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The thing that really strikes me about this list is how nearly everything on it is offered at a premium price. One thing I loved about the tech world while I w

by xiaoma 10y ago

The thing that really strikes me about this list is how nearly everything on it is offered at a premium price. One thing I loved about the tech world while I was growing up was that it was consistently doing more with less. Wikipedia displaced Encyclopaedia Brittanica by being both better and free. Hotmail was a clear win over AOL and Yahoo's offerings and then Gmail was faster and handled spam better while giving more at every price point (including free). Computers became both faster and cheaper. Amazon and Netflix broke down even the movie industry and ended the $70 per tape movie sale price. The offerings on the linked page are mostly things that would be out of the budget of an American family living on a median income. I won't call out any specific examples or hurt feelings, but a random sampling of several companies of any part of the list (other than non-profits) will show a clear trend. It's hard to say if the same was true 20 years ago and those few companies that broke out into famous successes happened to be particularly aimed towards a broad appeal, but it's clear the current trend is doing more with more.

nostromo 10y ago
To your point, Airbnb bucks the trend you identified by making travel more affordable and accessible. It's also far and away the most successful company listed.
- callmeed 10y ago
  More accessible, maybe (unless you're black [0]) More affordable, no. In my recent travels to NYC and SF, I was always able to get a hotel room via HotelTonight or Hotwire cheaper than an AirBnB unit. I know its not always an apples-to-apples comparison but even for just a private room (not an entire home), an AirBnB in SF is $100+/night.[1] All that to say, I think you're wrong. [0] https://medium.com/stay-woke/i-read-about-this-phenomenon-of-black-people-being-rejected-on-airbnb-f36dd3ab0375 https://medium.com/stay-woke/i-read-about-this-phenomenon-of... [1] I randomly checked Dec 18-20 in SF. Hotwire has a 4-star room for $91/night. Most AirBnB private rooms are the same or higher.
  - morgante 10y ago
    I travel a lot (including in SF and NYC) and you're objectively wrong. I prefer hotels to AirBnB, but still almost always go with AirBnB because it's significantly cheaper. For your suggested dates of Dec 18-20 I found literally dozens of AirBnBs for <$80/night. [0] All I can conclude is that you're straight up lying. It's trivially easier to find AirBnBs which are cheaper than hotels. [0] https://www.airbnb.com/s/San-Francisco--CA--United-States?guests=1&place_id=ChIJIQBpAG2ahYAR_6128GcTUEo&checkin=12%2F18%2F2016&checkout=12%2F20%2F2016&ss_id=zuhp9idb&source=bb&page=1&allow_override%5B%5D=&room_types%5B%5D=Private%20room https://www.airbnb.com/s/San-Francisco--CA--United-States?gu...
    - callmeed 10y ago
      Yeah, I have so much incentive to straight up lie. The average for the link you have is $108/night. That's above several hotels in my search. Also, most of these AirBnB listings only allow 1 person. Every hotel room will support 2 people and most will allow 4 (if you can get 2 beds). Take that for what its worth. If I'm objectively wrong or a liar to you, cool.
      - morgante 10y ago
        You're comparing the average to the minimum. That's deceptive and unfair. The average hotel room in SF costs hundreds of dollars a night. [0] So the average hotel is much more expensive than the average AirBnB. Likewise, I showed countless examples of AirBnBs which have a lower price than the cheapest hotel you could find. If both the average and the minimum for AirBnB is much lower than for hotels, we can safely conclude that AirBnB is substantially cheaper. As a frequent traveler, I know that to be a fact. I would love if hotels were cheaper than AirBnB (I prefer them), but it's objectively not true. [0] http://www.bizjournals.com/sanfrancisco/morning_call/2015/07/san-francisco-most-expensive-hotel-rooms-tourism.html http://www.bizjournals.com/sanfrancisco/morning_call/2015/07...
  - davmar 10y ago
    airbnb is a much, much more economical option while traveling over hotels when booking in advance for a couple. it was even cheaper than a private room in a hostels in berlin. source: traveling for 1.5 years using airbnb, hotels, hostels.
bhalp1 10y ago
Your point is true, but it's also likely that the model for a lot of these companies is to start with premium so they can focus on a profitable model and get the supply chain and execution worked out while there is still wiggle room, and then move down market. This is what Uber and Tesla did, and I wouldn't be surprised if that is the most fashionable approach these days. There are probably plenty of exceptions, as well, like Dollar Shave Club.
- xiaoma 10y ago
  I seriously hope that happens with Acre. They could be amazing.
  - ashark 10y ago
    Went to check them out. Their houses are beautiful, but they truly are targeting the high end—double the price of a mid-tier-fixtures McMansion-build-quality house of similar size, at least around here. I'm also not sure how I'd get one of them built anywhere near the city here without buying a house in a no-HOA, low-home-value neighborhood and demolishing the house already on it, which'd be throwing away a ton of money on both the demo and putting such an expensive house in such a crap neighborhood. You could build one out in the country, but so much for being green (assuming you have a commute to the city). Be nice if they could mainstream this style, but looks like they've got a ways to go.
    - deleted 10y ago
      [deleted]
    - sbov 10y ago
      I would question someone's actual motives if they demolished a house so they could build a new one in name of sustainability. How much time would it take to recuperate that full rebuild vs. just retrofitting the already existing house?
      - mahyarm 10y ago
StudyAnimal 10y ago
Oh course, the products in Gift Guides aren't meant to be the ones that most people can afford. No one wants to look at a gift guide of moderately priced mid-level gear. Gift guides give people something to aspire to. And I think a lot of people do look at the items and then go order a cheaper version on amazon later.
tristor 10y ago
This is true in one way of looking at it, but the other way of looking at it is that these are companies offering products that were always out of the price range of the average person, but they've managed to drive the price down. For instance, handmade leather shoes are between $300-$500 for the entry level, but Markhor is selling them for $120. Yeah, maybe your average person can't spend $120 on a pair of shoes, but that's still significantly opening up the market in a way which wasn't possible before. That's the nature of capitalism. Identify a market for goods people want, and as demand goes up, figure out a way to supply it at a price people can afford. As these types of ideas iterate, the cost will continue to go down and new things will become available at the top of the price ladder.
- idlewords 10y ago
  That is trickle-down consumerism.
  - clock_tower 10y ago
    But it's been done successfully many times -- sugar, tea, coffee, liquor, automobiles, air travel, and computers, for example; likewise ownership of clothing in quantity. No reason it can't work again.
- dsr_ 10y ago
  Well... one set of the Markhors are $120. Most of them seem to be $250 and up. And, despite being handmade, are not available in my size.
  - tristor 10y ago
    Yep, handmade probably does not mean "custom" or "bespoke" in this case, which means limiting the options presumably allows them to take advantage of economies of scale to lower the price compared to other options for handmade shoes. I've never used the product from Markhors, it was just one example I was using for my point previously. I'm more the type of guy that either wears cheap sneakers or actual bespoke shoes, not much in-between.
mlinsey 10y ago
True for web software - but that's never been true for hardware. Hardware always starts expensive for early adopters and gets radically cheaper as adoption scales up. The cheapest Apple 2 was over $5,000 (in inflation-adjusted dollars) at its release, the IBM 5150 debuted four years later at a more competitive $4,000, and the monitor was separate in both releases. Besides hardware, lots of the other current startups are offline services, that are taking something formerly for the super-rich and making it accessible to the upper-middle class (eg: a private driver, a personal chef, custom-tailored clothing, custom paintings). They may not be within budget for everyone but they are still following the trend of doing more with less.
- baka 10y ago
  From at least the late 90s to recently you were consistently getting more for less with hardware. Things were expensive as they came out, but then got cheaper than the previous alternative. The market moved from a school having a couple of slow computers to everyone having multiple supercomputers. Not only did they become faster but you could do more things with them. These days many things seem to be getting slightly better, but more premium and almost less capable. Upgrading a couple of year old smart phone or computer today isn't exactly a mind blowing experience. "[...] formerly for the super-rich and making it accessible to the upper-middle class (eg: a private driver, a personal chef, custom-tailored clothing, custom paintings)" Don't really buy it. Before it was only for the rich it was for everyone. You go to rural places that's how it works. The latest incarnation of modern society is, for better or worse, based on people having their own car, camera, kitchen and being able to buy the latest fashions.
  - nemothekid 10y ago
    >The market moved from a school having a couple of slow computers to everyone having multiple supercomputers. This is exactly what he says here: >Hardware always starts expensive for early adopters and gets radically cheaper as adoption scales up.
    - baka 10y ago
david_mitchell 10y ago
What came to mind when I saw the list was what is might say about the founders that YC is selecting. You could easily conclude from this list that it's rich peoples kids creating solutions to imaginary problems - "Oh, how could my poor feet possibly survive the arduous journey from my front door to the uber in an off the shelf pair of shoes? I need a tailor!". I think we should give them the benefit of the doubt though since these companies are presumably a small subset of those they've invested in. A more charitable explanation might be that since these companies are in SV then it makes sense for them to start out selling stuff to affluent customers who are not overly price sensitive.
- Aloha 10y ago
  As someone who has perpetual trouble finding well fitting dress shirts off the shelf - the MTailor thing seems interesting. You do raise something valid - I suspect they're selling affluent customers, because they're easier to reach, and are willing to try something novel.
  - deleted 10y ago
    [deleted]
  - IanCal 10y ago
    You can just buy a shirt and get it tailored by someone who can actually see you and try pinning it in different places.
    - sedachv 10y ago
      If you have a sewing machine it takes less than 15 minutes to tailor a shirt down (just put it on inside-out, pin, and sew). Made-to-measure mail-order dress shirts are an idea from the 1990s AFAIK. A while back I collected some promotional offers from in-flight magazines and online and ordered a big stockpile of white made-to-measure dress shirts. With the promotional pricing it came out to less than $20 a shirt. As with any menswear business, the main problem is customer education. Men in the US dress like slobs, do not care that they dress like slobs, and do not want to spend money on clothes (85% of apparel revenue comes from womenswear).
Shivetya 10y ago
Its for the trendy pretentious crowd and many who came up with a different viewpoint or even from another income level don't understand the desire behind some of these purchases. This is no different than the Macbook Starbuck crowd. If anything I use it as a list of things I am best without. Karma be damned but I just LOL at that page
qmalzp 10y ago
"Amazon and Netflix broke down even the movie industry and ended the $70 per tape movie sale price." Is that a typo? When were movies ever $70?
- cfmcdonald 10y ago
  Yes, but the other part of the sentence is all wrong, the gradual shift from this pricing model to more like $20 a tape happened from the mid 80s to early 90s.
- larrywright 10y ago
  In the 80s and early-to-mid 90s, most movies weren't offered for sale to consumers. Big blockbuster movies sometimes were, but those were the exception. Places like Blockbuster or your corner video rental store bought VHS movies for around $70/ea and then rented them to consumers for $3 or so. That changed somewhere around the late 90s, when people began buying movies on VHS and DVD, and the price dropped significantly. Source: I worked for a small video store in the early 90s.
  - pbhjpbhj 10y ago
    >Places like Blockbuster or your corner video rental store bought VHS movies for around $70/ea // Isn't that just rental prices vs consumer prices. It's a tort to by the consumer copy and rent it out so large companies could never get away with that instead they bought a more expensive copy that is basically the tape with license to rent it?? Turns out it's more complicated than that: https://entertainment-industry.knoji.com/the-history-of-the-vhs-movie-industry/ https://entertainment-industry.knoji.com/the-history-of-the-... & http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showthread.php?t=692441 http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showthread.php?t=692441. Would be interested in similar info with global comparison, eg how was the situation different in UK, Germany, etc..
- mikestew 10y ago
  I remember movies selling for over US$100 when VHS first hit the streets. The only "typo" is crediting Amazon and Netflix with the price reductions: movies were commonly $20 long before those two showed up. No, what killed the $100 movie were people going "$100 to own _Weekend at Bernie's_? Oh, hell no!" Remember, we lived quite fulfilled lives before we were allowed to "own" our own copies of movies, we weren't missing anything. Oh, and rental stores that popped up shortly after. From my POV at the time, owning the VHS tape was reserved for the rental stores who would profit from it and the overly-privileged. The rest of us just rented at $10 a pop. Want to see it again? Go rent it again. EDIT: somewhat related to pricing: would have to look it up to be sure, but I recall blank VHS tapes going for >$20 when they first came out.
deleted 10y ago
[deleted]
anindha 10y ago
"NetFlix initially offered a seven-day DVD rental for $4, plus $2 shipping" [1] This is more than it costs to rent from a local video store. Especially on discount days. Its much easier to start at a higher price point and lower volume with a small team. Hotmail and Wikipedia are businesses that scale much better because they don't handle physical goods. [1] http://www.fundinguniverse.com/company-histories/netflix-inc-history/ http://www.fundinguniverse.com/company-histories/netflix-inc...
nether 10y ago
Chef Roy Choi addressed a similar issue in food, namely that they were all fixated on "feeding the rich": http://www.eater.com/2016/9/23/12981936/locol-watts-roy-choi-daniel-patterson http://www.eater.com/2016/9/23/12981936/locol-watts-roy-choi.... I do wonder what YC startups could bring to say, people struggling in the Rust Belt of the US. FarmLogs is one awesome example but I'm sure there are other opportunities. I don't work in tech, but it does seem the community is self-obsessed and that is stunting its reach.
ejcx 10y ago
This is probably an unpopular opinion, but I would call very few of these "tech companies". None of the problems that most of these companies are solving are tech problems. Their secret sauce is not the tech, but the examples you gave the secret sauce WAS the tech.
cuchoi 10y ago
Peter Thiel recommends creating monopolies in Zero to One. That's basically what YC companies are doing.
chrischen 10y ago
Definitely a lot of startups target high end, but they end up competing in high end by being cheaper than the other high end alternatives. High end is just a better market to attack first since high end users are more liberal with their spending, and more likely to pay a premium for something new. Uber is an example of something that started in the high end (black cars only). Airbnb, Instapainting.com (disclaimer: my company) are examples of companies that broke into mid-market products by using technology to reduce costs and compete with significantly lower pricing.

by xiaoma 10y ago

nostromo 10y ago

To your point, Airbnb bucks the trend you identified by making travel more affordable and accessible. It's also far and away the most successful company listed.

callmeed 10y ago
More accessible, maybe (unless you're black [0]) More affordable, no. In my recent travels to NYC and SF, I was always able to get a hotel room via HotelTonight or Hotwire cheaper than an AirBnB unit. I know its not always an apples-to-apples comparison but even for just a private room (not an entire home), an AirBnB in SF is $100+/night.[1] All that to say, I think you're wrong. [0] https://medium.com/stay-woke/i-read-about-this-phenomenon-of-black-people-being-rejected-on-airbnb-f36dd3ab0375 https://medium.com/stay-woke/i-read-about-this-phenomenon-of... [1] I randomly checked Dec 18-20 in SF. Hotwire has a 4-star room for $91/night. Most AirBnB private rooms are the same or higher.
- morgante 10y ago
  I travel a lot (including in SF and NYC) and you're objectively wrong. I prefer hotels to AirBnB, but still almost always go with AirBnB because it's significantly cheaper. For your suggested dates of Dec 18-20 I found literally dozens of AirBnBs for <$80/night. [0] All I can conclude is that you're straight up lying. It's trivially easier to find AirBnBs which are cheaper than hotels. [0] https://www.airbnb.com/s/San-Francisco--CA--United-States?guests=1&place_id=ChIJIQBpAG2ahYAR_6128GcTUEo&checkin=12%2F18%2F2016&checkout=12%2F20%2F2016&ss_id=zuhp9idb&source=bb&page=1&allow_override%5B%5D=&room_types%5B%5D=Private%20room https://www.airbnb.com/s/San-Francisco--CA--United-States?gu...
  - callmeed 10y ago
    Yeah, I have so much incentive to straight up lie. The average for the link you have is $108/night. That's above several hotels in my search. Also, most of these AirBnB listings only allow 1 person. Every hotel room will support 2 people and most will allow 4 (if you can get 2 beds). Take that for what its worth. If I'm objectively wrong or a liar to you, cool.
    - morgante 10y ago
      You're comparing the average to the minimum. That's deceptive and unfair. The average hotel room in SF costs hundreds of dollars a night. [0] So the average hotel is much more expensive than the average AirBnB. Likewise, I showed countless examples of AirBnBs which have a lower price than the cheapest hotel you could find. If both the average and the minimum for AirBnB is much lower than for hotels, we can safely conclude that AirBnB is substantially cheaper. As a frequent traveler, I know that to be a fact. I would love if hotels were cheaper than AirBnB (I prefer them), but it's objectively not true. [0] http://www.bizjournals.com/sanfrancisco/morning_call/2015/07/san-francisco-most-expensive-hotel-rooms-tourism.html http://www.bizjournals.com/sanfrancisco/morning_call/2015/07...
- davmar 10y ago
  airbnb is a much, much more economical option while traveling over hotels when booking in advance for a couple. it was even cheaper than a private room in a hostels in berlin. source: traveling for 1.5 years using airbnb, hotels, hostels.

bhalp1 10y ago

Your point is true, but it's also likely that the model for a lot of these companies is to start with premium so they can focus on a profitable model and get the supply chain and execution worked out while there is still wiggle room, and then move down market. This is what Uber and Tesla did, and I wouldn't be surprised if that is the most fashionable approach these days. There are probably plenty of exceptions, as well, like Dollar Shave Club.

xiaoma 10y ago
I seriously hope that happens with Acre. They could be amazing.
- ashark 10y ago
  Went to check them out. Their houses are beautiful, but they truly are targeting the high end—double the price of a mid-tier-fixtures McMansion-build-quality house of similar size, at least around here. I'm also not sure how I'd get one of them built anywhere near the city here without buying a house in a no-HOA, low-home-value neighborhood and demolishing the house already on it, which'd be throwing away a ton of money on both the demo and putting such an expensive house in such a crap neighborhood. You could build one out in the country, but so much for being green (assuming you have a commute to the city). Be nice if they could mainstream this style, but looks like they've got a ways to go.
  - deleted 10y ago
    [deleted]
  - sbov 10y ago
    I would question someone's actual motives if they demolished a house so they could build a new one in name of sustainability. How much time would it take to recuperate that full rebuild vs. just retrofitting the already existing house?
    - mahyarm 10y ago

StudyAnimal 10y ago

Oh course, the products in Gift Guides aren't meant to be the ones that most people can afford. No one wants to look at a gift guide of moderately priced mid-level gear. Gift guides give people something to aspire to. And I think a lot of people do look at the items and then go order a cheaper version on amazon later.

tristor 10y ago

This is true in one way of looking at it, but the other way of looking at it is that these are companies offering products that were always out of the price range of the average person, but they've managed to drive the price down. For instance, handmade leather shoes are between $300-$500 for the entry level, but Markhor is selling them for $120. Yeah, maybe your average person can't spend $120 on a pair of shoes, but that's still significantly opening up the market in a way which wasn't possible before. That's the nature of capitalism. Identify a market for goods people want, and as demand goes up, figure out a way to supply it at a price people can afford. As these types of ideas iterate, the cost will continue to go down and new things will become available at the top of the price ladder.

idlewords 10y ago
That is trickle-down consumerism.
- clock_tower 10y ago
  But it's been done successfully many times -- sugar, tea, coffee, liquor, automobiles, air travel, and computers, for example; likewise ownership of clothing in quantity. No reason it can't work again.
dsr_ 10y ago
Well... one set of the Markhors are $120. Most of them seem to be $250 and up. And, despite being handmade, are not available in my size.
- tristor 10y ago
  Yep, handmade probably does not mean "custom" or "bespoke" in this case, which means limiting the options presumably allows them to take advantage of economies of scale to lower the price compared to other options for handmade shoes. I've never used the product from Markhors, it was just one example I was using for my point previously. I'm more the type of guy that either wears cheap sneakers or actual bespoke shoes, not much in-between.

mlinsey 10y ago

True for web software - but that's never been true for hardware. Hardware always starts expensive for early adopters and gets radically cheaper as adoption scales up. The cheapest Apple 2 was over $5,000 (in inflation-adjusted dollars) at its release, the IBM 5150 debuted four years later at a more competitive $4,000, and the monitor was separate in both releases. Besides hardware, lots of the other current startups are offline services, that are taking something formerly for the super-rich and making it accessible to the upper-middle class (eg: a private driver, a personal chef, custom-tailored clothing, custom paintings). They may not be within budget for everyone but they are still following the trend of doing more with less.

baka 10y ago
From at least the late 90s to recently you were consistently getting more for less with hardware. Things were expensive as they came out, but then got cheaper than the previous alternative. The market moved from a school having a couple of slow computers to everyone having multiple supercomputers. Not only did they become faster but you could do more things with them. These days many things seem to be getting slightly better, but more premium and almost less capable. Upgrading a couple of year old smart phone or computer today isn't exactly a mind blowing experience. "[...] formerly for the super-rich and making it accessible to the upper-middle class (eg: a private driver, a personal chef, custom-tailored clothing, custom paintings)" Don't really buy it. Before it was only for the rich it was for everyone. You go to rural places that's how it works. The latest incarnation of modern society is, for better or worse, based on people having their own car, camera, kitchen and being able to buy the latest fashions.
- nemothekid 10y ago
  >The market moved from a school having a couple of slow computers to everyone having multiple supercomputers. This is exactly what he says here: >Hardware always starts expensive for early adopters and gets radically cheaper as adoption scales up.
  - baka 10y ago

david_mitchell 10y ago

What came to mind when I saw the list was what is might say about the founders that YC is selecting. You could easily conclude from this list that it's rich peoples kids creating solutions to imaginary problems - "Oh, how could my poor feet possibly survive the arduous journey from my front door to the uber in an off the shelf pair of shoes? I need a tailor!". I think we should give them the benefit of the doubt though since these companies are presumably a small subset of those they've invested in. A more charitable explanation might be that since these companies are in SV then it makes sense for them to start out selling stuff to affluent customers who are not overly price sensitive.

Aloha 10y ago
As someone who has perpetual trouble finding well fitting dress shirts off the shelf - the MTailor thing seems interesting. You do raise something valid - I suspect they're selling affluent customers, because they're easier to reach, and are willing to try something novel.
- deleted 10y ago
  [deleted]
- IanCal 10y ago
  You can just buy a shirt and get it tailored by someone who can actually see you and try pinning it in different places.
  - sedachv 10y ago
    If you have a sewing machine it takes less than 15 minutes to tailor a shirt down (just put it on inside-out, pin, and sew). Made-to-measure mail-order dress shirts are an idea from the 1990s AFAIK. A while back I collected some promotional offers from in-flight magazines and online and ordered a big stockpile of white made-to-measure dress shirts. With the promotional pricing it came out to less than $20 a shirt. As with any menswear business, the main problem is customer education. Men in the US dress like slobs, do not care that they dress like slobs, and do not want to spend money on clothes (85% of apparel revenue comes from womenswear).

Shivetya 10y ago

Its for the trendy pretentious crowd and many who came up with a different viewpoint or even from another income level don't understand the desire behind some of these purchases. This is no different than the Macbook Starbuck crowd. If anything I use it as a list of things I am best without. Karma be damned but I just LOL at that page

qmalzp 10y ago

"Amazon and Netflix broke down even the movie industry and ended the $70 per tape movie sale price." Is that a typo? When were movies ever $70?

cfmcdonald 10y ago
Yes, but the other part of the sentence is all wrong, the gradual shift from this pricing model to more like $20 a tape happened from the mid 80s to early 90s.
larrywright 10y ago
In the 80s and early-to-mid 90s, most movies weren't offered for sale to consumers. Big blockbuster movies sometimes were, but those were the exception. Places like Blockbuster or your corner video rental store bought VHS movies for around $70/ea and then rented them to consumers for $3 or so. That changed somewhere around the late 90s, when people began buying movies on VHS and DVD, and the price dropped significantly. Source: I worked for a small video store in the early 90s.
- pbhjpbhj 10y ago
  >Places like Blockbuster or your corner video rental store bought VHS movies for around $70/ea // Isn't that just rental prices vs consumer prices. It's a tort to by the consumer copy and rent it out so large companies could never get away with that instead they bought a more expensive copy that is basically the tape with license to rent it?? Turns out it's more complicated than that: https://entertainment-industry.knoji.com/the-history-of-the-vhs-movie-industry/ https://entertainment-industry.knoji.com/the-history-of-the-... & http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showthread.php?t=692441 http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showthread.php?t=692441. Would be interested in similar info with global comparison, eg how was the situation different in UK, Germany, etc..
mikestew 10y ago
I remember movies selling for over US$100 when VHS first hit the streets. The only "typo" is crediting Amazon and Netflix with the price reductions: movies were commonly $20 long before those two showed up. No, what killed the $100 movie were people going "$100 to own _Weekend at Bernie's_? Oh, hell no!" Remember, we lived quite fulfilled lives before we were allowed to "own" our own copies of movies, we weren't missing anything. Oh, and rental stores that popped up shortly after. From my POV at the time, owning the VHS tape was reserved for the rental stores who would profit from it and the overly-privileged. The rest of us just rented at $10 a pop. Want to see it again? Go rent it again. EDIT: somewhat related to pricing: would have to look it up to be sure, but I recall blank VHS tapes going for >$20 when they first came out.

deleted 10y ago

[deleted]

anindha 10y ago

"NetFlix initially offered a seven-day DVD rental for $4, plus $2 shipping" [1] This is more than it costs to rent from a local video store. Especially on discount days. Its much easier to start at a higher price point and lower volume with a small team. Hotmail and Wikipedia are businesses that scale much better because they don't handle physical goods. [1] http://www.fundinguniverse.com/company-histories/netflix-inc-history/ http://www.fundinguniverse.com/company-histories/netflix-inc...

nether 10y ago

Chef Roy Choi addressed a similar issue in food, namely that they were all fixated on "feeding the rich": http://www.eater.com/2016/9/23/12981936/locol-watts-roy-choi-daniel-patterson http://www.eater.com/2016/9/23/12981936/locol-watts-roy-choi.... I do wonder what YC startups could bring to say, people struggling in the Rust Belt of the US. FarmLogs is one awesome example but I'm sure there are other opportunities. I don't work in tech, but it does seem the community is self-obsessed and that is stunting its reach.

ejcx 10y ago

This is probably an unpopular opinion, but I would call very few of these "tech companies". None of the problems that most of these companies are solving are tech problems. Their secret sauce is not the tech, but the examples you gave the secret sauce WAS the tech.

cuchoi 10y ago

Peter Thiel recommends creating monopolies in Zero to One. That's basically what YC companies are doing.

chrischen 10y ago

Definitely a lot of startups target high end, but they end up competing in high end by being cheaper than the other high end alternatives. High end is just a better market to attack first since high end users are more liberal with their spending, and more likely to pay a premium for something new. Uber is an example of something that started in the high end (black cars only). Airbnb, Instapainting.com (disclaimer: my company) are examples of companies that broke into mid-market products by using technology to reduce costs and compete with significantly lower pricing.