6 ms·

YC Demo Day Session 2

90 points by xpop2027 12y ago

huhtenberg 12y ago
uBiome looks interesting. Has anyone tried them? http://ubiome.com/ http://ubiome.com/
dr_ 12y ago
I realize it's hard to predict what direction a company will take in the future, but is it YCombinator's policy to incubate companies that from the start seem to be competing against each other? It seems to me that ListRunner and Medisas (http://www.forbes.com/sites/alextaub/2014/04/24/meet-medisas-the-company-that-saves-peoples-lives/ http://www.forbes.com/sites/alextaub/2014/04/24/meet-medisas...) do pretty much exactly the same thing.
- argonaut 12y ago
  YC has stated several times that often companies will change ideas after they get into YC. YC thus isn't going to tell them to not do something just because it competes with another YC company.
kyro 12y ago
uBiome may be onto something. I read a study the other day that said obesity may actually be linked to gut flora, which I found very interesting. Excited to see what comes of this.
nichodges 12y ago
> Sliced democratizes access to hedge funds. Even though hedge funds have outperformed S&P 500 over the past decade, very few investors have access to them. Hedge Funds on average do not outperform market indices such as S&P 500. I'm curious as to whether this was TechCrunch's take on the problem, or the startup's?
- tpeng 12y ago
  It's mostly irrelevant. No one is investing in the hedge fund average, they are investing in the hedge funds that they think will do well. It's actually the same if you look at VC funds -- the overall returns of venture funds is poor, but the returns of the top quartile of funds is outstanding. In any case, the S&P 500 is not an appropriate benchmark for the hedge fund industry as a whole, because many hedge funds do not invest (solely) in equities and those that do theoretically have different risk characteristics from the market.
  - jayp 12y ago
    Is it really irrelevant? How do you suppose one tell which hedge fund will do better and which won't beforehand? Past performance? We know that's not a good indicator. If you can tell which hedge funds will do better in the future, you probably can tell which stocks will do better, and then why not just got it yourself without giving someone else 2 and 20? We agree that S&P500 and hedge funds have different risk factors. The point is that S&P500 is a lot less riskier and with better returns than an average hedge fund.
    - tpeng 12y ago
      Investing in stocks is more labor-intensive than investing in funds. I can identify a few great managers that will do very well over time, write them a check, and be done. By your logic, why should anyone give YC or a16z money? I mean, if I know that YC is better at picking startups, why don't I just go pick my own startups? It's two different skillsets. It's clearly not the case that I cannot select a set of hedge funds that is less risky than the S&P500. Fixed income funds, for example are much less risky (ignoring for argument's sake some details like inflation risk). I don't know if the "average" hedge fund is more or less risky than the S&P500. Depends how you define average. But no one is investing in the average, you couldn't do so even if you wanted to.
      - jayp 12y ago
        On the other side of the coin, there are index funds for fixed income too. That would be a better compare against hedge fund that primarily uses fixed income assets. (For hybrid hedge funds, there are hybrid index funds too.) Once again, the 2 and 20 payment structure makes it very hard for it to beat a 0.2 fee index fund. And as for clearly better funds like A16Z and YC now, there have many numerous that have held that crown before. Fees and fund expansion have resulted in worse results -- allowing newer players like A16Z and YC to take off. My argument is that I don't think it's clear who'll beat the broad market (for their asset class) once the fees are taken out. I suppose we disagree about the value of high-fee managed funds (whether VC, PE, Hedge, etc.). That's fine. Anyway, enough digression from the discussion on hand. Good luck to the founders in making their value proposition clear. I am sure there are lots of people want to invest in hedge funds but don't have the funds to invest directly. They will find this appealing.
dkyc 12y ago
Flynn could really make a dent in the PaaS space, although they seem to have a problem communicating their value proposition. I understand it's something like an open-source version of Heroku? If they take all the hassle out of deployments (everything that happens between git push and bare metal), I see a lot of Heroku users that are sick and tired of paying outrageous 35$ a month could flock over to them.
- benologist 12y ago
  Flynn seems to be focusing on the deployment side of things but that's only 1/2 of the value Heroku offers which is a fully managed platform. You take on that responsibility with Flynn.
- archseer 12y ago
  One of the maintainers here, we do agree that documentation and getting our message across a bit more clearer is our primary priority. One of our major advantages is that we're a bit more ambitious about deploys and we try not to limit you to a certain format: you can deploy any type of application on Flynn, not just web apps, but regular applications and services like databases, mail servers and so on. We then let you connect all of these together via service discovery. Meaning that instead of limiting you to a plugin system, Flynn allows you to write your own "plugins" that behave just like regular apps.
rdl 12y ago
I'm really excited about some of these, but particularly ubiome. It's pretty "ew, gross" to think about, but it does seem like an area of medicine and diagnostics which is open for deeper exploration, finally. (disclaimer: I met the team a couple times before in bay area tech contexts and like them)
tptacek 12y ago
"Death begins in the colon" seems to be attributed to an expert (albeit an old one), but unfortunately the adage is mostly associated with "wellness" practices on Google; it seems to be a shibboleth for things like colonics.
seren 12y ago
Helion seems unreal. I am not ready up to date with fusion research, but as far as I know there was not even a demo or prototype in lab producing energy for a few seconds (or minutes), and they claim to have a product in 6 years. Can someone tell me what I've missed ?
- 27182818284 12y ago
  When I was majoring in physics 10 years ago, a prof with expertise in nuclear physics said the only thing stopping us was funding. Just of late I came across this graph which says something similar: http://i.imgur.com/JyUZDe2.jpg http://i.imgur.com/JyUZDe2.jpg
- adwf 12y ago
  You're probably not missing anything. By my (limited) reckoning, even if they can get their design to work in theory, I think they're grossly underestimating the materials requirements for the fusion reactor. From what I recall, one of the big problems that any reactor project has is that the reaction has a tendency to destroy the reaction chamber. Not just the heat, but the neutron radiation can completely screw up the reaction chamber walls, which then need replacing. It's one of the reasons the ITER project is so large, to make it relatively robust in the face of such destructive power. I also remember reading a while back that the force from the electromagnets in the ITER project is sufficient to launch the entire reaction chamber off the ground, something like 5000 tons... Having said that, I think it's cool that they're attempting it and I think that fusion projects have been grossly underfunded in the past. The reason why it's always 30 years away is because they're always cutting the funding! I'd love to be proven wrong on this, but I imagine they'll have unexpected escalating costs surrounding the actual building of a working durable reactor and the company will die before it gets off the ground.
  - idlewords 12y ago
    It seems like the kind of high risk thing VC money should be thrown at. It would be cool to see more research into cold fusion, too. The well was poisoned back in the eighties and the field never recovered.
cm2012 12y ago
Uber for bodyguards and uber for lawns. Neat!
conorgil145 12y ago
Couldn't Square or some other "big" player come in and implement payments via bank account and simply put Kash out of business? I know nothing of the domain, but it seems relatively straight forward to do, no? PayPal already let's me send money to any individual with an email address (and maybe a PayPal account?), so couldn't they just change their fees to 1% flat for businesses tomorrow? What am I missing? Thoughts?
- maxbrown 12y ago
  Sure, a big player could implement this model, but they may not take the risk or make the investment if their current model is successful. Also, it certainly doesn't mean they'll put Kash out of business if they do (and if the Kash team succeeds). For example, I don't expect Amazon Local Register to put Square out of business.
  - conorgil145 12y ago
    Fair points. I guess I struggle to see the benefit as a user. I just glanced at their site and they do list a few benefits for users including "fast and easy payment, perks and rewards for using Kash, manage spending better with daily limits, no bank fees or interest charges". These could be interesting, but as a user I don't know that the incentives are there for me to stop using my CC which I am already accustomed to. I get points from CC purchases, use Mint to set budgets, and do not see bank fees or interest charges because I pay each month in full. I guess I am just not the target market for Kash. However, I clearly see the many benefits for the retailer. They are saving money on transaction fees, avoid charge backs (maybe?), get paid more quickly, and is free for businesses charging under $100k. I think in the back of my mind when I posted my previous comment was the classic chicken-and-the egg problem. Lots of benefits for retailers, but only if customers use it. Possible benefits for customers, but only if retailers accept it. I think that many of the other larger existing players in this space already have most of the infrastructure in place (eg, Square) and have brand recognition to boot. So, I see a very large uphill battle for Kash in this space with their business model. However, as you point out, it isn't necessarily a zero sum game and Kash could exist along side competitors. It will be interesting to see if they can differentiate themselves in some way and/or execute better in some way.
GregorStocks 12y ago
> Sliced democratizes access to hedge funds. To be clear, Sliced is open only to accredited investors and has a minimum investment of $20,000.
parennoob 12y ago
Love the idea of Fixed, specially if it spills over to healthcare charges. I have observed that hospitals invariably manage to saddle me with ridiculous "processing fees" and suchlike and add around $100 or more to my expected charges every time I visit them. I usually just pay up to avoid the nuisance of dealing with administrators who cannot seem to be able to communicate over email, and possible damage to my credit if I try to challenge it. I strongly suspect this is the case for a lot of middle-class Americans. I'd gladly pay the same amount to Fixed to act as an intermediary between me and said 70s-era administrators, if only to let them know that someone is looking carefully at their exorbitant charges, and possibly even contesting them.
Jemaclus 12y ago
Will uBiome run into the same FDA regulatory issues that 23andMe did? If so, I hope they have a great legal team...

90 points by xpop2027 12y ago

uBiome looks interesting. Has anyone tried them? http://ubiome.com/ http://ubiome.com/

dr_ 12y ago

I realize it's hard to predict what direction a company will take in the future, but is it YCombinator's policy to incubate companies that from the start seem to be competing against each other? It seems to me that ListRunner and Medisas (http://www.forbes.com/sites/alextaub/2014/04/24/meet-medisas-the-company-that-saves-peoples-lives/ http://www.forbes.com/sites/alextaub/2014/04/24/meet-medisas...) do pretty much exactly the same thing.

argonaut 12y ago
YC has stated several times that often companies will change ideas after they get into YC. YC thus isn't going to tell them to not do something just because it competes with another YC company.

kyro 12y ago

uBiome may be onto something. I read a study the other day that said obesity may actually be linked to gut flora, which I found very interesting. Excited to see what comes of this.

nichodges 12y ago

> Sliced democratizes access to hedge funds. Even though hedge funds have outperformed S&P 500 over the past decade, very few investors have access to them. Hedge Funds on average do not outperform market indices such as S&P 500. I'm curious as to whether this was TechCrunch's take on the problem, or the startup's?

tpeng 12y ago
It's mostly irrelevant. No one is investing in the hedge fund average, they are investing in the hedge funds that they think will do well. It's actually the same if you look at VC funds -- the overall returns of venture funds is poor, but the returns of the top quartile of funds is outstanding. In any case, the S&P 500 is not an appropriate benchmark for the hedge fund industry as a whole, because many hedge funds do not invest (solely) in equities and those that do theoretically have different risk characteristics from the market.
- jayp 12y ago
  Is it really irrelevant? How do you suppose one tell which hedge fund will do better and which won't beforehand? Past performance? We know that's not a good indicator. If you can tell which hedge funds will do better in the future, you probably can tell which stocks will do better, and then why not just got it yourself without giving someone else 2 and 20? We agree that S&P500 and hedge funds have different risk factors. The point is that S&P500 is a lot less riskier and with better returns than an average hedge fund.
  - tpeng 12y ago
    Investing in stocks is more labor-intensive than investing in funds. I can identify a few great managers that will do very well over time, write them a check, and be done. By your logic, why should anyone give YC or a16z money? I mean, if I know that YC is better at picking startups, why don't I just go pick my own startups? It's two different skillsets. It's clearly not the case that I cannot select a set of hedge funds that is less risky than the S&P500. Fixed income funds, for example are much less risky (ignoring for argument's sake some details like inflation risk). I don't know if the "average" hedge fund is more or less risky than the S&P500. Depends how you define average. But no one is investing in the average, you couldn't do so even if you wanted to.
    - jayp 12y ago
      On the other side of the coin, there are index funds for fixed income too. That would be a better compare against hedge fund that primarily uses fixed income assets. (For hybrid hedge funds, there are hybrid index funds too.) Once again, the 2 and 20 payment structure makes it very hard for it to beat a 0.2 fee index fund. And as for clearly better funds like A16Z and YC now, there have many numerous that have held that crown before. Fees and fund expansion have resulted in worse results -- allowing newer players like A16Z and YC to take off. My argument is that I don't think it's clear who'll beat the broad market (for their asset class) once the fees are taken out. I suppose we disagree about the value of high-fee managed funds (whether VC, PE, Hedge, etc.). That's fine. Anyway, enough digression from the discussion on hand. Good luck to the founders in making their value proposition clear. I am sure there are lots of people want to invest in hedge funds but don't have the funds to invest directly. They will find this appealing.

dkyc 12y ago

Flynn could really make a dent in the PaaS space, although they seem to have a problem communicating their value proposition. I understand it's something like an open-source version of Heroku? If they take all the hassle out of deployments (everything that happens between git push and bare metal), I see a lot of Heroku users that are sick and tired of paying outrageous 35$ a month could flock over to them.

benologist 12y ago
Flynn seems to be focusing on the deployment side of things but that's only 1/2 of the value Heroku offers which is a fully managed platform. You take on that responsibility with Flynn.
archseer 12y ago
One of the maintainers here, we do agree that documentation and getting our message across a bit more clearer is our primary priority. One of our major advantages is that we're a bit more ambitious about deploys and we try not to limit you to a certain format: you can deploy any type of application on Flynn, not just web apps, but regular applications and services like databases, mail servers and so on. We then let you connect all of these together via service discovery. Meaning that instead of limiting you to a plugin system, Flynn allows you to write your own "plugins" that behave just like regular apps.

rdl 12y ago

I'm really excited about some of these, but particularly ubiome. It's pretty "ew, gross" to think about, but it does seem like an area of medicine and diagnostics which is open for deeper exploration, finally. (disclaimer: I met the team a couple times before in bay area tech contexts and like them)

tptacek 12y ago

"Death begins in the colon" seems to be attributed to an expert (albeit an old one), but unfortunately the adage is mostly associated with "wellness" practices on Google; it seems to be a shibboleth for things like colonics.

seren 12y ago

Helion seems unreal. I am not ready up to date with fusion research, but as far as I know there was not even a demo or prototype in lab producing energy for a few seconds (or minutes), and they claim to have a product in 6 years. Can someone tell me what I've missed ?

27182818284 12y ago
When I was majoring in physics 10 years ago, a prof with expertise in nuclear physics said the only thing stopping us was funding. Just of late I came across this graph which says something similar: http://i.imgur.com/JyUZDe2.jpg http://i.imgur.com/JyUZDe2.jpg
adwf 12y ago
You're probably not missing anything. By my (limited) reckoning, even if they can get their design to work in theory, I think they're grossly underestimating the materials requirements for the fusion reactor. From what I recall, one of the big problems that any reactor project has is that the reaction has a tendency to destroy the reaction chamber. Not just the heat, but the neutron radiation can completely screw up the reaction chamber walls, which then need replacing. It's one of the reasons the ITER project is so large, to make it relatively robust in the face of such destructive power. I also remember reading a while back that the force from the electromagnets in the ITER project is sufficient to launch the entire reaction chamber off the ground, something like 5000 tons... Having said that, I think it's cool that they're attempting it and I think that fusion projects have been grossly underfunded in the past. The reason why it's always 30 years away is because they're always cutting the funding! I'd love to be proven wrong on this, but I imagine they'll have unexpected escalating costs surrounding the actual building of a working durable reactor and the company will die before it gets off the ground.
- idlewords 12y ago
  It seems like the kind of high risk thing VC money should be thrown at. It would be cool to see more research into cold fusion, too. The well was poisoned back in the eighties and the field never recovered.

cm2012 12y ago

Uber for bodyguards and uber for lawns. Neat!

conorgil145 12y ago

Couldn't Square or some other "big" player come in and implement payments via bank account and simply put Kash out of business? I know nothing of the domain, but it seems relatively straight forward to do, no? PayPal already let's me send money to any individual with an email address (and maybe a PayPal account?), so couldn't they just change their fees to 1% flat for businesses tomorrow? What am I missing? Thoughts?

maxbrown 12y ago
Sure, a big player could implement this model, but they may not take the risk or make the investment if their current model is successful. Also, it certainly doesn't mean they'll put Kash out of business if they do (and if the Kash team succeeds). For example, I don't expect Amazon Local Register to put Square out of business.
- conorgil145 12y ago
  Fair points. I guess I struggle to see the benefit as a user. I just glanced at their site and they do list a few benefits for users including "fast and easy payment, perks and rewards for using Kash, manage spending better with daily limits, no bank fees or interest charges". These could be interesting, but as a user I don't know that the incentives are there for me to stop using my CC which I am already accustomed to. I get points from CC purchases, use Mint to set budgets, and do not see bank fees or interest charges because I pay each month in full. I guess I am just not the target market for Kash. However, I clearly see the many benefits for the retailer. They are saving money on transaction fees, avoid charge backs (maybe?), get paid more quickly, and is free for businesses charging under $100k. I think in the back of my mind when I posted my previous comment was the classic chicken-and-the egg problem. Lots of benefits for retailers, but only if customers use it. Possible benefits for customers, but only if retailers accept it. I think that many of the other larger existing players in this space already have most of the infrastructure in place (eg, Square) and have brand recognition to boot. So, I see a very large uphill battle for Kash in this space with their business model. However, as you point out, it isn't necessarily a zero sum game and Kash could exist along side competitors. It will be interesting to see if they can differentiate themselves in some way and/or execute better in some way.

GregorStocks 12y ago

> Sliced democratizes access to hedge funds. To be clear, Sliced is open only to accredited investors and has a minimum investment of $20,000.

parennoob 12y ago

Love the idea of Fixed, specially if it spills over to healthcare charges. I have observed that hospitals invariably manage to saddle me with ridiculous "processing fees" and suchlike and add around $100 or more to my expected charges every time I visit them. I usually just pay up to avoid the nuisance of dealing with administrators who cannot seem to be able to communicate over email, and possible damage to my credit if I try to challenge it. I strongly suspect this is the case for a lot of middle-class Americans. I'd gladly pay the same amount to Fixed to act as an intermediary between me and said 70s-era administrators, if only to let them know that someone is looking carefully at their exorbitant charges, and possibly even contesting them.

Jemaclus 12y ago

Will uBiome run into the same FDA regulatory issues that 23andMe did? If so, I hope they have a great legal team...