a lot of love in the techcrunch comments, but I guess that's to be
expected.

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SwellJoe
No better or worse than usual (actually maybe a little less hostile than the
last three batches--I know Winter07 had more hostility in the comments,
although this one may catch up by the time all is said). TC comments are
always full of also-rans and never-was entrepreneurs who are spitting vitriol,
and they come out in force for the YC demo day roundup.

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ivankirigin
The presentations were awesome. The total value of the tech in the room was
huge.

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DarrenStuart
is there any video of the presentations?

on paper some of these seem like hacker projects not startups so I would love
to see how they see value in these startups.

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webwright
what percentage of breakout success storieson the Internet did NOT start as
hacker projects? Facebook, google, yahoo, etc. All started that way.

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antiismist
As counterpoints, myspace, flickr, and digg were not hacker projects.

edit: removed google from the above list.

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pg
Flickr was sort of a hacker project, in that like Blogger it was a side
project of a group who thought they were working on something else.

~~~
antiismist
It depends on how you define a hacker project. That is a fair characterization
if you say that a hacker project is something that doesn't come out of a
normal business process, regardless of the corporate structure that surrounds
the people hacking away on it.

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lanceusa
Quote: MightyQuiz ...The site is very sticky: the average session lasts 8
minutes (or 19 questions). As a comparison, the founders claim that Slate has
an average session length of 4:22 and Wired has 3:34.

Are 3-8 minute sessions any indication of success? My site gets over 10
minutes right now.

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poppysan
I get so excited to see whats coming out next from the YC womb. I'm very
excited about InSochi and tipJoy especially. I can see non-profits and
charities even using tipJoy . Pretty hip stuff!

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mhartl
Glad to hear you're excited about Insoshi---just be sure to note the spelling!
(We own the domains for a bunch of misspellings, just not the one you used.
:-)

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comatose_kid
Many sound like good ideas, but I'm most intrigued by Deluux.

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wallflower
Which company had the best demo?

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Monti
Nice job guys, wish you all the best. My startup launches in 3 weeks :)

