7 ms·

YC W17 Launch: Claire, Peer5, WaystoCap, Symple, RankScience, and Kudi

51 points by craigcannon 10y ago

jasonlbaptiste 10y ago
good group of companies. See the need for a CDN that can handle television volume audiences. Symple makes a lot of sense. Basically, bill.com that doesn't suck/feel dated.
- shacharz 10y ago
  Hi Peer5 co-founder here, thanks for resonating with our vision!
  - xb 10y ago
    WebRTC seems like a really cool opportunity to rethink certain kinds of services. Video is an obvious candidate, I've also seen a bittorrent client that uses WebRTC. What are other interesting peer to peer applications that WebRTC could enable?
    - shacharz 10y ago
      > I've also seen a bittorrent client that uses WebRTC Yea, webtorrent[1] is a great project. We've also created Sharefest[2] a while ago which is basically WeTransfer with no servers. I think multiplayer web gaming has a nice potential and need for a high performance network stack using WebRTC. IoT might also be a candidate for direct p2p communication, without the need for all the devices in your home/office to connect directly to the cloud. [1] https://github.com/feross/webtorrent https://github.com/feross/webtorrent [2] https://sharefest.me/ https://sharefest.me/
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miguelrochefort 10y ago
I don't understand "X for Y" businesses such as: - Kudi: "PayPal for Africa" - WaystoCap: "Alibaba for Africa" - Symple: "Venmo for business payments" Can't PayPal, Alibaba or Venmo just target these customers themselves? Duplicating these efforts seems like a huge waste of resources...
- vasco 10y ago
  And until they do? If a company isn't able to capitalize on the whole global market why shouldn't someone else fulfill that need? People usually take the stance of "it's just ripping of that other original company's idea" but it's very hard to make a business succeed and grow it, wherever it is, much more in the harsher overall conditions Africa generally presents.
  - miguelrochefort 10y ago
    I hate the competitive feel surrounding these kinds of startups. It doesn't seem like any of them is trying to bring anything new. Mostly, they're building mediocre versions of what already exists, then fold after 6 months when faced with reality. If they succeed, it's all of us that lose. We'll add yet another "me too" tool to the collective toolbox, further dissipating the little focus that we had.
    - CalChris 10y ago
      > Mostly, they're building mediocre versions of what already exists Yes and as such they can easily be summarized into X for Y. It shows no originality and it requires no thought.
- monkmartinez 10y ago
  I thought this is how Silicon Valley works. The churn|acquisition|procurement is how everyone makes money, at least that is how it looks to an outsider.
- Nadya 10y ago
  The cost, difficulty, and research required to penetrate the market makes it not worth the potential return for Paypal/Alibaba/Venmo. Instead - another company can take the risks, build the market, then be acquired by one of those larger companies. The larger companies now has a proven business model for the market. Like a typical Korean "grind MMO" businesses have two options: (a) Buy high-level gear for an extremely inflated price from other players (b) Grind to make it yourself (potentially losing more money than if you had bought it in the first place) (a) is lower risk and makes more sense for businesses. They "could" spend $300,000,000 - $800,000,000 to maybe extend into a potential market. Or maybe they fail and threw away $600,000,000. Maybe they try again and lose another $800,000,000 with nothing to show for it. So why not acquire a company for $3,000,000,000 and forego the risks altogether? (All figures made up for example purposes.)
koolba 10y ago
> Symple is Venmo for business payments. This seems a close enough industry as Simple to be confusing: https://www.simple.com/ https://www.simple.com/
- xb 10y ago
  This may be true now, but Simple (the consumer online bank) is currently in the process of shutting down.
  - ensignavenger 10y ago
    Source? I have been a Simple customer for years, and haven't heard anything about them shutting down?
  - DeonPenny 10y ago
    The aren't they are transfer accounts to BBVA
  - kmf 10y ago
    Just wanted to hop in here as a Simple employee—we are not shutting down! We're very much alive and well: as another commenter said, we're currently in the process of migrating our customers to our new partner bank, BBVA. (Definitely speaking in an unofficial capacity, but thought I'd clear the air as best I could.)
derwiki 10y ago
I'm pretty excited about RankScience. SEO can have a huge effect but also be one of the hardest things to accurately measure; and it's an industry where there's a fair amount of dogma and waving dead chickens around.
- deleted 10y ago
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- WA 10y ago
  It sounds good, but I don't get it from the brief description. I'm interested in hearing more. Especially this line makes me wonder: > No one has solved automated SEO because SEO is a software problem I thought SEO is a content and linking problem, not a software problem. I'm somewhat disillusioned after having lost keyword rankings to competitors with far inferior content software (hundreds of HTTP requests, 20s load time, MBs worth of junk) vs. my highly optimized website that loads in milliseconds even without AMP.
  - ryanb 10y ago
    Pagespeed is a ranking factor, but it's far from the most important one. I would think deeply about what might make humans engage with your competitor's site for longer than yours.
    - WA 10y ago
      Thanks for the advice. Will do. But I still fail to understand how this makes SEO a software problem.
      - derwiki 10y ago
        SEO also includes: "what meta description can I surface on a SERP that has the highest clickthrough?" so in that sense, it's an A/B testing/software problem.
- aresant 10y ago
  Also excited about this product but from their pitch: "No one has solved automated SEO because SEO is a software problem that non-technical marketers are trying to solve." Great pitch, but untrue. Most SEOs I've met at serious companies are almost always very technical people. And this isn't a recent development, back in 2007 there was an SEO contest held to grab the keyword for "Greatest living american". An SEO named Brandon Wirtz took the win(1) and the guy would fit any description as a very technical person previously having been the compressionist and technical lead for Microsoft's Merlin Lab. SEO is, at its core, a technical puzzle with constantly changing parameters, and as a result attracts a lot of very talented technical people from diverse backgrounds to solve. (1) http://www.adweek.com/lostremote/the-second-greatest-living-american-brandon-wirtz-of-course/3715 http://www.adweek.com/lostremote/the-second-greatest-living-...
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pastaking 10y ago
Peer5 is a brilliant idea! Glad to see they're doing well.

51 points by craigcannon 10y ago

good group of companies. See the need for a CDN that can handle television volume audiences. Symple makes a lot of sense. Basically, bill.com that doesn't suck/feel dated.

shacharz 10y ago
Hi Peer5 co-founder here, thanks for resonating with our vision!
- xb 10y ago
  WebRTC seems like a really cool opportunity to rethink certain kinds of services. Video is an obvious candidate, I've also seen a bittorrent client that uses WebRTC. What are other interesting peer to peer applications that WebRTC could enable?
  - shacharz 10y ago
    > I've also seen a bittorrent client that uses WebRTC Yea, webtorrent[1] is a great project. We've also created Sharefest[2] a while ago which is basically WeTransfer with no servers. I think multiplayer web gaming has a nice potential and need for a high performance network stack using WebRTC. IoT might also be a candidate for direct p2p communication, without the need for all the devices in your home/office to connect directly to the cloud. [1] https://github.com/feross/webtorrent https://github.com/feross/webtorrent [2] https://sharefest.me/ https://sharefest.me/
- deleted 10y ago
  [deleted]
- deleted 10y ago
  [deleted]

miguelrochefort 10y ago

I don't understand "X for Y" businesses such as: - Kudi: "PayPal for Africa" - WaystoCap: "Alibaba for Africa" - Symple: "Venmo for business payments" Can't PayPal, Alibaba or Venmo just target these customers themselves? Duplicating these efforts seems like a huge waste of resources...

vasco 10y ago
And until they do? If a company isn't able to capitalize on the whole global market why shouldn't someone else fulfill that need? People usually take the stance of "it's just ripping of that other original company's idea" but it's very hard to make a business succeed and grow it, wherever it is, much more in the harsher overall conditions Africa generally presents.
- miguelrochefort 10y ago
  I hate the competitive feel surrounding these kinds of startups. It doesn't seem like any of them is trying to bring anything new. Mostly, they're building mediocre versions of what already exists, then fold after 6 months when faced with reality. If they succeed, it's all of us that lose. We'll add yet another "me too" tool to the collective toolbox, further dissipating the little focus that we had.
  - CalChris 10y ago
    > Mostly, they're building mediocre versions of what already exists Yes and as such they can easily be summarized into X for Y. It shows no originality and it requires no thought.
monkmartinez 10y ago
I thought this is how Silicon Valley works. The churn|acquisition|procurement is how everyone makes money, at least that is how it looks to an outsider.
Nadya 10y ago
The cost, difficulty, and research required to penetrate the market makes it not worth the potential return for Paypal/Alibaba/Venmo. Instead - another company can take the risks, build the market, then be acquired by one of those larger companies. The larger companies now has a proven business model for the market. Like a typical Korean "grind MMO" businesses have two options: (a) Buy high-level gear for an extremely inflated price from other players (b) Grind to make it yourself (potentially losing more money than if you had bought it in the first place) (a) is lower risk and makes more sense for businesses. They "could" spend $300,000,000 - $800,000,000 to maybe extend into a potential market. Or maybe they fail and threw away $600,000,000. Maybe they try again and lose another $800,000,000 with nothing to show for it. So why not acquire a company for $3,000,000,000 and forego the risks altogether? (All figures made up for example purposes.)

koolba 10y ago

> Symple is Venmo for business payments. This seems a close enough industry as Simple to be confusing: https://www.simple.com/ https://www.simple.com/

xb 10y ago
This may be true now, but Simple (the consumer online bank) is currently in the process of shutting down.
- ensignavenger 10y ago
  Source? I have been a Simple customer for years, and haven't heard anything about them shutting down?
- DeonPenny 10y ago
  The aren't they are transfer accounts to BBVA
- kmf 10y ago
  Just wanted to hop in here as a Simple employee—we are not shutting down! We're very much alive and well: as another commenter said, we're currently in the process of migrating our customers to our new partner bank, BBVA. (Definitely speaking in an unofficial capacity, but thought I'd clear the air as best I could.)

derwiki 10y ago

I'm pretty excited about RankScience. SEO can have a huge effect but also be one of the hardest things to accurately measure; and it's an industry where there's a fair amount of dogma and waving dead chickens around.

deleted 10y ago
[deleted]
WA 10y ago
It sounds good, but I don't get it from the brief description. I'm interested in hearing more. Especially this line makes me wonder: > No one has solved automated SEO because SEO is a software problem I thought SEO is a content and linking problem, not a software problem. I'm somewhat disillusioned after having lost keyword rankings to competitors with far inferior content software (hundreds of HTTP requests, 20s load time, MBs worth of junk) vs. my highly optimized website that loads in milliseconds even without AMP.
- ryanb 10y ago
  Pagespeed is a ranking factor, but it's far from the most important one. I would think deeply about what might make humans engage with your competitor's site for longer than yours.
  - WA 10y ago
    Thanks for the advice. Will do. But I still fail to understand how this makes SEO a software problem.
    - derwiki 10y ago
      SEO also includes: "what meta description can I surface on a SERP that has the highest clickthrough?" so in that sense, it's an A/B testing/software problem.
aresant 10y ago
Also excited about this product but from their pitch: "No one has solved automated SEO because SEO is a software problem that non-technical marketers are trying to solve." Great pitch, but untrue. Most SEOs I've met at serious companies are almost always very technical people. And this isn't a recent development, back in 2007 there was an SEO contest held to grab the keyword for "Greatest living american". An SEO named Brandon Wirtz took the win(1) and the guy would fit any description as a very technical person previously having been the compressionist and technical lead for Microsoft's Merlin Lab. SEO is, at its core, a technical puzzle with constantly changing parameters, and as a result attracts a lot of very talented technical people from diverse backgrounds to solve. (1) http://www.adweek.com/lostremote/the-second-greatest-living-american-brandon-wirtz-of-course/3715 http://www.adweek.com/lostremote/the-second-greatest-living-...

deleted 10y ago

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pastaking 10y ago

Peer5 is a brilliant idea! Glad to see they're doing well.