

Y Combinator Unloads Massive New Batch of Start-Ups - dbul
http://allthingsd.com/20110823/y-combinator-unloads-massive-new-batch-of-start-ups/

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pg
"The other distinction is that Y Combinator didn’t let investors snag any
participants early, as it previously has."

We don't have any power to stop companies from taking investment. Nor would we
want to, especially in these uncertain times. We usually encourage companies
to take money before DDay if a legit investor makes them an offer that doesn't
require a lot of negotiation.

What we did differently this time was that we didn't hold an event we have in
the past called Angel Day, at which we introduced startups early to a select
group of angels. We found this was turning into a de facto early Demo Day, and
that was bad because it was causing the startups to be pushed into fundraising
mode early.

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citricsquid
Vidyards pricing list is pretty shady/lame.

They compare themselves along side Vimeo Pro and Youtube, under their pricing
they list "free" (Vimeo being $199, Youtube also free) and then under a bunch
of options for Vidyard that are ONLY available if you pay >cost of Vimeo pro
they add a tick, which would imply that they're available for _free_. It's
misleading, it implies it's cheaper to use Vidyard (which it isn't)

~~~
john_flintstone
Vidyard looked good at first glance, as I'm looking into adding video to a
site right now, but the free video, with branding, is really no better than
YouTube. They really should be offering half a dozen free videos with all the
bells and whistles (i.e. no Vidyard branding) if they want to entice new
users.

~~~
devongall
The free plan is intended to add player customization, no advertisements, no
out-bound link and analytics over YouTube, along with pretty minimal branding
(only on mouse-over).

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jessep
Saw demo day yesterday and it was pretty awesome. Lots of interesting
startups, and the way Paul & co. coach teams to present is fun to watch. They
really make what they're doing seem exciting. It's also kinda like bingo to
figure out what the the common phrases they're coached to use are. This batch
it seemed common to have some really awesome accomplishment such as "8
bajillion users within 3 seconds of launch," be followed by, "But this is just
the beginning ..." or "This is just a trojan horse." We were coached similarly
last year, but it definitely stuck out.

Anyway, a lot of them were really cool, some of the presentations were
hilarious, and it just amplified the feeling that there a ton of enormous
opportunities in software (which is pretty obvi.com, I suppose).

The most interesting trend I saw was a surprising number of cos focused on
"the future of banner/display ads".

~~~
tejaswiy
I think I'm most excited by Codeacademy and Parse. I'm hoping to try out Parse
with my next project.

Parse: Beta invites please!

~~~
tikhon
i made a beta code for you with up to 10 uses. 'hacker' no quotes

~~~
d_r
Thanks for the code from this indie developer!

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shiven
I guess I am late to the party, but I feel I must voice this opinion since
Quartzy is listed. Also, comments on the original Quartzy submission are
closed (<https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2744408>).

Must've escaped my notice, being busy defending my doctoral thesis and all.

\---

Working in an exceptionally well-organized lab (in terms of ordering etc.) and
still having iLab shoved down our collective throats
(<http://www.ilabsolutions.com/>) here's what in my experience is the biggest
barrier to adoption amongst all fancy-shmancy lab organizing/ordering
e-solutions:

NONE of the systems allow for _direct ordering_ from the vendor.

What I mean by that is the lab manager (or the person with appropriate
authority) cannot just click "Place order" and have the item _automatically_
ordered from the vendor's website. This makes all such solutions the most
brain-dead, needlessly repetitive method of ordering lab goods. This
completely defeats the very purpose of having such a system in place. How is
this _really_ any better than an excel spreadsheet? In my experience, this is
the single biggest hurdle to adoption of such systems by many (better-
organized) academic labs.

I will be way more than happy to talk with anyone from Quartzy to explain the
above in more detail (I _am_ ranting and may not be clear in articulating
these things here). Therefore, please do feel free to contact me, a real-world
user.

So what is needed?

Anyone who comes up with a method/system to connect _direct_ ordering from
_within_ your e-solution software/portal _to_ the outside vendor will win this
competition. Now this may well be the proverbial can of worms. Each vendor
website will have their own idiosyncrasies and will require serious effort to
make things work, but if you can make it work, I guarantee you will be the
_chosen_ solution amongst the many out there.

Of course, having all vendors agree to a unified ordering API would be the
ideal solution. You could come up with such a solution that may be licensed to
multiple vendors (and supported by you), hopefully the vendors will also see
value in using/supporting such an API (orders placed via your portal) and the
entire system will be of mutual benefit to you, the vendor and most
importantly, end users like me.

Fin.

~~~
jayzee
hey Shiven, This is Jayant, a Quartzy founder. We know 100% where you are
coming from. We are scientists ourselves and know the pain exactly as you are
describing it. Send me an email and I would love to chat with you and tell you
about our vision for Quartzy!

Cheers and congrats on defending your thesis! Jayant (jayant@quartzy.com)

~~~
shiven
Thanks Jayant! I'll email you shortly.

Cheers!

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iamelgringo
_It’s just a larger percentage of the total pool of start-ups is coming
through Y Combinator._

Angel List has helped over 500 companies get funded in the last year. Angel
pad launched 24 companies, IO Ventures launced 14, 500 Startups launched 24 in
the last few months.

I'd argue that more and more people are doing startups, and that the market
for early capital is more efficient than it's ever been.

Great batch of companies. Kudos.

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vaksel
codecademy really needs to buy codeacademy.com...every time I type their name
I end up there. Do it fast(by offering to buy the forum), before the guy
figures out there is an actual company vying for the name and jacks up the
price to 6 figures.

~~~
revorad
I didn't notice that until just now! That is a naming blunder, but I reckon
they were busy making an awesome product in a really short time.

It might be best to think of a completely new name. There are still good
domain names available. It just takes some patience and creative thinking.

~~~
wisty
Or they want to expand into other niches, and the code-academy name was just a
way of getting eyeballs from people wanting to program (their initial niche).

That's my guess.

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dbingham
I'd be interested to see how much traction Science Exchange[1] is going to
get. As someone who grew up in a family of scientists and who has been
involved in the scientific community for a long time, I've got to say, my gut
reaction is revulsion at the whole concept. Outsourcing experiments to the
cheapest bidder? 99designs for science? I feel a really powerful revulsion.

I can't see any of the many scientists I know outsourcing their work. It beats
the point! Maybe for the corporate science industry -- where they just need to
perform certain tests as cheaply and quickly as possible, and with a preferred
result if possible -- it could gain some traction. But I don't see this
gaining anything in the universities. Or rather, perhaps I hope it doesn't.

[1] <http://scienceexchange.com/>

~~~
pg
Academic researchers already outsource about 2% of their experiments.

It's not driven by laziness, but by one institution having facilities or
expertise that another doesn't. Often it's simply a way for universities to
share machines so expensive that they can't all afford one of their own.

~~~
dbingham
When I've encountered that sort of outsourcing in the past it was called
"collaboration" and it was between two individual researchers at the
respective institutions. There was no exchange of money and they would both
have their names on any resulting papers.

This strikes me as much more "outsource the labor to where it's cheap" sort of
thing. The programming team in India if you will.

All of that said, I'm not a researcher, so I suppose I'm not really the target
audience. My experience of research is all second hand, though there's a lot
of that. Maybe times have changed. I'll bring up the idea with my researcher
friends and see what they think.

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thesnider
WTH? I just tried out DebtEye, and without warning or confirmation, they
scheduled me for a call with some sort of debt consultant, which happened
despite me immediately replying to their email (sent from support@debteye.com)
requesting both that they not try to contact me by phone, and that they delete
my account. They have failed on both counts thus far. Badly done, I say! Badly
done indeed.

~~~
jsun
We don't see a call schedule for you or any calls from us in the past. The
email was likely just an automated email from the system before we processed
your email to support. Don't worry, we won't actually call you:)

~~~
thesnider
Strange. I definitely got a call from someone claiming affiliation with y'all
that referenced info about the plan DebtEye generated at 8:19PM Eastern today
(8/23). The number was a chicago number that ended in 0969, and asked me to
call back at (866) 771-3511. I hate talking to people on the phone, and had
you not called me, I'd have considered using your service.

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callmeed
Ok, hold on. This page totally just got updated and some links/listings were
removed. I printed it to read at lunch 45 mins ago ... I came back and
refreshed and a certain listing was gone (wanted to hit the link).

What's up with that?

~~~
pbreit
I suspect the author accidentally included some "off the record" companies.

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bh42222
I know this is a silly thing to do, but based just on the descriptions my
favorites are:

1\. Quartzy this sounds trivial but could in fact be huge. Also, think about
the trend of personalized medicine...

2\. Munch On Me, I just like food :)

3\. MarketBrief, this is exactly the kind of automation we need more of.

4\. Stypi might be better as Google+ done right!

5\. Science Exchange if this works, it could speed up R&D tremendously.

~~~
murz
> 4\. Stypi might be better as Google+ done right!

Maybe I'm confused, but how is an etherpad clone "Google+ done right"?

~~~
sim0n
He may have meant Google Wave.

~~~
bh42222
Yep, copy/paste error.

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brackin
Interstate are an awesome team with a well designed product and Picplum is a
cool idea although in my opinion it could be even simpler. Like how Google+ is
able to take photos off my Android phone for me to review, I realise some of
this may not be viable but as long as they find innovative ways to simplify
the process further they'll do great.

Not sure about "Google Wave done right", only read their description though so
can't comment.

------
jonmc12
Curious, only 32 of 63 are on the record. Seems like ratio was higher in
previous classes. Any ideas why?

~~~
kapilkale
24/43 were on the record for YCW11, and 22/36 for YCS10.

So it goes 66% -> 55% -> 51% this batch. Not sure the reason for the trend,
but it is getting harder to sift through this mass of startups.

[http://allthingsd.com/20110322/meet-y-combinators-latest-
cla...](http://allthingsd.com/20110322/meet-y-combinators-latest-class/)
[http://www.xconomy.com/san-francisco/2010/08/25/the-
definiti...](http://www.xconomy.com/san-francisco/2010/08/25/the-definitive-y-
combinator-demo-day-debrief/)

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jbail
Didn't YC classes used to be much much smaller?

It's great publicity having the YC name attached to your startup, but it's a
lot of companies to look at in a single sitting. Surely, each one gets a bit
less time and attention, which devalues the publicity somewhat.

~~~
tptacek
Like the article says, they're accepting the same fraction of applicants, but
getting many more applicants now. YC has also staffed up. It's not just 'pg.

------
Raphael
Darn, I wanted Proxino or Bushido to be a new AppJet. At least Stypi is
bringing Etherpad back.

------
thesnider
Wait, how are DoubleRecall captchas actually captchas? They appear to be
trivially easy to OCR.

~~~
rjb
They are just "captcha like". I believe the idea is to to make ads
bidirectional. Instead of just clicking a banner ad, a user would enter, say,
a coupon code for example.

~~~
thesnider
I'm sorry, I don't get it then -- is the plan to force me to enter one before
visiting a site? Or are they just display ads with text fields?

~~~
BadCookie
You can't see whatever content it is that you are trying to access until you
enter the code. The examples on their web site make it pretty clear:
<http://doublerecall.com/>

~~~
tomjen3
Am I the only person who already hates that company?

I mean it is a very profitable idea, but ads are annoying enough already.

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pxlpshr
rooting for yardsale. i had similar concept/name reserved on iTunes a few
years ago, but couldn't run with it at the time.

do it big!

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thisisfmu
Congrats to all!

Among the revealed ones I am most excited about (and would invest in) Parse --
solves a real problem, it is easy to see how it can be commercially viable,
and there is very little technology risk. Kind of wish I had thought of it. An
obvious target to be acqhired by one of the PaaS vendors.

------
Hisoka
Where is Leaky?

