Startups that launched at Y Combinator’s S18 Demo Day 2

https://techcrunch.com/2018/08/21/all-59-startups-that-launched-today-at-y-combinators-s18-demo-day-2/

by matdehaast • 8 years ago

135 91 8 years ago

techcrunch.com

boxcardavin• 8 years ago

Click link, ctrl-f "robot" or "autonomy"

statictype2• 8 years ago

In depth analysis here: https://twitter.com/pinboard/status/1031952446795522048

fsloth2• 8 years ago

It's funny because it's true.

However, I think YCombinator has more often than not stated that they invest in the team and not the specific product they are making at the time. The invested product is generally just a learning vehicle for the team. The selected team is expected to plausibly have the insight and technical capability to pivot and retarget as new data is gathered.

Nigeria is the most interesting country in Africa at the moment and Lagos is projected to be the largest city on the planet in 2100. It's totally credible to try sounding the local market at this point. Funding a couple of small startups with a talented team sounds like a great way to do that.

roadbeats2• 8 years ago

I wouldn't call that tweetstorm "deep analysis". It's just pinboard arguing about other people's startups, meanwhile its own search doesn't function properly.

statictype2• 8 years ago

More like Pinboard making fun of YC. Obviously, I didn't really mean it was deep analysis.

maxerickson• 8 years ago

Pinboard isn't a startup, it's one snarky guy.

gfaure• 8 years ago

Looks like a typo in the very third word of the post.

thisisit2• 8 years ago

I have been reading YC lists for so many years. And this list has set a record for number of facepalms. Companies like Papa are stuff of nightmares. While others like AnchorUSD, SparkSwap etc seem like an attempt to ride a wave which was been gone for long.

patkai• 8 years ago

Read yesterday's list as well! I have always been following YC batches and to me it seemed this Day-1 was excellent.

Alex3917• 8 years ago

To me this seems like the best list in years. More stuff that’s early stage and somewhat whimsical again, albeit run by ex-FAANG employees instead of college kids. The last couple years have seemed heavier on more prosaic dtc stuff.

gtbcb• 8 years ago

I think Papa solves a legit need. By the time we (ie millennials) are old, we'll be so damn connected, hopefully loneliness will be low. But between now and 30 years from now, there are millions of seniors suffering from loneliness, and I think Papa could help with the problem. I've definitely thought about this exact idea before.

88• 8 years ago

Some would say millennials are the loneliest of all; overwhelmed by superficial interactions but lacking in meaningful relationships.

beaconstudios3• 8 years ago

it's attempting to use technology to solve a social problem - that we don't value family or community any more. The root problem is that people just shove their parents in a home as soon as they get old, and don't bother to visit them.

soneca2• 8 years ago

I think Papa (from this pitch) is an awesome idea/company. What's your issue with it?

lacker• 8 years ago

AnchorUSD seems promising to me. There are a lot of problems with Tether, and a trustworthy stablecoin with low transaction costs has an obvious value proposition and doesn't really exist yet.

duncanawoods• 8 years ago

I can barely read a list of 60 new start-ups without melting my mind. The names and value props turn into soup after about 20. I can't imagine being there, making decisions about all 60 and then coming back repeating for a second day!

Does demo day work for the audience?

mkagenius• 8 years ago

Some end up perhaps getting too much investor interest, while others not even 1.

codegladiator• 8 years ago

Demo day is i guess spread across a couple of weeks ?

making decisions about all 60

Numbers game for them now ?

ngokevin• 8 years ago

It's back to back days...back to back to back if you count Alumni Demo Day where all startups go in one day.

muhneesh• 8 years ago

Anima seems really cool and ambitious; modernizing design <-> code seems like an obvious necessity and next step to modernize workflows in the front-end.

My prediction would be that, if successful, this would empower designers and commoditize front end developers (or optimistically, let them focus on more complex logic)

Good luck to the team.

vevoe2• 8 years ago

Anima does seem really great. As a front-end dev seeing this stuff makes me happy and slightly anxious for the future. On one hand, styling basic marketing sites manually is boring and I would happily use this if it fits easily into my work flow. On the other, I hope it doesn't start making complex React apps soon or I'm in trouble :)

bsaul• 8 years ago

Not sure if you're just starting your career or not, but every time i meet a freshly graduated junior that tell me he's a "x developer" where X is a technology, i make a point telling him "no you're not, you're a developper, period. Don't think of yourself as being stuck to a given tech or you'll be in trouble pretty soon".

ReverseCold3• 8 years ago

I never understood why that isn't the way it's always worked. Some design software lets you define things in a similar way to how you would program it, but there is no easy pathway between them.

Even a code generator that's wrong 50% of the time would be pretty useful.

LeonM• 8 years ago

There are some cringe worthy ones, but also a couple which I think are suprisingly good. I think ShopWith is brilliant (although I expect HN is not the audience to discuss this with).

thisisit2• 8 years ago

Apps like Shopwith are built with limited social media engagement in mind. In this case the engagement seems to be - sell stuff to people. There is another called Stardust which has videos "but only "reaction videos" and reviews".

While it seems like specialized social media apps like these are a natural progression from more generic tools like Facebook, Twitter etc, I am not too sure. Most of social media has been taken over by bots. But twitter, fb etc do have some incentive to try and root the bots. In comparison these apps are made specifically for bot based engagement.

no1youknowz• 8 years ago

Apps like ShopWith are a good idea. However, what's going to break it is the network effect.

For them to be found, the influencers on whatever medium they are on, be it YouTube, Steemit, D-Tube, BitChute, YouNow, etc, etc then need to tell their audience to install another app and find them on there to purchase "stuff".

It's this extra few steps that limit engagement and incur huge drop-offs. Besides, with YouTube now adding in built in stores and Patreon like services. It makes it easier for influencers on there to stick with YouTube. For the other platforms that I mention, once they start doing the same. Well, the days of ShopWith would be numbered.

Finally, will ShopWith fall fowl of the same problems as Busker.co as they were forced to pay a Google/Apple Tax on purchases through the app and this lead them to close. Having not used the app, I don't know if any purchases then redirect to a webpage to do the purchase rather than on the app. Again, an issue which may cause drop-off points. As genZ may just wish to push their thumb rather than having to fill in a form, which may be a drag.

Disclaimer: I'm in the Ecommerce space and I think of this stuff down to a minute detail. I know all the different verticals and competitors in the space and what they are doing. I don't think I would have accepted them as the next 3 years are going to be very interesting and I don't think they will survive.

Rainymood• 8 years ago

There are so many startups that are getting funded by YC of which "I had the idea (first)". Of course I could think of the idea but this truly shows that the nitty gritty part is actually building the dream instead of coming up with an idea. On the bright side, if you ever find one of your own ideas or a derivative thereof being funded try to see it as market validation and get to work!

dnautics• 8 years ago

There's one startup on the list where I've had the idea, done some non-trivial work towards it in very garage-ey conditions, and applied to yc for it, and failed to get in. Still looking for funding. Oh well.

toomanybeersies• 8 years ago

I'm not in SV, and very much outside the startup community in the rest of the world these days, especially since I no longer work in a coworking space.

I have to say, some of these legitimately look like parodies, like something out of the Silicon Valley TV show. Emojer cannot be a legitimate company with real funding. It just can't.

onion2k• 8 years ago

Emojer cannot be a legitimate company with real funding.

There's a very clear exit route to selling to a phone manufacturer that wants to add more "fun" functionality to its camera app..

roadbeats2• 8 years ago

I honestly wish to have the skills of people who pitched and found investment for Emojer.

bobmarley13• 8 years ago

Must be fun spending years in academia getting your Phd in Machine Learning and Computer Vision only to create an Emoji app. How much talent is being wasted on worthless trash like this??

apabepa• 8 years ago

These kind of apps seemed popular a few years ago in China and mig still be. Saw this type of gifs in wechat frequently back then. Maybe animated gifs and stuffs in chats are more popular there but it might work to make some money from this.

soneca2• 8 years ago

It seems like you made an effort to find those companies to mock.

On my first reading I was very impressed by how many health care startups are in the list, solving hard and important problems of society.

yread• 8 years ago

Monetizing game modding?! Nooo

fsloth2• 8 years ago

That's what Roblox is basically already doing. Except it's more like "create your own game from these blocks" kind of thing, the content there seems to be of remixing lot of existing ideas and concepts.

The monetization apparently works there:

https://venturebeat.com/2017/07/21/the-deanbeat-robloxs-kid-...

swaggyBoatswain• 8 years ago

I must be getting old because I didnt even know this market segment was so large

First thing I thought of was Skyrim modding, modding through steam workshops(e.g. rocket league), and garrys mod

ReverseCold3• 8 years ago

Same with Minecraft-except instead of kids making money, the random companies that got there first a few years ago are making money.

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gls2ro• 8 years ago

I am curious what it is exactly the process of this Demo Day?

Is the normal flow: pitching for a couple of minutes, then Q&A and then at the final day a decision?

If someone who participated could share, that will be great!

glennon• 8 years ago

There is a FAQ at: https://www.ycombinator.com/demoday/faq/

Each startup gives a two to three minute pitch with slides, one pitch after another. No questions. They have 15 to 30 minute breaks every 20 pitches or so.

Investors can express interest via a web app, and meetings are set for later. It is also possible to talk to founders during the breaks and in the hallway.

ttoinou• 8 years ago

   According to Ixora, major film studios produce 100 blockbuster
   films each year that feature than 1,000 CGI shots —
   each costing them roughly $10,000 a pop

English is not my mother tongue, does "a pop" mean each second ? Anyway USD/(second of VFX) is a bad metric. Curious about the startup though, looks like they are putting the idea out there to see if people are interested because there's no information online about this

sokoloff• 8 years ago

“A pop” means “each” in this case.

snood• 8 years ago

In this context 'a pop' would mean 'for each'

So each shot is $10k

igravious• 8 years ago

a pop = apiece

ReverseCold3• 8 years ago

It is repetitive information because earlier in the sentence it already says "each costing them..."

Probably poor writing on their part.

eaenki6• 8 years ago

I can't help but wonder what would happen if YC and all its influence was to be focused on only a bunch of startups per year doing truly far fetched things - namely space, biotech, finance, robotics, computing and VR. Is focusing on social networks for grandkids, instant food, the 50th sticker app and countless B2B products truly worth it when it could be directed towards the former? Who could possibly, genuinely want to work at such places by the way (I mean, for anything else but money)?

As for this year, I'm extremely pleased to see so many startup trying to replace meat and dairy. Ditto for aerospace.

Amygaz• 8 years ago

I work at a top tier University and I have been wondering the same thing, about some of the government funded research going on in Academia...

jimmy12• 8 years ago

Who could possibly, genuinely want to work at such places by the way (I mean, for anything else but money)?

People who find their meaning outside of their work rather than through their work -- ergo most people.

I am thankful for my employer that provides a salary for me to allow me to do fun things with my family and take vacations and all the fun stuff that actually create memories that I will cherish when I am older and no longer working.

eaenki6• 8 years ago

Somehow, even though you quoted it, you missed the content inside the parenthesis. Also, flash news! You'll be working roughly 1/4 of your entire life. Unless there's nothing that excites you, it makes much more sense to get a salary + the excitement.

wyattk• 8 years ago

I get the point you're tryin to make, but, then again, who are we to judge what is and is not worthy, especially this early? A lot of "unworthy" things have been extremely value to us as a society in hindsight, let alone things that have stemmed from them.

countless B2B products truly worth it?

"B2B" is a very vague and extremely overarching term. Computers, internet, and cell phones were all, at one point, very much "B2B".

Who could possibly, genuinely want to work at such places?

For starters, I can imagine some people would fancy having a large impact on the world and the subsequent 10-12 figures attached to their name from all the value they created. Microsoft was "B2B", Amazon was an online bookstore (some people would imagine "instant food" in a category close to that), etc. It can be hard for many to see the value of something at its origin and not be able to see how that would shape a society, let alone an exponentially changing one. I think Peter Thiel would call some of these things "secrets".

eaenki6• 8 years ago

Microsoft owns the end user experience. I'd say it's as much B2C as it is B2B.

Being able to purchase any book (any knowledge) it's amazing. Definitely not even close to instant food.

DeonPenny2• 8 years ago

The problem is those ideas except maybe finance and computing don't convert well. When was the last one to go IPO. B2B, on the other hand, converts extremely well because they are solving real problems

chatmasta2• 8 years ago

There are maybe, maybe 10 promising companies in the mix these past two days. YC has really lost its prestige by diluting its batches so much, IMO. There are better pathways to funding nowadays for promising startups that don’t require surrendering 7% equity.

quakenul• 8 years ago

Be specific

marmadukester39• 8 years ago

I'm curious as to your opinion on the better ways right now.

sampl• 8 years ago

Me too.

One possible option: no accelerator at all. YC doesn’t fund you that much, and you don’t need a demo day to pitch investors. The network and advice can come others ways too: from working for startups, and increasingly online (see YCs own startup school).

chatmasta2• 8 years ago

Skip the accelerator and go straight to seed funding via convertible debt. No need to give up any space on your cap table until series A, and you can probably raise more than $150k or whatever YC is giving these days.

Of course this discounts other benefits of YC, but those are arguably becoming less useful as the batches have been diluted with so many lackluster startups. At this point YC almost seems like something people do not for their startups, but for themselves. It attracts prestige collectors that are more concerned with how they look on paper than how they perform in reality.

_sentient2• 8 years ago

I was at Demo Day, and couldn't disagree more.

If you actually believe that, go ahead and pick the ten companies you think are worth something, and I'll take the "unpromising" part of the batch. We can put a five year bet into longbets that the top ten companies of my group will outperform your ten companies, as scored by either exit value or value of last round raised.

Picking winners is hard, and most great companies today looked dramatically different when they were first getting started.

throwaway2018i3• 8 years ago

I'd be more than willing to do this. How do you want to proceed?

pedalpete• 8 years ago

I think this would have been said at the start as well.

"really, a company that is renting out air mattresses" "another Digg clone" "sync my folders? there are a million tools for that"

Though your knee-jerk reaction is correct, it is specifically this which makes YC stand-out. They often seem to pick the things that don't seem promising, and yet those turn in to stand-out successes.

cercatrova• 8 years ago

That's exactly what some people did say, at least about Dropbox (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9224)

blackmario• 8 years ago

Great but no chance!

trebligdivad• 8 years ago

64-x jumped out at me as having George Church as one of the co-founders; I've read his 'Regenesis' book and it's a good detailed read.

claudiulodro• 8 years ago

What is up with listing the pedigree of the founders? I noticed it on the demo day 1 article, also. Does being an ex-FAANG employee correlate with successfully running a startup, or is it just the easiest signal VCs have for "This person is probably smart"? It seems like a lot of YC's current model is to throw money at ex-FAANG employees with ideas.

eldavido• 8 years ago

The entire ecosystem emphasizes this. People put it on Twitter, AngelList, LinkedIn, etc.

ex-FAANG is the VC equivalent of "nobody got fired for buying IBM". It's what happens when nobody has any idea how to assess anything: they use brand as a proxy for quality. This happens in every market from consumer packaged goods (is one soap better than another?), university education, pretty much anywhere there's no accepted criteria for comparing two things.

jjeaff2• 8 years ago

I felt the same way. Some of the businesses seem so ridiculous. But then they have an ex faang, so I guess that must be the only reason they got in.

segmondy• 8 years ago

It's one of the data signals for success. An ex-FAANG employee is more likely to succeed than a non ex-FAANG, not only are they most likely smarter than average, they also probably have experience in dealing with more complex systems, and also possibly a more valuable network in terms of poaching their ex coworkers.

It's just one of those things in life. :-D

jcomis• 8 years ago

based on what evidence?

Jhsto• 8 years ago

Anecdotal, but a Google recruiter once approached me. He told me I have a weird work history. According to him, this was because I had not targeted FAANG after graduation, but instead worked in smaller companies. This was while I was living in Silicon Valley. I guess VCs might see it the same way as the recruiter - only weirdos would say no to dosh.

Personally, I think it is much the opposite -- if you worked in corporations for your whole life, how does that relate to running a startup? I think it's a general consensus that most programmers expect a job description. These people do not usually make great startup founders, because the obscurity of direction and lack of significance for coding early on might startle them.

bobmarley13• 8 years ago

How else can you convince someone to fund another useless product if you don't tell everyone the founders went to Stanford and worked at Google??

DeonPenny2• 8 years ago

Yes, good smart founders correlate with successfully running a startup and it gives notoriety.

throwaway2018i3• 8 years ago

As someone who went through YCombinator (my company failed), an Ivy-League and one of the tech giants——I can certainly say they're screwing up. To invoke Dyson, should you be investing in the frog or the bird? Let's see:

Every single company in YCombinator's portfolio these days, with rare exception seems visionless, they're single product businesses, that's why they always exit (how many went to IPO?); which is inherent with the 'people they invest in'. What is the intersection of characters of the founders of Microsoft and Apple, of Bill Gates and Paul Allen compared to Steve Jobs and Steve Wozniak? One was an idea man, whose credentials or lack there of allowed him to be, and partly the predisposition for the former to be the case, a subversive generalist; the other was a technical specialist who spent much time focusing on the intricacies of engineering. Who do you think will have a better idea? The individual who did everything right because he was told it was right or the man who didn't do everything right because he tried to trust himself? The latter's neglecting of extreme specialization along with making his own choices, which forbid him from certain credentials of supposed proof of success, gave him the time to explore more areas than the exhausted specialist. As a specialist I can tell you my ideas suck, I haven't been able to understand the big picture yet because I've spent all my time thinking in terms of these small technical details that don't allow for creativity. I'm a frog, that's why my company failed.

The specialist chose problems because he was told to do so, he never had time to exercise this broad judgement, while it's the opposite for the apparently less successful generalist. Who would be more likely to correctly identify a market niche in an overall anthropological system, the frog or the bird respectively?

Regardless, given that this is controversial, should a VC really be investing in people over the quality of the business? Whatever happened to finding people who work smart not hard? Are VC's so inept that they can't trust themselves on potential businesses and instead are forced to trust institutional credentials which signal the exact opposite of a capability for original rigorous, creatively destructive, thought?

The portfolio of YCombinator actually sucks. They invest in products that almost always exit and get bought for their single product, they all sell because they have no vision. Those products are almost always shut down eventually too: they're just bought for insurance purposes of potential disruption from the same VC delusion. Who doesn't sell? The people who have vision, the people who don't have the credentials like the founders of Stripe.

Whatever happened to investing in the Goddards, the Newtons, the Wrights, the Pitts, the Edisons's, the Jobs, the Rockfellers, the Jack Mas, and the Cubans of the world? And let me tell you, you'll reject these people, everyone will, but they're use to it——that's why they become so great. They'll find a way to make the next Fortune 500 company without you.

throwaway2018i3• 8 years ago

Just imagine if public equities were invested with this VC/YC approach. Our economy would be dead—imagine Blankfein boasting, "who cares about potential for future revenue, the CEO and his minions went to Harvard". Benjamin Graham, Warren Buffet, et al. all invest without a single care for the credentials of the education of the top 10 executives. Buffet invested in the Korean stock market without understanding a lick of Korean.

cjd• 8 years ago

The list feels like they're going more for microlending and less for the real one-winner-carries-twenty-losers VC. Maybe they estimate that there aren't going to be a lot of major IPOs in the coming years...

eaenki6• 8 years ago

I echo that

haaen• 8 years ago

Great batch. I'm especially impressed by the hard tech companies that produce atoms. But unfortunately, on demo day 1 there was a company that makes the world uglier and is supporting the massive ongoing trend of middle class and sometimes even upper class people imitating an aspect of the underclass. On demo day 2, there was a shamelessly partisan company that makes the world worse. It wants to get more people to support a process that, contrary to entrepreneurship, brings out the worst in people who actively engage in that process.

May the companies from the S18 batch flourish, except those two.

RobLach• 8 years ago

Which companies are you referring to?

bobmarley13• 8 years ago

Frankly I've found both days completely underwhelming and the only companies that have even a hope of approaching unicorn territory are the Pharma startups and even then they don't seem terribly groundbreaking.

YC has gotten stale.

frakkingcylons• 8 years ago

Titan sounds interesting, but I feel like the value they provide is dubious for the fee (1% of AUM!) they charge.

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Startups that launched at Y Combinator’s S18 Demo Day 2

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