

Ask YC: Your favorite startups lately - gaia-forming

What's some of your favorite innovative startups lately?<p>I like the approach that RethinkDB is taking with their SSD DB technology.<p>* = Doesn't have to be YC
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pg
Picwing (<http://picwing.com>) is probably the one that has improved our life
the most lately. It is the perfect thing for people with new babies. Your
relatives get a regular stream of new prints with near zero effort.

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ivankirigin
Do they no longer make hardware?

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pg
For now, no. It turns out that a lot of the photo frame market actually
prefers prints.

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ivankirigin
They should incorporate the print ordering in the hardware: one click to put
it in the next batch.

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PStamatiou
I like Etherpad, but I'm not sure why. I'm a big G Docs user, or at least was
in college, and use both for the same features (don't do too much heavy
collab). But I use Etherpad Pro to consolidate all the random text files I
have lying around usually. I think I like it because it's simple, non-nosense
and logging into google docs is a pain. I have it on google apps and i never
remember the URL so i have to log into mail, click the icon, etc. Granted I
could setup a CNAME but I digress..

Maybe I like em more than gDocs b/c they're also a startup..

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alexsolo
I agree completely. Etherpad is a lot better than Google Docs. The big reason
for me is that it provides instant collaboration. When I type something in,
the other people editing the doc can see my changes instantly.

For Goog Docs, it takes a few seconds to see someone's changes. It's great for
solo editing, but very annoying for collaborative work.

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PStamatiou
> but very annoying for collaborative work.

tell me about it. i wrote a 33 page group paper in Google Docs once.. PITA.

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dfranke
Tarsnap is unique among the startups that get play here in getting me to open
my wallet to the tune of more than the price of a T-shirt.

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plinkplonk
Tarsnap! Solo Founder, great product, great payment terms. What's not to like?

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icey
Does anyone know if Colin has anyone working with him on Tarsnap yet? Or is he
still the only person working on it?

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cperciva
I'm still the only person working on tarsnap, unless you count some (free)
help I'm getting from my brother to build a more useful website.

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icey
I think that's awesome. How long have you been working full-time on Tarsnap?

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cperciva
Almost 3 years -- I started making plans and designing everything in September
2006, but didn't start writing code full-time until December 2006.

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paulgb
GitHub really impresses me.

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icco
I agree. I really like their release cycle and transparency. They produce a
solid product, they understand their market, and they are innovative. The only
thing I don't know is how profitable they are.

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pjhyett
We're doing well and will be around for a long time.

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bdmac97
Heroku...

After that I'm a bit partial to launchly but that's probably because it's
mine. :-)

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gaia-forming
The heroku guys do a really solid job.

What's launchy?

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bretthoerner
<http://www.launchly.com/>

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bdmac97
Thanks for the link... and yes, launchly is run on Heroku and yes they rock!
:-)

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eel
thesixtyone, probably. It's replaced Pandora for me. It's a little too social
networky (I just want to listen to music!) but it works.

~~~
adamhowell
+1 thesixtyone. The idea of giving users quests to reward them for exploring a
site/app more is inspiring.

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mrduncan
280 North for re-inventing how web apps can be developed.

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jseeba
Posterous. It just works.

~~~
zaveri
Amazing how they continue to crank out feature after feature. They are wicked
fast..

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jmonegro
You don't know anything yet! Too bad I can't talk about it. :(

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pclark
dropbox. still.

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mtrichardson
Dropbox takes up all of my CPU these days. It's very depressing how little I
use it now.

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raptrex
The CPU usage is kinda high, thats why I only run it when I need it

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revertts
Spideroak impressed me. It's a service similar to Dropbox, but with more
emphasis on privacy. I found their devs really accessible and interesting to
talk to.

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turtle4
Nice. New to me.

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christonog
I'm really finding Evernote a great tool for syncing my daily to-do lists.

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zaveri
Prefer ShoveBox, however only available for OS X...
<http://www.wonderwarp.com/shovebox/>

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nick007
that's 2 votes for shovebox. great organizational tool for the mac! also with
an iphone client now that is super useful on the go.

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nwjsmith
Github takes the cake for me. It makes reading and finding code a breeze, and
for the relatively unexperienced (like me), it has dramatically lowered the
barrier to entry for OSS.

A Facebook for hackers, I love it.

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blender
cloudkick, I think those guys did a great job.

Delivered something of value, freemium business model that I believe will work
extraordinarily well for them.

My hat is off to them! Just wish I would've thought of it first.

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gaia-forming
I guess it's about execution every time, and yeah, they execute well.

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kalvin
Aardvark for potentially kicking off a new way to search (and even if not, for
having awesome diction)

Kickstarter for being beautiful and the first crowdfunding site that looks
like it has a chance to explode.

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alexsolo
Billmonk, for splitting restaurant bills with friends.

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alexsolo
Chatterous. I have it hooked up to my IM, and I use it for group chat all the
time.

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htsh
grooveshark, still wonky interface but its as close to spotify I can find on
our shores.

..of course I still use dropbox .. who doesn't? I stopped using evernote as I
got tired of having to use Wine to run it..

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jasonlbaptiste
Favorite Startups of 2009

vark.com listia.com saynow.com

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mrlebowski
Cloudera! Their tutorials kick-ass :)

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dshah
I like the following (may not as cool as some of those listed, but they're
great startups and driving real revenue):

1\. ZenDesk 2\. Freshbooks 3\. 99designs

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icco
Rightscale. They put out such a solid product and make using ec2 so easy, it's
not even funny.

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slvrspoon
not to denigrate the smart people and great work done here, but i think this
is a pretty depressing list when looked at from on high. this is the creme of
the crop of all the yc hacker intelligentsia? suprisingly banal imhop.

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bkudria
"yc hacker intelligentsia"? Sounds like your expectations are way over-
inflated. Consider reconsidering your concept of "intelligent".

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agotterer
Makerbot is pretty awesome

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mahmud
Twilio. Top notch.

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mhb
Shapeways

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rokhayakebe
YCombinator.

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hynek
Dropbox

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prakash
Angstro

