7 ms·

Startups That Launched at Y Combinator Winter 2015 Demo Day 2

110 points by sinak 12y ago

rdl 12y ago
Wow (I missed alumni demo day this year because I'm at a conference in Florida). I knew about a lot of these already, and some are great, but of those I didn't know about -- if http://techcrunch.com/2015/03/16/shift-labs-medical-devices-dripassist/ http://techcrunch.com/2015/03/16/shift-labs-medical-devices-... is actually possible, executes well, etc., it's going to be amazing, both in terms of any potential profits, but more importantly, changing the industry. Less extortionately expensive medical devices would be huge, especially outside the developed world. If equipment drops in price so it can be updated more frequently, it should evolve faster, and rapidly get better than the expensive equipment even independent of cost, too.
- anon8418 12y ago
  FDA clearance is a real pain. I spent some time at a medical device manufacturer and saw very long cycles from R&D to FDA clearance. I see their point about the high average cost of most medical devices, but I'm interested in why they started out with an infusion pump... that market is pretty competitive, even in the low-cost segment.
- josephpmay 12y ago
  Another Company doing similar stuff is Stasis Labs. They're more focused on the low end (they're targeting small hospitals in India), but they have the potential to be huge http://www.stasislabs.com/ http://www.stasislabs.com/
aabajian 12y ago
I think Open Listings has the potential to be huge. It's a great example of Schlep Blindness (http://paulgraham.com/schlep.html http://paulgraham.com/schlep.html). Real estate agents have disproportionate commissions largely based on where they operate. A real estate agent in San Bernardino, CA may make $1K for selling a home, while an agent in Palo Alto makes $10K+, because, well, the house costs 10x as much. Disclaimer: My father is a broker in San Bernardino. He's mentioned to me a number of times how incredible it is that agents get to take a percentage of the selling cost rather than a fixed fee. "Doctors get rich by going into real estate," a famous quote of his. Certainly there is more competition for agents in Palo Alto, but the actual amount of work done by a real estate agent in PA is damn near equivalent to the work done by one in SB. There are standard California forms, inspections, financing etc. The only "added perks" provided by luxury firms in the Bay Area are aesthetic improvements designed to attract wealthy buyers. For those who are interested, innovation in the real estate market has been difficult due to the monopoly on housing listings. The "Multiple Listing Service" (http://www.mls.com/ http://www.mls.com/) is the only master directory of housing lists and is only made available to "Realtors". In case you didn't know, Realtors are not exceptional agents, they simply pay to be members and gain access to the MLS. My dad was a member for the longest time just to have access to the MLS. After all, when a customer asks you to help buy a home, where are you going to get your list of available properties from? In order for Open Listings to succeed they're going to have to upset the MLS. This means building their own listings. Here's my (crazy) suggestion: Hire 20+ people to drive around the Bay Area looking for "for sale" signs in order to populate their database. It's what my dad and I used to do before he paid to be a Realtor. Once we had a list of available properties we could show them to clients.
- 7Figures2Commas 12y ago
  > Certainly there is more competition for agents in Palo Alto, but the actual amount of work done by a real estate agent in PA is damn near equivalent to the work done by one in SB. There are standard California forms, inspections, financing etc. The only "added perks" provided by luxury firms in the Bay Area are aesthetic improvements designed to attract wealthy buyers. Work != value. Here, you seem to have overlooked the fact that Open Listings is trying to "disrupt" the buyer's agent (although technically that's what it is). If you think the only thing a buyer's agent has to do to close deals in hot markets like Palo Alto is to submit an offer and run through the motions, you're mistaken. A great agent can be the difference between getting a property or not. > For those who are interested, innovation in the real estate market has been difficult due to the monopoly on housing listings. The "Multiple Listing Service" (http://www.mls.com/ http://www.mls.com/) is the only master directory of housing lists and is only made available to "Realtors". In case you didn't know, Realtors are not exceptional agents, they simply pay to be members and gain access to the MLS. My dad was a member for the longest time just to have access to the MLS. After all, when a customer asks you to help buy a home, where are you going to get your list of available properties from? You do realize that the number of pocket listings has grown substantially in the past several years, right? In some markets, pocket listings account for double digit percentages of sales. This, incidentally, is another reason to work with an agent who is a top producer, particularly in a hot market. They're far more likely to be tapped into the networks that will give their clients access to properties that haven't hit the MLS.
  - sharkweek 12y ago
    You're absolutely right in that a hard working agent will make a difference in a hot market. When my wife and I bought our house in Seattle, there were 7 offers, all pre-inspected, waiving all contingencies, everyone escalating, etc. Our agent showed up to deliver the offer in person, talked to the sellers, an elderly couple, about us (talking up how we are one day hoping to start a family in the house, won't just tear it down, etc) and hung out while other offers came in, literally calling us every time someone else had an offer competitive to ours so we could adjust if needed. Big difference between that and submitting an online offer form. But as an aside, I think Open Listings will be huge, or at least similar flat fee models in the future (Redfin was another big step in the right direction chunking out 1.5% of the cost for consumers and removing commission for their agents)
lancewiggs 12y ago
A down under perspective - some potential conversations to have: Seed, Kickpay: Xero.com, others in their ecosystem. (data) NextTravel: Serko.com (direct competition, large) Industrial microbes: lanzatech.com (did this with 1 use case) Valor: taggle.com.au (long lasting remote meters) Open Listings: 200square.co.nz (similar) Spire: fphcare.co.nz (respiratory specialists) Smarking: frogparking.com (the parking sensors) Pretty Instant: magicmemories.com (tourist photos)
andrelaszlo 12y ago
Pedantic moment (Lumi): "Everyone is starting their own business, and everyone needs help getting their brand out their." This is a typo, right? Or is it a pun that I'm not getting? :)
- danieltillett 12y ago
  I would say it is a bad pun.
forgottenacc56 12y ago
I know this isn't the right forum for anything but enthusiasm, but I cant help feeling that it's getting ever harder to find exciting things to work on. I can see there's innovation here and hard work but not much is inspiring.
- kcole16 12y ago
  Really? I found the number of innovative healthtech companies to be very inspiring. Standard Cyborg is building a better version of the prosthetic limb for a small fraction of the cost. I think that's awesome.
- diafygi 12y ago
  Have you considered energy? We need to switch 87% of our energy sources over the next 40 years in order to stop climate change[1]. It's a ridiculously huge problem that is going to be extremely lucrative for cleantech software companies. [1]: http://www.pvsolarreport.com/the-next-internet/ http://www.pvsolarreport.com/the-next-internet/
- TheOtherHobbes 12y ago
  There's not much - actually no - tech-for-tech's-sake. I'd guess that's more of a good thing than a bad one. IMO the bio/med slant and almost (not quite...) complete absence of anything social or IoT is interesting, and possibly an indicator of future YC strategy. I'm slightly surprised some of these projects think they need YC. E.g. if MashGin is anywhere close to working it's likely going to have investors dropping off big piles of cash at their lab day, night, weekends, and major holidays.
- basch 12y ago
  construction industry document management. there needs to be a medium.com for rfp/rfi/rfq etcs that has digital signatures, and allows anyone, no matter how little technology experience they have to jump in and make and collaborate on industry documents and contracts.
  - onlyfortoday2 12y ago
highCs 12y ago
kickpay amazes me: is it available outside the US?
- pmtarantino 12y ago
  I found it amazing too, but I don't know how legal is in another countries.
Alex3917 12y ago
This seems like it's by far the strongest batch ever. All of the ideas are solid, and it seems like most of them are in fast-growing markets and already have traction. Whereas even as recently as five years ago, it seemed like at least a third of the startups were built around ideas that were barely even plausible.
shortoncash 12y ago
I'm wondering why YC invested in DirectMatch. Market volumes have been abysmal the past few years and I'd have guessed a partner would've picked up on the shrinking-pie situation and passed.
tdaltonc 12y ago
Part of what's great about the "two people and a laptop" startup is that it empowers outsiders. You don't need buy-in for the established players. You just need to be able to execute. I wonder if the shift away form "two people and a laptop" and towards bio and energy is signaling the waning of the anti-establishment startup.

110 points by sinak 12y ago

rdl 12y ago

Wow (I missed alumni demo day this year because I'm at a conference in Florida). I knew about a lot of these already, and some are great, but of those I didn't know about -- if http://techcrunch.com/2015/03/16/shift-labs-medical-devices-dripassist/ http://techcrunch.com/2015/03/16/shift-labs-medical-devices-... is actually possible, executes well, etc., it's going to be amazing, both in terms of any potential profits, but more importantly, changing the industry. Less extortionately expensive medical devices would be huge, especially outside the developed world. If equipment drops in price so it can be updated more frequently, it should evolve faster, and rapidly get better than the expensive equipment even independent of cost, too.

anon8418 12y ago
FDA clearance is a real pain. I spent some time at a medical device manufacturer and saw very long cycles from R&D to FDA clearance. I see their point about the high average cost of most medical devices, but I'm interested in why they started out with an infusion pump... that market is pretty competitive, even in the low-cost segment.
josephpmay 12y ago
Another Company doing similar stuff is Stasis Labs. They're more focused on the low end (they're targeting small hospitals in India), but they have the potential to be huge http://www.stasislabs.com/ http://www.stasislabs.com/

aabajian 12y ago

I think Open Listings has the potential to be huge. It's a great example of Schlep Blindness (http://paulgraham.com/schlep.html http://paulgraham.com/schlep.html). Real estate agents have disproportionate commissions largely based on where they operate. A real estate agent in San Bernardino, CA may make $1K for selling a home, while an agent in Palo Alto makes $10K+, because, well, the house costs 10x as much. Disclaimer: My father is a broker in San Bernardino. He's mentioned to me a number of times how incredible it is that agents get to take a percentage of the selling cost rather than a fixed fee. "Doctors get rich by going into real estate," a famous quote of his. Certainly there is more competition for agents in Palo Alto, but the actual amount of work done by a real estate agent in PA is damn near equivalent to the work done by one in SB. There are standard California forms, inspections, financing etc. The only "added perks" provided by luxury firms in the Bay Area are aesthetic improvements designed to attract wealthy buyers. For those who are interested, innovation in the real estate market has been difficult due to the monopoly on housing listings. The "Multiple Listing Service" (http://www.mls.com/ http://www.mls.com/) is the only master directory of housing lists and is only made available to "Realtors". In case you didn't know, Realtors are not exceptional agents, they simply pay to be members and gain access to the MLS. My dad was a member for the longest time just to have access to the MLS. After all, when a customer asks you to help buy a home, where are you going to get your list of available properties from? In order for Open Listings to succeed they're going to have to upset the MLS. This means building their own listings. Here's my (crazy) suggestion: Hire 20+ people to drive around the Bay Area looking for "for sale" signs in order to populate their database. It's what my dad and I used to do before he paid to be a Realtor. Once we had a list of available properties we could show them to clients.

7Figures2Commas 12y ago
> Certainly there is more competition for agents in Palo Alto, but the actual amount of work done by a real estate agent in PA is damn near equivalent to the work done by one in SB. There are standard California forms, inspections, financing etc. The only "added perks" provided by luxury firms in the Bay Area are aesthetic improvements designed to attract wealthy buyers. Work != value. Here, you seem to have overlooked the fact that Open Listings is trying to "disrupt" the buyer's agent (although technically that's what it is). If you think the only thing a buyer's agent has to do to close deals in hot markets like Palo Alto is to submit an offer and run through the motions, you're mistaken. A great agent can be the difference between getting a property or not. > For those who are interested, innovation in the real estate market has been difficult due to the monopoly on housing listings. The "Multiple Listing Service" (http://www.mls.com/ http://www.mls.com/) is the only master directory of housing lists and is only made available to "Realtors". In case you didn't know, Realtors are not exceptional agents, they simply pay to be members and gain access to the MLS. My dad was a member for the longest time just to have access to the MLS. After all, when a customer asks you to help buy a home, where are you going to get your list of available properties from? You do realize that the number of pocket listings has grown substantially in the past several years, right? In some markets, pocket listings account for double digit percentages of sales. This, incidentally, is another reason to work with an agent who is a top producer, particularly in a hot market. They're far more likely to be tapped into the networks that will give their clients access to properties that haven't hit the MLS.
- sharkweek 12y ago
  You're absolutely right in that a hard working agent will make a difference in a hot market. When my wife and I bought our house in Seattle, there were 7 offers, all pre-inspected, waiving all contingencies, everyone escalating, etc. Our agent showed up to deliver the offer in person, talked to the sellers, an elderly couple, about us (talking up how we are one day hoping to start a family in the house, won't just tear it down, etc) and hung out while other offers came in, literally calling us every time someone else had an offer competitive to ours so we could adjust if needed. Big difference between that and submitting an online offer form. But as an aside, I think Open Listings will be huge, or at least similar flat fee models in the future (Redfin was another big step in the right direction chunking out 1.5% of the cost for consumers and removing commission for their agents)

lancewiggs 12y ago

A down under perspective - some potential conversations to have: Seed, Kickpay: Xero.com, others in their ecosystem. (data) NextTravel: Serko.com (direct competition, large) Industrial microbes: lanzatech.com (did this with 1 use case) Valor: taggle.com.au (long lasting remote meters) Open Listings: 200square.co.nz (similar) Spire: fphcare.co.nz (respiratory specialists) Smarking: frogparking.com (the parking sensors) Pretty Instant: magicmemories.com (tourist photos)

andrelaszlo 12y ago

Pedantic moment (Lumi): "Everyone is starting their own business, and everyone needs help getting their brand out their." This is a typo, right? Or is it a pun that I'm not getting? :)

danieltillett 12y ago
I would say it is a bad pun.

forgottenacc56 12y ago

I know this isn't the right forum for anything but enthusiasm, but I cant help feeling that it's getting ever harder to find exciting things to work on. I can see there's innovation here and hard work but not much is inspiring.

kcole16 12y ago
Really? I found the number of innovative healthtech companies to be very inspiring. Standard Cyborg is building a better version of the prosthetic limb for a small fraction of the cost. I think that's awesome.
diafygi 12y ago
Have you considered energy? We need to switch 87% of our energy sources over the next 40 years in order to stop climate change[1]. It's a ridiculously huge problem that is going to be extremely lucrative for cleantech software companies. [1]: http://www.pvsolarreport.com/the-next-internet/ http://www.pvsolarreport.com/the-next-internet/
TheOtherHobbes 12y ago
There's not much - actually no - tech-for-tech's-sake. I'd guess that's more of a good thing than a bad one. IMO the bio/med slant and almost (not quite...) complete absence of anything social or IoT is interesting, and possibly an indicator of future YC strategy. I'm slightly surprised some of these projects think they need YC. E.g. if MashGin is anywhere close to working it's likely going to have investors dropping off big piles of cash at their lab day, night, weekends, and major holidays.
basch 12y ago
construction industry document management. there needs to be a medium.com for rfp/rfi/rfq etcs that has digital signatures, and allows anyone, no matter how little technology experience they have to jump in and make and collaborate on industry documents and contracts.
- onlyfortoday2 12y ago

highCs 12y ago

kickpay amazes me: is it available outside the US?

pmtarantino 12y ago
I found it amazing too, but I don't know how legal is in another countries.

Alex3917 12y ago

This seems like it's by far the strongest batch ever. All of the ideas are solid, and it seems like most of them are in fast-growing markets and already have traction. Whereas even as recently as five years ago, it seemed like at least a third of the startups were built around ideas that were barely even plausible.

shortoncash 12y ago

I'm wondering why YC invested in DirectMatch. Market volumes have been abysmal the past few years and I'd have guessed a partner would've picked up on the shrinking-pie situation and passed.

tdaltonc 12y ago

Part of what's great about the "two people and a laptop" startup is that it empowers outsiders. You don't need buy-in for the established players. You just need to be able to execute. I wonder if the shift away form "two people and a laptop" and towards bio and energy is signaling the waning of the anti-establishment startup.