
Here Are the 52 Startups That Launched at Y Combinator Summer 2015 Demo Day 2 - awwstn
http://techcrunch.com/2015/08/19/here-are-the-52-startups-that-launched-at-y-combinator-summer-2015-demo-day-2/
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q2hokremeo5gth1
TL;DR Can someone give me an advice on how to prevent myself from degrading my
own ideas in order to create a startup?

I do not see how these startups and/or others companies created during the
last years are solving real problems. People in the country where I live have
a saying for the people of my city: "They are so recursive, they could sell
you a hole and make you buy it". If I am literal to this statement and try to
think the same way the founders of these startups think I could create a
company to dig holes in the grown as a service, maybe a telecommunication
company could see this useful considering that (at least in my city) they put
their cables underground (mostly). But you do not see people here selling
holes, that is stupid.

Now, to my question again, can anyone give me an advise of how to change my
mind about these things in order to prevent myself from degrading my own
ideas? Because they may be silly but may also work and produce a revenue, but
I am too negative to see them flourish.

~~~
bliti
Here is another side of the coin. Some ideas might seem silly. In fact, some
actually are! But let's say a couple of them make it and turn a profit. Did
the idea change the world? Maybe a little. If that much. Here is the kicker:
The idea will probably have changed someone's world for the better. You don't
need to go out and change the world itself. Sometimes its enough to improve
somebody's world. Who knows? Maybe its one of those uber drivers Ive met who
have fallen into hard times and are driving a car around to support their
families. Not world changing, but important. And uber, when you think about
it, is a simple app where you request a car to pick you up. It has not
resulted in world peace. But is definitely keeping some people from going
hungry.

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sama
There are a lot of things I love about HN, but seeing the hate on ambition,
hard work, and potential success is always disappointing.

~~~
geofft
The root cause of the things you love about HN is that people are honest.
Praise on HN is genuine because condemnation is genuine. If you want people to
be truly passionate about changing the world, about disrupting entrenched
inefficiencies that are bad for people, about seeing Silicon Valley be the
best that Silicon Valley can be, they will call you out when you fall short of
that.

If you don't want to be disappointed, fund better startups.

~~~
ed
> The root cause of the things you love about HN is that people are honest.

I've been here a while and that's never made HN great. HN is supposed a
welcoming place for smart folks with an interest in the small intersection
between tech and business.

It's always felt like an implicit rule, but it's pretty simple: don't be a
dick, and don't discourage people from exploring ideas they think are
interesting. What positive outcome could that possibly have?

~~~
bliti
Honest != being a dick. You can be honest whilst respecting the other person.
Being a dick just shows that you are a dick.

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unoti
> Hardware was the clear cut theme of Day 1...

> L. Condoms — “Condoms That Women Want”...

Do the condoms count as hardware, or software? Or perhaps both, depending on
how long they are worn.

~~~
TheBiv
This article is a recap of the startups included in Day 2

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scottkduncan
"Vive — Classpass for hair blowouts"

I'm trying to think of a better "X for Y" startup parody, but am failing.

~~~
_pius
You may not be in their market (yet), but that company is going to make a
_lot_ of money if they execute well.

~~~
scottkduncan
I haven't considered the economics of salons, but not sure they would have the
same low variable costs that allow Classpass to succeed in fitness. I
certainly wish the team (and all the other YC companies) the best though
considering the guts and determination it takes to give it a shot, and you are
correct that I am decidedly not in their target market so I may be missing
something about the idea that is gold.

~~~
rdl
Pretty sure blow drying hair has very low variable costs. Electricity to run a
hair dryer.

Everything else is to some extent fixed (including operator). What it doesn't
have is SaaS style scalability (1000 users costing the same as 1), and it's
not like a yoga class where you can probably do 30 in the same space as 15,
but the variable costs are just the electricity.

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flyinglizard
You can play a fun game by looking at these lists and speculating which of
these companies would still be included if YC was a $200m fund with 10-20 bets
to make.

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nstart
I'm totally excited about heroic labs. Is there any other company providing
this service (that isn't part of a closed eco system that is)?

AppCanary sounds great. I've been working on a tiny prototype that makes use
of a dockerfile to check on software that should be updated and sends a
mail/SMS when an update is needed. Connects to various RSS feeds and
vulnerability DBs to figure out when to notify the user. I guess AppCanary can
be a drop in replacement for that.

On a separate note, and I hope I'm not putting negative fuel here, would
anyone be interested in a quick and dirty website to place bets on whether a
company will grow or fail and maybe how long it will take to go big/fail?
Point here isn't to hate on any company. It would just be an experiment that
would yield some interesting results in a couple of years as to how good our
individual abilities are in predicting success/failure.

~~~
rokhayakebe
"Everything you can do with a frown, you can do with a smile."

I think you can give a positive spin to your site. That is people can say why
they think a certain product will succeed (break market & competitors
analysis/overview, team strength, product strength, etc....). They can also
state what problems they may face etc.. And please delete and do not allow
negative comments that add nothing to the feedback.

Cheers,

~~~
nstart
On a site like that, I don't think I'd ever want to allow comments :D . Thanks
for the feedback

Edit - After reading this I just realised it could be taken as loaded with
snark. Really did not want it to come across as that. Just to clarify my
statement, a website which allows for people to comment on the highly
polarizing issue that is "what value, if any, does this new Silicon Valley
funded startup X bring to the table?" would probably be filled up with
thoughtless/cruel comments right at the start. I'd never be able to control
that on my own, so would just never build a site like that that allows for
comments.

Again, sorry if my initial statement came off as snarky.

~~~
rokhayakebe
No problem, I did not read as such.

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jonlucc
Can someone who knows something about farms explain how Picktrace is different
from FarmLogs? Are they direct competitors?

~~~
bsbechtel
I think FarmLogs is more about collecting (and making useful) data at the
geographic level (rainfall levels, soil types, yieldmaps, etc), and Picktrace
is more about collecting data at the operational level (payroll, productivity
levels for high labor farm tasks, etc). The agricultural segments they are
targeting only slightly overlap as well - Picktrace seems to be built for
farms that require large amounts of labor to operate, such as orchards and
vegetable farms, while FarmLogs targets high yield row crops, such as corn,
soybean, and wheat farms that are highly mechanized.

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philipn
Whoa, AppCanary looks really sweet now! I'm also really happy they added a lot
more information about themselves to their website :) I think there's a huge
market for really simple security products like this, as most people don't
realize how much work keeping even an LTS Ubuntu image up to date is (hint:
unattended updates aren't automatically installed, and you'll often have to
restart the box to get essential kernel security fixes!)

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kelukelugames
I love it. Some of the start ups have the potential to be huge.

Her and Jopwell are really, really cool and much needed but I can't see them
getting to $100 million in revenue or whatever the threshold for VC funding
is. And frankly that's depressing.

On a related note how profitable is Grindr?

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funkyy
There is lack of disruptive companies in my opinion in this batch.

The ones that can grow in to something huge are Vive, Paribus, Bitmovin,
Scentbird and AppCanary, but still a long road ahead of them.

~~~
rokhayakebe
If you are truly disruptive, it is in your best interest as a startup to not
appear as such.

~~~
funkyy
While I agree, but Ycombinator among others says they are looking for
disruptive (one way or another) startups.

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welder
Curious about Gigster. They say they aren't a marketplace, but if they only
have vetted devs and PMs how do they plan to scale up?

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JasperBall
"They argue that the market for software development is $407 billion compared
to $93 billion for gaming."

Seems crazy. Anything to back it up?!

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jakejake
I'd be curious to know how Gravitational works if the founders are here? How
would one take a public service and make it private?

~~~
grantlmiller
I’m not sure how the gravitaional guys are doing it, but we launched a related
company a few months ago. We basically leverage the portability of Docker
containers so that SaaS vendors (like NPM, Code Climate, Travis CI) can use
the same product in the cloud that they use to ship on-prem. You can see a
quick demo on our website: www.replicated.com

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mildbow
As a minority[0]: I _hate_ the idea of Jopwell. Fewer things have, in my
opinion, done more harm for the professional perception of a minority person
as the affirmative action debacle[1]. Anything that says "hire more
minorities, it's a good thing!!" automatically gets a black mark from me.

[0] I don't presume to speak for us all :)

[1] Edit: removed anecdote coz I don't want to spend the next hour talking
about affirmative action.

~~~
gkoberger
This isn't directly about hiring, however (as a white person) it shifted my
perceptions significantly:

[https://www.reddit.com/comments/3du1qm/](https://www.reddit.com/comments/3du1qm/)

In a few years, I want Jopwell to not exist anymore. Not that I'm rooting for
them to fail, but rather that I hope every job site is equally diverse. But
for now, we need to be intentional about this.

Most companies hire from within their networks. So, this problem will solve
itself eventually, as minorities start bringing their networks of potential
hires to companies and the companies start naturally hiring from that new
pool. However, it's a chicken-and-egg problem that needs a kick start.

~~~
aianus
Where have you worked where it was easier to get hired as a white man?
Everyone in tech is already tripping over themselves trying to hire women and
minorities.

This 'company' is blatantly discriminatory and unnecessary and taints the
success of their hires by making it appear they took a shortcut into their
positions via their race/sex .

~~~
geofft
Anecdotally, judging from my friends in both categories, it's easier to get
hired and promoted (implicit disclaimer: in the US tech scene) as a competent
white man than as an equally-competent woman or racial/ethnic minority, if you
are job-hunting.

One of the side effects of entrenched racism and sexism is that competent
women and minorities tend to be underemployed more than competent white men,
and so as the biases are being broken down, you'll see way more women and
minorities (compared to the ratios in the general population) being hired or
promoted to the right place compared to white men. Out of people who are
competent to be senior developers, way more white men than women or minorities
already have a good job fit, and in turn, way fewer of them are on the job
market or easily poachable.

So the market, as a whole, can be biased in favor of hiring and promoting
women and minorities without it being any easier for the individual developer
who happens to be a woman or minority.

~~~
mildbow
The market as a whole is getting purpotedly pushed to hire minorities.
Apparently. Is it working(in the tech sector)? Or, are they just making the
white guys resentful and so making it harder in the long run?

Not sure. But I don't think it's helping.

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Grovara123
I love these companies... such a great/fun read.

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siquick
"Their claimed profit margin is 94%"

So they're totally ripping the consumer off then...

~~~
hayksaakian
I argue that "ripping off" is based on the value that a consumer receives
relative to the price of the product or service.

Imagine you say: "I will tell you a joke, if you laugh then you must pay me
100 dollars"

If I give you 100 dollars, and you just run off with it, I got ripped off.

If I give you 100 dollars, and you tell me a really funny joke, then I was not
ripped off.

Your problem seems to be that telling jokes is virtually free, and the profit
margin might be 94%.

~~~
siquick
Yep I get it but it seems like an incredibly naive and almost arrogant message
to relay...

"Hey customers, buy our product for $16 even though it actually cost $1 to
make"

~~~
wooster
The audience for the message is investors, not customers.

~~~
siquick
It was posted on a customer facing website...

