
Startups that demoed at Y Combinator W16 Demo Day 2 - cjbarber
http://techcrunch.com/2016/03/23/y-combinator-winter-2016/
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mkohlmyr
Looks like a much stronger batch to me, I take back some of what I said
yesterday. I would be hard pressed to choose between some of these!

I love that we are seeing less fad apps and more healthcare / farming / energy
/ third world tech. It's encouraging.

Personally farming tech and third world mobile payment are areas that I've
been thinking about reading up on for a while. Perhaps the time is now!

As a side note it seems like there are a lot of teams right now working on
chat / chat bots / chat ai in a very overlapping way. It makes me wonder what
the root of this bot/ai/virtual assistant trend is and if they would be
attacking the problem the same way without slack-colored glasses.

~~~
wsinks
Probably slack and ryver and facebook for work - there's a lot of companies
out there. And other companies are throwing money into it too.

Cisco just put out a $150mil fund to fund similar things for their chat &
video platform as well:

[https://developer.ciscospark.com/fund/](https://developer.ciscospark.com/fund/)

Disclaimer: I do work for Cisco

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serkanunsal
Here is the clean list of YCW16:
[https://startups.watch/yc-w16-startups/](https://startups.watch/yc-w16-startups/)

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danieltillett
Lots of biotech/medical device companies in this class. Historically this has
not been a good category to invest in (unless you like to lose money), nor one
that is easy to get right. The FDA is a real pain to deal with and trying to
"do things that don’t scale" has you end up like Theranos. I do give YC kudos
for trying.

~~~
StephenSmith
The FDA also provides a HUGE barrier to entry. Once a company makes it through
the approval processes (if they make it), they will have a monopoly on that
corner of the medical market for many years. I agree its difficult, but the
rewards are higher.

~~~
danieltillett
You can still fail at the marketing level even if you make it all the way
through the approval process (Affezza comes to mind as a good example of this
[1]). My background is in biotech and I feel the risk/reward ratio is too
great in this area. Still a gutsy move from YC.

1\. [http://www.fiercepharma.com/story/sanofi-tried-and-failed-
af...](http://www.fiercepharma.com/story/sanofi-tried-and-failed-afrezza-why-
does-mannkind-still-think-it-can-win/2016-02-10)

~~~
lisper
My very first angel investment was in a medical device company. They had FDA
approval, patent protection, all the manufacturing in place, rave reviews from
users, clear benefits over the competition... and they still failed because
they couldn't get distribution.

Ten years later I made another medical device investment. Again, good IP
protection, FDA approved, clear data showing life-saving benefits. This one
failed because the technical founders decided to go off the ranch and have a
turf battle with the CEO.

The Murphy factor in this sector seems pretty high to me.

~~~
danieltillett
Yes the bar in this area is very high as there are so many things that can go
wrong.

I think the difference is with pure software you are just dealing with human
created complexity - with biotech you also have nature’s complexity to deal
with too. Mix the two together and spice it up with some unbelievably
stringent regulations and you have a recipe for a lot of heartburn.

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kelukelugames
Since number 1 is a catheter, I want to repeat a long time complaint. Why
can't technology help urinals stay clean? There are puddles in literally every
male bathroom. Some one please solve this.

Edit: At my age, the last sputters go in every which way. So missing is
unavoidable and we need some kind of self cleaning floor.

~~~
danieltillett
It is a user error not a technology problem :)

If you did want a technology solution I would suggest electrifying a zone area
around the urinal - 5000V should get even the most haphazard user on the
straight and narrow.

~~~
ant6n
Except the stream is not continuous, as the the liquid speeds up it tends to
separate into droplets.

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danieltillett
I suggest you try urinating on an electric fence - I have seen it done and the
result is both horrifying and very amusing.

~~~
ant6n
An electric fence is much closer than the floor, the stream may not have
broken yet. It does depend on the distance -- for example you could pee from a
subway platform onto the third rail and live to tell the story.

~~~
simonebrunozzi
I have a better solution: just don't drink. Ever.

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sb8244
A lot of these links are broken. For example,
[http://www.getaccept.com/%E2%80%9C](http://www.getaccept.com/%E2%80%9C)

Luckily, it's easy to parse this out but it's a bit jarring.

~~~
autopov
Well it _is_ TechCrunch (where it's and its are seemingly interchangeable).

~~~
DonHopkins
"Spinal Singularity wants to tap into the $2 billion urinary catheter market
..."

Well played, TechCrunch. Credit where due.

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kriro
I can't help but wonder how DeepGram is impacted by Google opening their
speech API.

~~~
chejazi
Google's API translates a sound sample to text. DeepGram's API uses the sound
sample to search other audio.

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bpchaps
NSFW warning.. there's a catheter/penis combo.

~~~
iLoch
I feel bad for anyone who can't view an animated medical diagram of a penis at
work for fear of it being NSFW.

~~~
bpchaps
Tell that to my boss. I personally don't give a shit.

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ssharp
PaveIQ looks pretty interesting. There has to be a big market of customers
willing to hand over money to learn how their website is performing but aren't
currently investing the time to learn GA's more advanced features or to learn
how to mine insights from all that clickstream data.

~~~
ryanSrich
I'm not so sure. There's a lot you get can from simply running basic analytics
and an NPS survey. You should also be constantly talking with customers.
Ideally you'd already know where the site/app is failing purely based on those
interactions.

If they can pull in data from various sources (Stripe, SFIQ, etc), that's
where this product could be really exciting.

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neuromancer2701
So what is up with all the Chatbots? Between the two days there was at least
three companies that seemed to be pushing some sort of generic chatbot. Is
this really lucrative? I guess it could replace call centers with online
automated help.

~~~
visarga
It's just that voice is going to become more and more prevalent as an user
interface.

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debacle
I'm amazed at how big the batch is. It seems like there are some clear front-
runners, but the batch itself seems quite deep.

Disclaimer: Haven't payed a lot of attention to YC batches since '13.

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greenspot
Boom wants to build the next Concorde—how can YC help?

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illicium
Physio Health: "Time for a nice strecth!"

