
Startups that debuted at Y Combinator W17 Demo Day 2 - tyre
https://techcrunch.com/2017/03/21/demo-day-y-combinator/
======
a_d
"Enterprise sales" is a very interesting problem. There are 4 companies in
this batch that are attacking it from different sides: (1) Scribe – Automating
sales development representatives (2) Upcall – Outbound calls as a service (3)
Clover Intelligence – Voice analytics for sales (4) Riley – Lead qualification
as a service

B2B businesses rely heavily on sales - a great sales team can make or break
the company. But for folks with a predominantly technical background, sales as
a function, remains at best a mystery, and at worst something they make fun of
(because sales people are often different from technical people - there is a
lack of understanding between the two).

It is great to see more technical people entering "sales" and are trying to
understand it.

Sales is often (mis)understood as a slick-smooth-talking meeting/phone call
that magically convinces an unwitting customer into paying for a product.
Companies like the 4 mentioned above, and several others that are playing in
this space, are attempting to bring data and rigor to this space.

It would be a net better outcome for everyone -- less annoying calls for a
prospect and more focused approach for the seller.

I am fascinated by the intersection of analysis, software, and sales. I wish
the best to these companies!

edit: formatting

~~~
Radim
It's generally much harder to poo on professions, after you've had to walk in
their shoes.

Personally, I found that ML consulting gave me a valuable perspective on this
process. So many hats to wear: research & development, lead gen & marketing,
sales, support, product management, legal & IP, administrative & taxes.

Consulting definitely teaches you humility. You will no longer be "that
researcher" who thinks whatever happens after their precious math formula or
the 5-line Matlab prototype is "unworthy stuff for code monkeys".

Or that engineer who thinks "the suits" are out to ruin your perfect towers of
code and logic, with their silly deadlines and requirements...

------
mintplant
As podcasts become bigger and bigger I've been afraid of something like
Breaker succeeding. Thanks to RSS/Atom it's currently a very open medium.
Anyone can start putting out content and I can consume it on any device and
app I choose, download episodes for on-the-go and offline listening, transfer
the files easily between devices—even to "dumb" MP3 players that never had an
app ecosystem—and move my subscriptions around with the common OPML format.
There's no tracking or analytics peering over my shoulder, unlike so much of
modern media that's become enslaved to data: as a listener I consider this a
feature.

I'm quite willing to pay for podcast content, and I do. I've been a paid
subscriber to The NoSleep Podcast ever since they started offering the option,
at $20 a season. They use a service called Nanacast, which collects my payment
and gives me a unique RSS feed URL that I can add to any podcast app. No
arbitrary centralization or gatekeepers required.

~~~
haraball
Breaker's app looks good, but I agree in that I hope they won't succeed. Their
monetization strategy is to "own" podcasts and have people pay for access, if
I understand correctly. Which podcasts do they have lined up for this? Will
those podcasts still have ads in them? When will they start charging? Too many
unanswered questions for me at this point which stops me from switching from
my current podcast setup, and to advocate my friends to switch to this new
"social" platform which might shut down when money runs out.

I pay for Spotify, Netflix etc. to avoid ads. Some podcasts manage to
incorporate ads tastefully with respect for the listener. Others are not done
that well, and produces the same horror as when you're used to Netflix and
suddenly see how a show looks with frequent commercial breaks on a hotel TV.

Here's an idea: Crowdsourced ad-filtered podcast RSS streams you have to pay
to access, where the profits go back to the podcasts themselves. Users mark
the start and end of the ads in the podcast audio, and a podcast player skips
those parts. That's something I would pay for, and hopefully would generate
more money to the producers of podcasts than ads.

~~~
ghaff
Fortunately, podcasts do seem to be one area that is apparently working
reasonably well today for both producers and consumers.

Consumers get mostly free podcasts. Producers are either fine with not
monetizing; the podcast is a hobby or it's in support of other activities that
do bring in money. Or a pretty reasonable ad density (apparently) brings in
enough money that people find it worthwhile to produce podcasts.

------
Rainymood
First off, I absolutely LOVE these write-ups. That being said I chuckled at
this one:

>Tetra – Automatic notes for business meetings

>A lot of meeting notes are taken in Evernote but Tetra takes call notes for
you by automatically dialing you to merge into the call and then sending you a
fully searchable record of the entire conversation. It comes in auto speech
only or human edited using a fast transcription feature for 50 cents a minute
from humans. There may be some ethical challenges around recording others and
each person using the service will need to inform those on the call they are
being recorded but with two billion hours of conference calls a year, Tetra
plans to take on that market using it’s AI and data. The startup launched on
Product Hunt a week ago and now has two paid monthly users.

>The startup launched on Product Hunt a week ago and now has two paid monthly
users.

>two paid monthly users.

Yes, two. But still, any traction is better than no traction! I love a lot of
the ideas but am sceptical about most of them. Good luck to each company!

~~~
jgoldsmith
thanks! try us out [https://asktetra.com](https://asktetra.com) and maybe
we'll get to 3 :)

~~~
martalist
Your answer made me chuckle in a good way - great way to turn a potential
negative into something funny and positive! I'm sure I'm not the only one
checking out your site because of this.

~~~
nojvek
When Dropbox first came out, I remember a similar Comment. "Why would anyone
use this when you have rsync". They don't have any paying customer.

Speech -> annotated searchable text is a humongous market. I really hope you
guys and gals kill it.

------
anilgulecha
Peer5 - This is malware on your browser, and they are abusing the webrtc
protocol for their business usecase.

Until they provide a clear __opt-in __usage behavior, this opinion will not
change. Clearly if their proposition is about better streaming service
/quality, this is trivially testable by how many users opt-in to their network
when viewing videos.

Their endpoints should be added to easylist. This is very big concern for
metered users, who'll see their usage spike. Is there a list of peer5
endpoints?

~~~
huancle
At Peer5, our customers are the broadcasters who operate streaming services
throughout the world. The users are theirs, not ours, and it is up to the
broadcasters to decide how they want to message / roll-out p2p services. Some
choose to opt people in by default and allow them to opt out. Others choose
the opposite approach. Our job is to give our customers the tools they need to
create and enforce whatever business rules they feel are appropriate. This
includes looking at ASN numbers to identify ISPs that operate metered services
and turning off upstream sharing for such users. No one is forced to
participate in a Peer5 mesh network. And the value proposition is most
definitely better streaming, especially for the biggest / most popular streams
as these benefit the most from a p2p solution. We have plenty of data from
users all over the world to support this.

~~~
anilgulecha
Sure, and ad-networks asked sites to use their solutions appropriately on the
users browsers.

You're giving your customers tools to abuse the internet commons. You should
be called out for it. Afterall your revenue is an exact function of user's
bandwidth. Quoting from your pricing page:

> "Only data delivered via P2P counts against your plan."

~~~
einarvollset
By this logic, torrents are destroying the internet commons: this is basically
running torrents in the users browser, but for content that they are legally
allowed to consume. I think you need to step of your hobby horse here.

~~~
anilgulecha
Torrent users opt-in, by adding the magnetlink/torrent into the app.

~~~
einarvollset
Presumably, so would Peer5 users by doing things like picking the cheaper
streaming host with the superior quality. And by the way - what's so precious
in your mind about uplink bandwidth? How does the direction of the bits from
my computer make this a moral case for you?

~~~
anilgulecha
Assuming you're asking in good-faith: it's not the direction of bits that's
the concern, it's the number of bits. End users should have the option of
opting-in their metered bits towards Peer5's CDN revenue.

~~~
einarvollset
I am, and that's like saying you should be able to opt in to google's adwords
revenue when using google.

------
sergiotapia
Out of all of these the only one that really interests me is Fibo.
[https://www.fiboapp.com/](https://www.fiboapp.com/)

I was in line for the Nintendo Switch and I got to talking with a contractor
who deals with and hires carpenters, tile guys, plumbers, etc - and you
wouldn't believe the shit this guy had to put up with to finish a project.

His workflow was all over the place out of necessity and he paid around
$500/month on software alone, not to mention the wasted time. I was thinking
of building something like Fibo for these guys, this is gold! Best of luck to
them for real. They can change the quality of lives for contractors and for
their clients.

~~~
zsalim
Thank you for that comment. Means a lot! I'm one of the founders of Fibo and
would be happy to chat more about what we're doing anytime. zane @ fiboapp.com

~~~
nojvek
My dad and brother are in construction and plumbing. They talk about this all
the time. Tech industry has a lot of bullshit apps because most developers
don't know how other industries work.

Kudos for you to find a under-represented industry and make a dent.

------
justinzollars
I will get down voted for this but its how I feel. I have not been excited for
an app or a new website in a very long time. I think we are in a rut. None of
these ideas sound very interesting or exciting to me.

~~~
lurkervizzle
I think this is more a result of the increase in acceptance of
entrepreneurship as a career option. Adding to the list of predictors of a
tech correction, when you have a bunch of investment bankers and management
consultants coming into consulting, you know you've peaked.

I have to wonder, what's the catchet of YCombinator when you have so many new
startups being churned out every quarter? YC is always going to be fine - they
get their 7%. They're simply increasing the bandwidth and they'll get a few
hits, but we should be prepared for the average quality of YC start-ups to
fall with volume.

------
tabeth
I wish you could bet on the odds of some of these succeeding in 3 years or so.
Someone should start a startup that does this and get into Y Combinator to be
super meta.

random commentary below:

* FloydHub – Heroku for deep learning *

It's unlikely in my eyes that a company with enough data worth doing deep
learning for is going to outsource the actual model building. I'd be
interested to hear counter examples.

* Tetra – Automatic notes for business meetings *

I think this is worthless. Meetings important enough to warrant for "paid
notes" will have people taking notes, on their own (company) dime anyway. Not
to mention taking notes will improve your engagement in the meeting. Not to
mention the privacy implications.

* Collectly – Stripe for medical debt collection *

Pretty interesting. Hard to comment without knowing what the success rate is
for an average debt collector. I fear there's some selection bias in the stats
techcrunch shared.

* Indigo Fair – Amazon for local retailers*

Unfortunately I think local retailers are slowly dying. I do think this is an
interesting niche that could be successful.

* Lively – Modern healthcare savings account (HSA)*

This too could be successful. Most people who'd do this probably have an HSA
that's offered by their employer, unless they're trying to replace that.

* KidPass – One pass for “amazing activities for kids”*

I'm surprised at the success this is seeing. I do think parents are a good
group to exploit though. Overworked parents want the logistics of spending
time with their kids to be outsourced these days. Plenty of rich parents in
NYC too.

* Upcall – Outbound calls as a service*

Not a huge fan of spamming services.

* Niles – Conversational wiki for business *

It's cheap enough, I guess.

* Sycamore – Onboarding drivers for on-demand jobs *

Looks interesting, but don't see how it'll address the drivers making so
little part techcrunch mentioned.

~~~
samouch1180
Upcall is definitely not a spamming service (no robotcalls or autodialing
service), but a human-powered platform supplementing SDR and CSR at companies
looking to scale their outbound leads efforts and customer
retention/engagement. Upcall is a SaaS/API which connects clients with work
from home U.S. based callers, making calls within a specific context (qualify
lead, welcome user on a platform, collect feedback, reactivate user, etc...).

~~~
rspeer
> Upcall is definitely not a spamming service (no robotcalls or autodialing
> service)

Nobody said it was a robot-calling or auto-dialing service.

"Qualifying leads" is the thing where people with whom I have no prior
business arrangement call me at work, asking if I'm the right person to talk
to about (service that they sell), right? "Spamming service" sounds about
right.

------
booh
I personally know the team trying to build the first production electric
plane. One of the team members is an ex-engineer from NASA who was fired after
trying to resuscitate one of the former _kan-jis_. Kudos to them !

~~~
orb_yt
I was just about to ask about them. I'm curious how YC works with companies
like them and Boom Supersonic. They get in, and are given $120k in seed
funding. Then what? You can't build aircraft with $120k.

Im interested in hearing some insight on this.

~~~
tyre
For most teams, YC's financial investment is the least valuable part of the
program. Much more valuable:

\- 3 months of intense focus on product and growth with feedback

\- access to and advice from YC partners

\- community of other founders in the batch who are going through similar
issues

\- access to other YC founders (partnerships, advice, etc.)

\- social proof to investors, press, customers of having done YC

~~~
orb_yt
Sure, but they still need to build a plane, and not just any plane, but an
aircraft never before built. What do you think their game plan is moving
forward?

~~~
tyre
The team needed to build such a plane might be far removed from the network or
knowledge needed to raise the money necessary to build such a plane.

In that case, YC is tremendously helpful in giving the platform to raise
enough money to do all of the hard things involved in building a plane that's
never been built.

Time is the most precious resource in startups. One way to get more time is to
have a phenomenal team, so you do things faster (either by building the right
things faster, having the expertise to not build the wrong things, etc.)

Another way is by having more money, so you have a longer time to figure
things out. When I say that the $120k isn't what is valuable about YC, I don't
mean money in general. The fiscal benefit just tends to come indirectly, from
access to platforms (Demo Day, press), investors, and pitch advice.

------
bambax
> _Voodoo Manufacturing_

I have been using a French company that seems to do the exact same thing, for
low volume and prototyping: sculpteo.com

However, for mass production (still low volumes, <10,000) I manufacture in
China, and the reason is not only the cost, it's that "manufacturing" is not
enough.

We need finishing (polishing, printing) and packaging, and those on-demand
manufacturing services usually don't provide this, which is a shame.

------
1ba9115454
"Wright Electric hired a team that had been previously funded by NASA to
investigate the potential for electric planes, which its co-founder Jeff
Engler says puts the startup years ahead of the competition."

Airbus already have an electric prop engine fully tested as well as experience
building prop planes with traditional fuel engines. So to say Wright is years
ahead is misleading.

------
kriro
The "black hair care market" is one of the curious things I've pondered about
since spending some time in Africa. I think they are onto something and I
think it's one of the markets where you can build a nice lead without really
being noticed. I (as a Caucasian man with not exactly a lot of hair) had some
very interesting discussions about hair pieces for example. I wish them the
best of luck, the capitalist in me is always very happy if these "curious
sounding" markets finally get attention :)

There's something very satisfying about seeing such a company in a batch with
enterprise sales focused companies and an e-plane company.

~~~
sumedh
You should check out
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Good_Hair](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Good_Hair)

------
aestetix
Did they actually do anything besides donate money to the ACLU? I didn't see
anything on the ACLU's website about it, which is strange given the
arrangement YC usually has with companies they "fund." Did anyone from the
ACLU go to YC and participate? Is there a "demo day" presenation from the
ACLU? I'm very confused.

~~~
binaryorganic
The ACLU will be part of the winter batch of companies in YC, where it will
receive mentorship, a network of powerful connections in tech and a chance to
present itself to investors on Demo Day.

Y Combinator will also provide some funding, though it won’t take an equity
stake in ACLU because it’s a nonprofit. ACLU will not pay to participate."

SOURCE:
[https://techcrunch.com/2017/01/31/ycaclu/](https://techcrunch.com/2017/01/31/ycaclu/)

~~~
aestetix
I've read as much, but it is dangerously vague to me. Here is why.

The ACLU has at least publicly stood for decades for a lot of positions that
seem to fundamentally go against what some YC companies do.

For example, the ACLU is a clear proponent of the Civil Rights Act, which
among other things guarantees that hotels must not discriminate when providing
lodging to guests. Meanwhile, in recent years there have been several
documented cases where AirBNB renters have suddenly run out of vacancies for
one rentee, only to be suddenly free again a day later.

Given situations like this, I'm not sure what ACLU seems to think they can get
out of a YC "mentorship." If this creates a chance for a larger public
discussion on issues like this, it could be a good thing, but at the moment I
am extremely skeptical.

~~~
nojvek
There's one thing about some renter on Airbnb being a boofhead and another
when governments are being run by boofheads

ACLU need to choose their wars and if YC can help them hone their skills so
they win more meaningful wars for the masses then that's a good thing.

~~~
aestetix
I don't understand why YC would be able to help the ACLU "hone their skills."

If it's about access to legal skills, the ACLU has been around for nearly 100
years and has been involved in pivotal court cases.

If it's about money, I've seen articles saying that the ACLU's donation base
has gone up quite a lot since Trump.

If it's about reputation, I don't think there's any contest. I suspect that
more Americans know about the ACLU than YC, by an order of magnitude. It's
also worth noting that the only place I've seen this advertised is in tech
blogs, and a few news outlets. I haven't seen anything in legal journals, and
the ACLU's website doesn't even seem to mention it.

The one thing I could see as being logical is YC helping the ACLU to work on
more technical projects, and using technology to get more people involved in
civic duty. But if that's the case, then it's extremely misleading to say the
ACLU is a YC "startup", and far more accurate to say they are collaborating on
projects of some sort.

------
dayaz36
Did YC just fund a debt collection agency?...

~~~
the-dude
And a hedgefund.

------
kriro
So I guess pitching anything that's dataviz as "Palantir for X" is a thing
now? I need to update my Ys in my Y for X list. Uber for X and Palantir for X
are the new hotness it seems.

------
TuringNYC
>> Paragon One – Career coaching from real professionals >> Families spend a
fortune on sending their kids to college......Families pay $7500 up front, and
the kids get coaching over video chat. Paragon One says 100% of students who
completed the program got job or internship offers.

Wow, so the for-pay college application coaching is now becoming for-pay
jobs&internships "coaching?" I suspect this will be limited coaching and more
so selling _access._ Wouldn't this essentially incentivize insiders to "sell"
internship opportunities at prestigious firms? Certainly families paying $7500
up front are going to want results, even if it is a for-show internship at
Google reviewing release notes that gets morphed into entry level resume gold.
I'll be surprised if companies dont ban this outright (but then, TeamBlind
seems to be successful...)

~~~
sushid
Also, the 100% received an internship offer seems like a disingenuous
statistic at best. It's trivial to receive "an internship" if you count
scammy, unpaid ones.

------
adamnemecek
> with the worldwide black hair care market estimated at $500 billion a year

Did they mean million? No way it's billion?

~~~
vuyani
And whats so unbelievable about this stat?

~~~
nandemo
According to this [0] the sum of black population, plus australoid (for the
sake of the argument, let's say they will be part of the target audience
regardless of how they self-identify ethnically) and mixed caucasian+black,
caucasian+australoid etc is about 27% of world population. Let's round that up
to 30%. Also, let's round up the world population estimate to 7 billion, and
assume men are part of the target audience too. So total target audience is
about 2.1 billion. Which is probably a huge overestimate but it doesn't
matter...

A U$500 billion market then means the average person spends about U$240 per
year on hair care. Which is ridiculously high.

[0] [https://www.quora.com/Can-anyone-break-down-the-racial-
demog...](https://www.quora.com/Can-anyone-break-down-the-racial-demographics-
of-the-human-race-population-by-percentage)

~~~
neilk
$20/month? That wouldn't be enough even for most white women.

Black women's hair appointments are more expensive; many hair salons charge a
premium. Plus they use a lot of products and elixirs to change the nature of
their hair. Plus, many of them wear a wig-like accessory, often of real human
hair, every single day. The process of 'weaving' that into their natural hair
can cost hundreds or even thousands, at the high end.

Source: black friend in college wrote an essay about this for a journal I was
editing at the time, plus, common knowledge. There are some interesting
cultural questions about how in North American society, natural black hair is
deemed unacceptable, and this has generally been internalized by black women.
If you choose to just be natural (as my friend did) you get a lot of flak from
other black women.

I don't know if you can get this to work out to $500B; other industry numbers
I could find are like $10B, which would be about $50/month for every black
woman in the USA.

~~~
sah2ed
> There are some interesting cultural questions about how in North American
> society, natural black hair is deemed unacceptable, and this has generally
> been internalized by black women. If you choose to just be natural (as my
> friend did) you get a lot of flak from other black women.

You've basically identified the source of a "problem" that shouldn't even
exist to begin with: an inferiority complex.

~~~
nostrademons
Isn't this basically the driving force behind every consumer product made
since food & shelter became abundant?

~~~
sah2ed
I agree that mimetic pressures drive consumption but I was trying to dwell on
the bit about black women becoming less proud of natural hairdo to make the
market for hair attachments massive like it is today. I don't think Michelle
Obama ever donned natural in her 8 years as FLOTUS.

It used to be that women of African descent would sport plaits, Jheri curls
(80s), Afro (70s) etc. These were styles that rarely required the use of hair
attachments or wigs. Wigs used to be for masking hair loss ...

------
lurkervizzle
Regarding "Niles – Conversational wiki for business"

The article says: "It’s a $27 b market and claims 700,000 teams signed up in
one week."

I believe this is a typo - they actually have 700 teams that signed up.

------
davidddavidson
What does MDAcne do/solve for the consumer that PocketDerm/Curology isn't
doing already?

~~~
skin58
Hi, David. The success in acne treatment is based on three things. Matching
the best anti-acne products to the user specific condition, helping the person
with acne commit to her/his treatment and monitoring the skin 24/7 to
change/improve the routine. MDacne beats curology on all three. It uses
computer vison to assess the skin (actually better than any dermatologist /or
curology nurse can do), suggests anti acne products (such as benzoyl peroxide)
that are much more effective for acne than curology’s “prescription” products.
(Azelaic acid, retinoids) and 3; provides 24/7 skin monitoring with its selfie
tracker system. The image analysis, AI based system monitors skin improvement
and helps motivate the user to commit to her/his treatment which is key to
success (N/A in the curology’s solution).

------
saycheese
>> "YC’s recently developed Investor Match system"

Here's a YC blog post on this: [https://blog.ycombinator.com/investor-day-
software/](https://blog.ycombinator.com/investor-day-software/)

------
iloveluce
The ones that debuted on Demo Day 1 [https://techcrunch.com/2017/03/20/yc-
demo-day-winter-2017/](https://techcrunch.com/2017/03/20/yc-demo-day-
winter-2017/)

------
_pmf_
I'm hoping that something like the product Volt Health produces can one day be
used in correcting anterior pelvic tilt.

------
cjbenedikt
Pit.AI It's obvious what they do but what exactly are they offering? Nothing
on their website explains.

------
pavlov
How is Vize different from Tableau?

~~~
randusr
Co-founder here. Vize caters to use cases beyond the sales/marketing/BI ones
where Tableau is used. If you have millisecond time-series data, want to run
simulations, or need more performance, Vize would be great tool :)

~~~
pavlov
Thanks for the info!

------
frik
* Regarding "Pied Piper", funny that some refer to it

* "massively democratizes" is the new "disrupt"

~~~
frik
Who coined the "democratize" and "disrupt" words? (the usage/meaning of the
words in the startup scene) (maybe the first usage is well know, like "Web
2.0")

~~~
nandemo
The term "disruptive innovation" was coined by Christensen in his book "The
Innovator's Dilemma". Then it was shortened to "disruption" and its meaning
was quickly diluted by indiscriminate usage by the press and blogs.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Innovator%27s_Dilemma](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Innovator%27s_Dilemma)

------
usaphp
> "Tress – A social community for black women’s hairstyles"

I wonder what would black women say if there was an app "Social community for
white women's hairstyles", would not it be considered racist?

~~~
telesilla
I'm a white female who grew up where there were no (at the time) African or
other-similar-haired women. Not Paris, New York or London safe to say. It was
only after spending time in the U.S. that I was introduced to things such as
weaves, nappy hair, extensions, wigs.. it goes on. A huge industry and it's
completely different from how I and my fellow-caucasian friends approach hair,
which is essentially shampoo, condition & blow dry with a variety of products
to create and fix shape. It's a different world.

~~~
ryandamm
Thanks for the reality check; specifics matter a lot.

(My only question: how is it possibly a $500 bn/year market? The world economy
is something like $60 tn; I have a hard time imagining black women's hair care
is 1/120th of global GDP. I can't imagine hair care en toto is anything like
~0.8% of global GDP, either. I mean, if you're going to make up numbers...
they should be plausible.)

