
Y Combinator Summer 2013 Demo Day, Batch 1 - zaveri
http://techcrunch.com/2013/08/20/y-combinator-summer-2013-demo-day-batch-1-meet/
======
jasonkester
I remember a time when this very TechCrunch article would come out and I'd
read through it with a sense of dismay at the sheer unadulterated badness of
every single idea.

Things have changed.

An example: _Teleborder charges $5,000 per visa application, ... gathering
documents, collecting information, and sending information to the government._

This is one of those ideas where you just stop and wonder why nobody has run
with it before. These guys are going to make bank. I rode a dotcom into the
ground in the early 'aughts that was tackling a similar problem with 10x the
paperwork of a H1B and roughly 0% of the hair-on-fire demand that tech
companies with tons of money have for help getting labor into the country.

That's the kind of company I wish I'd founded. Nice work.

~~~
hpagey
I m not sure if this will work.

The cost per app goes down with each additional app. After about 10 apps the
company typically has figured out and streamlined the entire process. The
documentation requirements for the H1B applicant are pretty well known.
(previous status, transcripts, degree certificates,...). These are not overly
complicated documents (unless you are a special case).

Also 5k fee sounds kinds of high (I am assuming these are in addition to the
government fees). A lawyer for h1b application should not cost more than 2 to
3k. So, why would a company pay more NOT to work directly with a lawyer?

On the other hand, if the fees include government fees then this is a very
good deal.

H1b applicant feels secure in the knowledge that his application is handled by
a lawyer. Its like buying an insurance, they are indirectly buying "peace of
mind". If they find out that company is not directly using a lawyer, I am not
sure how they will react.

Am I missing something?

~~~
bduerst
You're not far off.

My girlfriend and a couple friends recently went through this year's LCA
process (H1B, H1B1, etc.) and the lawyers cost exactly that: $2-3k.

The $5k price point is only going to drive away your target market. These
customers are people who have already busted their ass to get a work sponsor,
so they know the ins and outs of the market, including what the laywers cost
and who is typically better. If they don't, then they are deferring to their
employer's lawyers, who are already experts, to handle it completely.

There isn't anything new that teleborders is bringing to the market here,
except a more expensive price point.

------
prawn
Liked this comment on the SpoonRocket story:

"Reminds me of a tactic used by my father's friend, who owned a pizzeria. He
noticed that about half the orders were for large pepperoni pizzas. So he had
his drivers always carry an additional large pepperoni pizza in the car, and
he'd call them mid-route if an additional order came in. It usually did, so
thankfully very few cold pizzas died, and he sold more pizzas per hour than
before. Saved on gas, drivers made more tips, and eventually he ended up
getting heaters and drivers carrying as many as 10 per trip. Combine that with
the deeper large pepperoni price cut he could now afford, it was quickly
became the busiest joint in town. Too bad he never expanded."

Makes me imagine a person/duo in a van, back filled with a limited range of
curries on the go and rice cookers, driving around a particular area getting
delivery requests and payment on their phone. Drive the short distance (you're
already in the van with the product), ladle out servings and walk them to the
door. It'd be hard to beat that sort of delivery time and it might make for a
few impulse orders.

~~~
confluence
> _Almost all programming [pizza delivery] can be viewed as an exercise in
> caching._

\-- Terje Mathisen

Extra food in the car is like the L1 cache of the food world. Now that I think
about, I'm pretty sure that every company in the world is just an exercise in
caching.

~~~
Ecio78
And in the case of food processing, cache "expiration" is definitely something
to take into account :)

------
frakkingcylons
Floobits works really well from my limited experience. I've used it in Sublime
while my friend was in vim and it worked flawlessly. Much better than our
experience with attempting something similar with Screenhero. We tried Flooty
(live terminal-sharing) as well, and it's in a mostly-working state. If you've
ever tried Nitrous.io's shared tmux sessions, it works almost as well. I see
Floobits becoming a tool used by many, many developers.

I like Toutpost's idea, but I'm not convinced by their approach at the moment.
Though I'm actually in the process of making something pretty similar for a
specific audience in Django.

If they were in my area already, I would probably try out SpoonRocket
immediately. I already prepare and cook all my meals, but I'm still prone to
getting some food near campus once or twice a week. $6 for a delivered
"designer" meal is pretty compelling if they manage to maintain that price
outside of their current area.

------
jhuckestein
There is no way that YC now considers 10% weekly revenue growth low. That's
142x a year. I'm pretty sure any investor would be happy with that kind of
traction, especially if the company has their unit economics figured out, like
Prim appears to have.

~~~
applecore
_> A good growth rate during YC is 5-7% a week. If you can hit 10% a week
you're doing exceptionally well. If you can only manage 1%, it's a sign you
haven't yet figured out what you're doing._

[http://www.paulgraham.com/growth.html](http://www.paulgraham.com/growth.html)

------
pisarzp
Kivo sounds really fantastic. I can remember having 272 versions of the
presentation back in the day I worked in the bank.

The only obstacle I see is that majority of the potential users are not
allowed to install any software themselves, but given that they already signed
up some big customers they definitely can cope with that.

~~~
patmcguire
Also starting with consultancies is smart. Once you get Deloitte and McKinsey
they're going to be recommending that to clients since it's what they know.

------
dirtyaura
Article claims that Prim's 10% weekly growth is "low by Y-Combinator
standards", but in "Startup = Growth" pg wrote that 10% weekly growth is great
growth pace, and above 5% is good. Has the baseline of YC companies improved
that much?

~~~
kevin_morrill
Techcrunch author may be reacting to growth rates right after launch that Demo
Day pitches tout, which of course are through the roof (often over 100% week-
over-week).

The 10% PG talks about is something you try to do week in and week out long
after your press spike. It's insanely hard to do, but even if you come
anywhere close you are doing very well.

------
k-mcgrady
Prim: interesting and I'm sure useful for a lot of people. I hope they're
right that they can eventually lower prices though because that seems very
expensive. Also is there a trend towards or away from using laundromats? Where
I'm from it's unusual not to have your own washing machine and I wouldn't move
anywhere that didn't have one.

RealCrowd: Really interesting startup but with the recent housing crisis they
may have trouble convincing people it's a worthwhile investment and not a
total gamble. I'm really interested to see where this goes and if it ever
moves to include the general public (i.e. non-accredited investors).

StatusPage.io - I'll be using this immediately. Useful product and it looks
like they already have quite a few high profile companies as customers. Hard
to have an opinion on the pricing as I've no idea how many users would
subscribe to these notifications.

~~~
adamhooper
Founder of RealCrowd here - thanks for the comments. We're focused only on
commercial assets now that produce stable cash flow - think of a starbucks or
an office building in SoMa that has consistent monthly income from rental
payments. Homes should be viewed as shelter, not as a primary vehicle to
create wealth.

It will be very interesting to see where the JOBS Act goes and how we can
incorporate pure crowdfunding into our platform. Bringing access to this class
of investment is what we're after and we're really excited to do so!

------
velik_m
I think GoComm and Kivo have the best chance of this batch. I think GoComm
especially is a good idea and in retrospect so obvious, that i wish i would've
though of it. Coordinating people, even in small scale events is painful. I
remember when i helped with fencing tournaments our club ran (running computer
system) it was a constant trouble tracking down free pistes, referees, making
sure other stuff (refreshments, garbage and similar) was ok... we solved this
with having a dedicated person on the floor in the hall, keeping an eye out
and keeping me in the loop, but that isn't very scalable

------
namwen
"Today, some $29. 6 billion in smartphone cases are sold every year."

Really? No way. I'd be amazed if this was a correct figure.

------
jamesbrennan
StatusPage.io looks like a very good and needed product but I feel like the
fact they are a 100% AWS service this wouldn't be ideal for companies who also
host their product in AWS. What happens when an AWS-related issue comes up?
Your customers may not be able to get to your product as well as your status
page.

------
pla3rhat3r
I love that every app is labeled "It's (insert other app) for (insert what is
does)." Example: YAMMER FOR MOBILE WORKFORCE, Mint.com for legal spend,
CLICKTALE FOR MOBILE, YELP FOR LATIN AMERICA.

UGH!!

~~~
kaeawc
It seems to be the best way to get new ideas across to people. How would you
describe them in a clearer way that as many people would understand?

~~~
soneca
Also, Glio looks like a copycat, so it is exactly Yelp for Brazil. That is
what they are building, not just a form of explain their model.

Remember those times when people discussed how YC model was "cooler" than
Rocket Internet model? Those times are gone.

~~~
robryan
I don't think that is an issue. The value in Yelp is largely in the reviews,
the rest of how it works has been done plenty of times for plenty of different
things.

Just like a groupon or stripe, the venue reviews space really needs boots on
the ground and some local knowledge to work right, so there is a big
opportunity for essentially a copycat model for that market (same as has
happened for a long time in china).

Bringing these tried and tested ideas to places just catching up to the rest
of the world with digital connectivity is probably going to be very lucrative
over the next decade for people well positioned to do so.

------
untilHellbanned
meh. none of these ideas other than Standard Treasury seem particularly
compelling,

and there goes whats left of my karma...

------
gadders
This is all very well, but what would Edward Sno.... Just kidding.

Good luck to everyone in all three Techcrunch pages. Entrepreneurs are heroes
and I hope you all make it big.

------
hatu
How many "X for Y" ideas can you count?

------
citizenkeys
all the companies are listed here: [http://ycuniverse.com/ycombinator-
companies](http://ycuniverse.com/ycombinator-companies)

most of them have already been on techcrunch by the time demo day rolls
around.

------
diminish
Please see the HN poll to predict top YC summer 2013 performers.
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6249141](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6249141)

------
sologoub
Looks like the screwed up tagline for SpoonRocket - "reviews for everything"
looks like a copy/paste from Toutpost right above it...

~~~
frakkingcylons
Yeah there's another error in the Floobits section. The bit about earlier
coverage was mistakenly copy-pasted from the section about Standard Treasury.

------
davedx
Congratulations to the Apptimize team! Proud to have been a part of it. :)

------
6thSigma
I wonder why GraftConcepts didn't go the Kickstarter route.

------
nashequilibrium
Is there a link to the video presentations?

