
Y Combinator Winter 2013 Demo Day, Batch 1: Meet Wevorce, FlightCar, Thalmic - zaveri
http://techcrunch.com/2013/03/26/y-combinator-winter-2013-demo-day-batch-1/
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napoleond
Wow, this definitely is the strongest looking batch in recent memory.
Interesting to see a few companies in the group that are or will be competing
head-on with previous YC alums.

Airware is particularly exciting. There are a lot of parallels between today's
hobby UAV market and the hobby PC market of decades past.

I love Circuitlab, but "the founders estimate their market to be $500 million,
because of _CircuitLabs’ influence over which components the developers using
the platform choose_ " (emphasis mine) is annoying.

Fivetran seems pretty ambitious, but it will be very cool if they can make it
work.

~~~
pisarzp
Fivetran looks very cool, although I'm only worried that it's web based tool.

Advanced Excel / SPPS/ Matlab is used by professionals, who want very fast and
responsive, something that is hard to replicate in web based app.

I wish them good luck though!

~~~
zmitri
1010data provides a web product for performing transformation on large sets of
data and it's quite nice. We used it when we used to do analysis of mortgage
pools etc.

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aray
I'm worried about Airware. Checking out their site, they list (prominently)
among other advertised features "Free of ITAR restrictions". First of all, I'm
not sure such a thing can be claimed (due to the nature of the decisions as to
whether specific technology or scientific arts count as arms).

It also looks like none of their products are particularly innovative in this
space. 3D robotics, Ardupilot, Micropilot, Openpilot, ZeroUAV, VeiYu Tech have
dozens of different products in this space. <http://diydrones.com> does a
pretty good job tracking all of those.

Compared to the big commercial players: CloudCap's Piccolo and Kestrel APs, I
don't see the value add. Major consumers of APs (>100 units) tend to choose
these because they're consistent and trusted. Building up clients trust in an
AP is a very hard thing to gain (why should I risk my $250,000 experimental
aircraft on your dinky little AP) and a _very_ easy thing to lose.

I'm also curious how will AirWares OS and "Apps" will fit in the current
airworthyness certification model, which has whether DO-178B compliance is on
their roadmap. Maybe the answer is "that doesn't apply to us" just like ITAR?
:)

Good luck to them, and good luck getting a CoA for anything with one of their
products in it.

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johngalt
I've been using Bitnami VMs for years. Surprised to see them in a 'new
startup' batch.

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rwallace
So I went down through the list, curious about what this batch looked like,
figuring most of it would be social networking junk or suchlike but hopefully
there should be a few gems in the list.

... and as far as I can see, it's actually pretty much all gems! Most of these
are solving real problems, and even the print on demand T-shirts is something
for which there seems to be an actual market.

So, congratulations to everyone involved and hopefully in a few years we'll be
going "oh yeah, it was back in 2013 I first heard about..."

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cmbaus
I think buildzoom is going to be big. I'm remodeling a condo in Florida, and
it has been a nightmare to find contractors.

In fact on the flight on the way home I penciled out some ideas to improve
this that aren't too different from what buildzoom is offering.

Edit: After reviewing my notes, one thing I considered was that for better or
worse, a lot of the industry is under the table and transient. Maybe buildzoom
will force the industry more into the open.

~~~
bri3d
What about Redbeacon (squarely aimed at the same place), or Thumbtack or
Yerbid?

This isn't a particularly new space, although I'm sure BuildZoom can do well
in it.

~~~
cmbaus
I've never heard of these, which is part of the benefit of YC I guess. What
that said, none of them seem to offer what BuildZoom does which is a list of
all the contractors in my area sorted by reputation. Even if their reputation
metrics are questionable at this point, at least they are making an attempt at
it.

I just contacted a painter through buildzoom. Let's see how it works out.
Contractors in my area (Tahoe) are notoriously hard to track down.

~~~
jiyannwei
Tahoe has been a little tricky. You need a contractor who is regulated in CA
however a lot of the contractors near Tahoe are licensed in Nevada (although a
number are licensed in both states).

One of our advisors has a house up there and we've been working with him to
create a better experience in that region. If you want to let us know a bit
more about your project, I'll make sure we get a great contractor out.

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thetrumanshow
I see 4 very strong, smartly chosen brand names in this list: wevorce,
fivetran, simplyinsured, errplane. But, wevorce wins this round.

~~~
timedoctor
Why do you say that these are strong brand names? I think all of the names are
difficult to remember and spell. I know that finding a name is difficult, but
the names of these startups are probably the least impressive aspect.

Wevorce - I doubt that people would remember this name

Startups can use a systematic method of determining if a name is memorable. I
think the ability to remember the name and write it down and spell it
correctly is the best indicator of a strong name.

I've done this previously by getting a short list of 15 names, then stating
them several times in a video (in different orders), then using a
crowdsourcing site such as amazon turk, get the person to watch the video and
then write down which names they remember. This tests both their ability to
remember the name amongst a crowd of other names AND their ability to spell
the name. Certain names come way out on top.

Startups need to think very carefully about their name, because I believe the
memorability of the name will have a huge impact on their success.

~~~
thetrumanshow
I think they are strong names based on either the language devices they employ
or based on the existing brands they are carefully aligning themselves with,
which I believe makes them memorable.

Here is a simple formula for one kind language device used in naming: 1) Find
a key term: house 2) Find a word that rhymes with the key term: mouse 3) Find
an idiom or common phrase that includes the rhymed term: mouse trap 4)
Substitute the original keyword in place of the rhyming word ... result: house
trap

Due to all kinds of fuzzy reasons that will never be arguably as good as
testing names with real people (kudos for testing your names!), I prefer this
method.

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davidw
Oh, I didn't realize Bitnami was taking part in YC. Enhorabuena, Daniel!

~~~
ridruejo
Thanks David! It has been three very intense months :)

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cpeterso
It seems a little strange that the TC article references DOS in two company
descriptions (Airware, the "DOS of drones", and CircuitLab replacing "DOS-era
tools").

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marcamillion
I like this batch.

Getting lots of Apache errors in the listings on Zaranga -
<http://www.zaranga.com/>

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cm2012
As an ecom professional, fivetran is the most exciting to me.

~~~
georgewfraser
Thanks! We've got a lot of features still to build and things to optimize but
we're really excited about what's coming up.

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lifeisstillgood
I am of course preparing for the downvotes but the first two companies to me
proffer the future of tech start ups.

Wevorce I really had to double check to be sure I was not reading an extended
parody of the HN front page. Try saying "tech-powered standard for civilised
divorce" without hearing Jon Stewart.

Then airware, already trying to turn UAVs into a app platform - UAVs are a big
open frontier - but a hardware led one.

One company that is browser only - and is filling in the gaps left over from
Web 1.0 and 2.0. And one that is driven by hardware. And while I cannot
comment on the company- boy are they in a growth industry

I suppose I am saying that way back when, connecting the virtual to the
physical was simple - music, text, video. We have taken the already connected
and transformed it

Now we need to provide the connection to the physical as well as the
application to drive the next generation - which means the next big waves need
to come with dongles. Pycon beware.

~~~
jfoster
What company would want to waste time and money customizing low-level UAV
software?

~~~
lifeisstillgood
Uav is still immature - customising implies a standard, whereas most
customising of low level stuff is still "getting it working right"

Big new field very open

I would put more money on dirigibles than planes myself

