Launch YC: 3D Web; Training; Child privacy; Pregnancy; Life science; Desk rental

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28049500

by dang • 5 years ago

85 127 5 years ago

news.ycombinator.com

Here's the third "Meet the Batch" thread - previous one was https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27996057. This time I've tweaked the title slightly in the hope of doing better re https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27996536.

Here are 6 startups for you to read about and engage with where interested. The initial order is random.

Lernit (YC S21) - Corporate training program for Latin America - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28049505

StandardCode (YC S21) - APIs to easily comply with child privacy laws - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28049504

Scispot (YC S21) - Workflow automation for life science - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28049501

Muse (YC S21) - Allow anyone to build 3D websites - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28049502

Ruth Health (YC S21) - Digital, at-home post-pregnancy care - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28049503

Deskimo (YC S21) - Book workspace by the minute in Singapore and Hong Kong - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28049507

satyascispotcpo3• 5 years ago

Hey HN! I am Satya from Scispot.io (https://www.scispot.io/). Scispot is a no-code workflow automation platform for life science. Think of us as an Airtable for Life science.

Life science companies often have no choice but to rely on a laundry list of tools to stay up and running. Electronic lab notebooks, LIMS (Lab Information Management Systems), Google Docs, Asana, Notion, and Airtable are just some of the tools that are used out of necessity. As a result, most of the biotherapeutics, diagnostics companies, contract research organizations, and labs struggle to stitch together disparate data. They end up scattering their sample, inventory, project, and protocol data in various systems. The disparate data adversely impacts the experiment's failure rate. Not being able to connect data also impacts the data integrity and regulatory compliance for fast-growing bio companies.

We let you personalize your workflows using an orchestration layer. A lab can track and manage its samples and inventory, plan and prepare experiments at the desk, and execute experiments at the bench using Scispot. We have project management features to easily visualize research and operational activities in a calendar and a kanban view. We also have APIs for developers and data engineers to plug in existing systems. For instance, customers can integrate their batch runs and inventory to their legacy systems using Scispot’s API. Scispot maintains a thorough audit trail (eligible for CFR part 11 compliance).

Customers are using Scispot to connect their inventory and chemical library with experiment execution. Customers also use Scispot’s template library to create protocols in bulk and connect the protocols with the inventory.

Scispot is founded by three founders, Guru (a molecular biologist and a life science tech veteran), Nash (automation expert), and me (the product guy who loves building workflows). We’d love to speak to any of you that are curious about what we’re doing or if you have any ideas/challenges for us!

patel011393• 5 years ago

I love this; I'm in HCI, but will keep an eye out for this. It'd be good to add more HR type functionality to this and help manage people + finances for academic research labs. What's the roadmap/vision?

nash272• 5 years ago

Thanks for the support! We're currently focusing on building cool features for our customers that are geared towards digitizing certain nuances within their existing workflows.

HR type functionality, Employee management and financial management are operations that are currently well covered by many of the ERP solutions out there in the market. We don't immediately have any plans to build these features right away, however, we never say never ;)

If a lot of our customers would deem these feature sets necessary, we might devote our engineering efforts towards either building them ourselves or integrating with a major ERP solutions providers down the road

daemonk• 5 years ago

Is this product geared towards academic labs that deal with maybe hundreds/thousands of samples/reagents? Or is it geared towards industry processing labs where there are easily thousands of new samples that go through workflows every week or month?

nash272• 5 years ago

Yes we do! We serve life science labs from industry and academia including diagnostics, biotherapeutics and CROs.

munfred• 5 years ago

1) What are the differences between Scispot and Benchling?

2) What are the things you offer that nobody else does?

3) How long have you been developing the product?

4) If it is only three people, why would a lab choose you over established players?

satyascispotcpo3• 5 years ago

Great questions! 1) What are the differences between Scispot and Benchling? Scispot is completely no-code. So, you can design your own sample manager, pick and choose the workflows you want to automate, and set inventory automation (maintain an always-updated inventory with our inventory automation module).

2) What are the things you offer that nobody else does? There is no other no-code workflow automation in life science space yet.

3) How long have you been developing the product? One year

4) If it is only three people, why would a lab choose you over established players? We only mentioned our founding team as part of the post. We have a team of highly talented engineers, scientists and advisors without whom Scispot wouldn’t be the product it is today. Customers choose us because we are more agile compared to bigger companies. Our agility comes from the orchestration layer that you can use to design your own life science workflows. For instance, every customer has its own different flavour of Scispot with different workflows, and metadata.

Happy to set-up a call to continue your discussion.

ninetax• 5 years ago

Hey Satya, congrats on the launch, I'm looking forward to using our new SciSpot integration soon!

satyascispotcpo3• 5 years ago

Thank you! I am excited to roll it out as well.

benjaminha1420• 5 years ago

Hi HN, we’re Ben and Alex, founders of Muse HQ (https://muse.place/). We help anyone build immersive 3D websites.

Alex and I started building 3D websites because we were bored of building the same old static websites that we have been contracted to do for the past 6 years since high school. Building websites sucked and was boring. Fortunately, Alex discovered the power of three.js. Between us, Alex was the first one to start building websites in 3D and frankly, I was jealous because I saw that the code for 3D websites was far too complicated for me to grasp quickly and I felt left behind. This is why Alex and I started Muse, to make the 3D internet accessible to everyone and easy to use so we don't have to keep building static websites.

The way we solved this problem was by first building an open-source framework called SpacesVR that made it very easy for React developers to start building 3D websites. Several months later, we built a no-code editor that works similar to Squarespace and Wix built around this framework. Using our framework, our team has built over 200 3D websites by hand. Since launching our no-code editor, we have seen over 40 websites published. Also, a crazy thing happened the other day when Alex was scrolling through Twitter. He stumbled upon a 3D website that used very similar control mechanisms to our websites. With a little bit of investigating, we found out that a virtual gallery project, 3XR, started using our framework to build virtual NFT galleries for all Mintbase stores!

It has been exciting to see our no-code editor and open-source framework grow. I encourage everyone here to build a 3D website, try it out, you may enjoy it! You can check out our open-source framework at https://www.npmjs.com/package/spacesvr or go to https://muse.place/to build a 3D website with no code. Have fun building!

podric• 5 years ago

Cool stuff! What are some great use cases that you'd like to see for 3D websites? Do the long load times of 3D websites relative to 2D ones affect search ranking?

benjaminha1420• 5 years ago

Because most of the site are not built with html, it is difficult for Google and search engines to crawl. That would affect search rankings the most. An idea to fix this is to automatically auto generate tags created by html that describe the 3D models and decorations/components added to the room.

tarr11• 5 years ago

Glad that I could navigate this on my phone!

Reminds me of VRML.

harrisreynolds• 5 years ago

I hate to complain but visiting this site made me feel completely trapped. I literally could not do anything and could not escape to even close the browser (mouse is 100% hijacked). I had to CMD-Q the whole browser just to get out of the site.

Surely there is some UX technique you guys can come up with to free the mouse and improve this.

Question for you... what is the best 3D website on the Internet? How do they solve this?

All the best to you guys!

jlund-molfese• 5 years ago

Which browser do you use? Most seem to support pressing Esc to exit from this site, videos etc. I feel like that's more of a browser issue.

benjaminha1420• 5 years ago

Thanks for the tip, we know we need to optimize for accessibility first. We have spent a lot of time optimizing our renderer for speed. To be honest, this is the first I am hearing about this bug so I would like to be able to learn more about your set up offline perhaps in an email. If you could email info@muse.place with your computer and browser setup that would be very helpful.

Also, one of our favorite websites have been https://nurtu.re/

It is built by Active Theory for Porter Robinson. I believe this could be the future. I guess they get away with it because they are in third person.

pionar• 5 years ago

Firefox at least tells you to use ESC to get the pointer back.

Fission2• 5 years ago

A tip for the Muse team: based on my experience with first-person 3D, a substantial portion of users don't understand pointerlock, and the built-in notification that browsers give usually are insufficient. It might be a good idea to put a persistent indicator that ESC can be used to get out of pointerlock.

a1369209993• 5 years ago

I literally could not do anything and could not escape to even close the browser (mouse is 100% hijacked). I had to CMD-Q the whole browser just to get out of the site.

To be scrupulously fair, the fact that a site can do this, even on purpose, is both a browser bug and a operating system bug (denial-of-service security vulnerability in both).

pedalpete• 5 years ago

I like to think we're one of the better ones https://ayvri.com

This is mostly just a side project now, after 6 years of work. We have our own 3D renderer, but are using our custom Cesium here.

onion2k• 5 years ago

Very cool indeed. react-three-fiber is a game-changer for how easy it makes building 3D websites. It's awesome to see a startup using it.

alexshortt5• 5 years ago

yeah it's especially useful for maintaining a large scale codebase! gotta love it

fillskills• 5 years ago

Some feedback: - Its not clear how to get the mouse to be free. I was expecting to hold a key (ctrl/alt etc) to free the mouse and press it again to give control back. Now I see that 'esc' is the key to pause the program. Just needs to be highlighted more. - The calendly link seems to be broken: https://calendly.com/muse-3muse/muse-demo-call - Some sites require microphone access without telling why

benjaminha1420• 5 years ago

thanks for shouting that out - will fix that and got your notes on our pause menu!

My Calendly subscription ran out :) Here is our updated link: https://calendly.com/ben-792/userinterview

d--b• 5 years ago

I know I only have a $300 laptop, but this is _slow_

benjaminha1420• 5 years ago

would love to get more info on this, were tryna optimize for speed, if you could email info@muse.place with your device that will be very helpful for us

chaostheory• 5 years ago

Works well with an iPhone 11 Pro. Can’t wait to try it with an Oculus Quest 2

alexshortt5• 5 years ago

not fully optimized for the quest just a heads up. best sites to try might be www.muse.place/balloonski and https://muse-place-2qc57fsgs-musehq.vercel.app/alto. we're not targeting quest users fully yet, but on my free time i'm slowly adding improvements :)

arkitaip• 5 years ago

At least for now, you should consider a persistent overlay that explains that Esc breaks out of view mode and releases control over the mouse. Not being able to use the mouse as you usually do is very unpleasant.

I really like these fun alternatives to ordinary web sites even though the UX designer in me is having a heart attack because of the countless usability and accessability issues

benjaminha1420• 5 years ago

Our goal is to get there though. Thats the biggest tech problem we face, accessibility and usability and everyday that is what our team RNDs

yunusabd• 5 years ago

This caught my interest because I've been dabbling with 3D graphics for the web lately. Some feedback: If your product is a no-code editor, why not make that the focus of your website? Squarespace for example doesn't take you to a generic website and asks you to sign up from there, they take you to their editor to start building your own site immediately. You could add examples somewhere else on the site.

Generally an interesting field to work in, lots of uncharted territory in terms of UI best practices and user expectations. Good luck!

mpeg• 5 years ago

I agree with this, when I look at the site I want to know how the editor works and what the pricing model is.

You can include a link to a demo and the showcase sites elsewhere.

It also feels what you're trying to sell is full 3D website templates, when in reality it would probably be more viable as an embed or a section of a bigger site.

An example of a successful site that is built on similar tech is decentraland

mkl3• 5 years ago

I don't agree in this case. I don't want to start editing, I want to know what the heck a "3D website" is. Now I know, and it turns out it's not something I want to spend any time using.

udia• 5 years ago

This is really cool but there are a few usability issues. I suggest to overly html DOM ontop of the canvas rather than having users enter form details within the experience as the only method of signing up. Other users who are trying to stand up can stand between my camera and the form itself, making it such that I can't see what the form is trying to ask me or what I am typing.

ctoth• 5 years ago

Hi, cool project!

Have you considered how you intend to provide accessibility on top of this model of interaction? I have some thoughts for possibilities involving HRTF audio for blind users, but the deafblind experience is going to be ... tricky. Of course you'll need to do similar work to expose the semantics of one of these experiences to search engines, so for once I am not just begging for accessibility merely for us poor blind folk.

I'm curious as to how you internally represent the scenes, and what sorts of research you've done into precursor technologies such as VRML.

If you have questions or would like some ideas of where to get started with accessibility, feel free to reach out! My email is in my profile.

benjaminha1420• 5 years ago

reaching out, we have thought about this. Would love your insight

cdata• 5 years ago

This is neat. I love that you are fostering a publishing mindset, and not just showcasing a glitzy 3D magazine for folks to gawk at.

There is a steep hill to climb before a 3D web really lands in a way that fosters an ecosystem of content creators. I suspect that it will take a different breed of web browser to truly realize an XR web, one with built-in, high-level APIs for composing 3D content. Ultimately, you need many of the built-in features of the 2D web, and approximating those things via a canvas is tantamount to rebuilding a fair chunk of the browser.

alexshortt5• 5 years ago

Yeah a new browser is inevitable. Main bottleneck is currently getting the full power of the CPU, especially when there is no GPU present, as browsers have pretty high overhead that bottlenecks the application.

Fission2• 5 years ago

It seems like there are some major accessibility issues that are a result of embedding text/inputs/etc. within threejs itself. Have you considered using an HTML element and dynamically positioning it with CSS transforms (i.e. update style per useFrame call)? It's a little more work, but it should solve a large class of accessibility issues, and is performant to boot.

benjaminha1420• 5 years ago

interesting, we'll take a closer look into this

fourseventy• 5 years ago

Just add strafe jumping and a rocket launcher

benjaminha1420• 5 years ago

tf2 on the web!

markdeloura• 5 years ago

Great work! I'm a big fan of this idea, and as others have mentioned, it's a little reminiscent of the promise of VRML back in the day. Or even of PlayStation Home or Second Life, but more accessible, since it's right there in your browser.

I've seen some comments about the performance, and I just wanted to comment that I just tried the site out on an old Chromebook Acer R11 (Celeron N3150) and while the perf on the opening environment is a little bit hitchy, the Balloonski room for example ran perfectly well. Little machines are capable of a whole heck of a lot these days! Even in the browser!

Nice work!

benjaminha1420• 5 years ago

Thank you!

mkl3• 5 years ago

Your instructions initially say to use WASD to move, which is inconvenient for those of us with our pointing device on the left. But it turns out the arrow keys work as well, and the in-site instructions say so (when you manage to click the instructions button, which is quite hard with a trapped pointer).

benjaminha1420• 5 years ago

what browser were you on? Your mouse pointer should be replaced by our cursor if there were no bugs.

sirianth2• 5 years ago

How can we find out more about y'all? Do you have a company website with the background? I just popped into the discord. I basically build babylonjs/threejs full stack worlds every day... I'd like to learn more.

benjaminha1420• 5 years ago

I'd check out our Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/musehq/

I am working on building a company website right now with bg info which should come out later this week. Being built using builder tools!!!

sirianth2• 5 years ago

How do we learn more about y'all? Do you have a company website with some background, blog posts, etc.? I just hopped in your discord. I basically build full stack vr worlds in babylonjs/threejs every day. Curious to learn more about your company and your team. You can take a look at my work here: https://delta.center/ and here: https://delta.center/gevurah

mlok• 5 years ago

Hello, I am using Firefox on Ubuntu with an AZERTY keyboard. I couldn't move with (unnatural) WASD, nor (more natural) ZQSD, nor (most natural) arrow keys. I could look around using the mouse. A couple of empty white rectangles were in front of me. Suddenly became four empty white squares (like keys ?) when I clicked them. No idea what they are for. All this still need some UI polishing, I would say.

benjaminha1420• 5 years ago

any chance you can email us a screenshot? info@muse.place, if not thanks for flagging this. We did a merge a pr recently for AZERTY keyboards: https://github.com/spacesvr/spacesvr/pull/51

solidasparagus• 5 years ago

Why should someone want to build a 3D website? Or are you only targeting people who already know they want to build a 3d website?

prox• 5 years ago

Came here with the same question. Who is the target demographic?

pawelwentpawel• 5 years ago

I quite like this and my experience on your 3D website was very smooth. I wonder about the following points:

- Would creating a 3D website hurt my SEO?

- Would the content be somehow accessible for users who are entering the website on devices that don't support WebGL? Is there any fallback?

- A 3D website looks cool and creative but does it really engage users more than a standard one? Would it increase my conversion rates or keep people longer on the site (subtracting the time to figure out the controls)?

benjaminha1420• 5 years ago

- To be honest, not sure. I am not an SEO expert.

- Most of the end visitors, those that visit our creators websites, are actually mobile users and they have an average session duration of 50+ seconds and so far we have very high retention with our creators so I think there hasn't been to big of an issue with accessibility. I tested our website on a iPhone SE and it ran great on good wifi. All modern browsers support WebGL. Our fallback would probably be around bad wifi.

- We only use 3D web sites to run our funnels. I always tell people content is king at the end of the day so I guess you will have to just try it out and see how it goes. Right now, it is hard for us to share with you robust analytics via conversion rates and CTAs so I recommend using a service like BITLY and attaching bitly to the buttons so you can track clicks. Here is one of our funnels: https://www.muse.place/pandassaurus The funnel was built completely with builder tools, so you have the same tools I do. So at the very least I can tell you that our growth/marketing strategy at Muse is 100% reliant on our own product if that helps.

shakna2• 5 years ago

With Firefox's tracking protection on, the only thing I get for the homepage is a single line error message, as the WebGL context drops unexpectedly.

If you visit at least once without tracking protection, and then turn it back on, and visit (even with cleaning all caches), then the site loads correctly.

benjaminha1420• 5 years ago

thanks for the flag! we'll look into this

pototo666• 5 years ago

This is amazing!

I am building a Reddit for China. I can't help thinking about builidng a 3D version.

This is like, what can I say, muse!

benjaminha1420• 5 years ago

that would actually be crazy! We have a long ways to go with this build, but you can consider this website as an early prototype of what a news/blog site could look like: https://violetsummerzine.com/

alis0nlaura3• 5 years ago

We're Alison and Audrey, cofounders of Ruth Health (https://www.ruthhealth.com), a digital + at-home clinic for pregnant people :]

We deliver 30-minute, online physical therapy video sessions to help the 83% of postpartum womxn with moderate-to-severe Pelvic Floor Prolapse—in other words, who pee in their pants after pregnancy. Birthing people deserve a life without postpartum pain and incontinence.

With our personalized, 1:1 telehealth Pelvic Training + Recovery Sessions, moms worldwide can get back to work, sex, and normal life 5x faster—all from home.

From SF to NYC to Singapore, patients simply share health information, get scheduled, and then log on for our video sessions during this $10-145/session sliding-scale Pelvic Pilot program. By taking our Training + Recovery Sessions 30 min/week from home for 2-6 months, womxn see an increase in strength, reduction in pain, and greater bladder control—versus spending often double the price and 3+ hours door-to-door on each Pelvic Floor Physical Therapy appointment in-person. Onboard here to get scheduled (https://bit.ly/RuthHealthOnboarding) for your first session!

throwawaydad2• 5 years ago

This is timely for us as my wife is expecting (2nd trimester), and we're both very active people outdoors. Post-partum recovery has been a frequent topic of conversation. Am I reading your website correctly that you're doing online telehealth, but limited to SF/NYC/Singapore?

dang9• 5 years ago

I'm pretty sure they just mentioned those places as examples and are available everywhere. Hopefully the founders will show up to confirm!

alis0nlaura3• 5 years ago

Hi there! We are global. Those are just a few of the places where we operate.

Congrats on expecting :] and we'd love to help. You or your wife are welcome to sign up here and we'll reach out to schedule! https://bit.ly/RuthHealthOnboarding

11235813212• 5 years ago

This seems promising. My wife wonders what the 5x time reduction is based on and what your therapy offers over training guidance provided by her primary OB, which cannot he provided entirely virtually but doesn’t require such lengthy sessions. Perhaps this is more a service for acute issues and not proactive pelvic health? Glad to see more such services forming either way.

alis0nlaura3• 5 years ago

Hello, thanks for commenting!

The 5x reduction is as opposed to postpartum recovery without any form of pelvic therapy or training as intervention.

Her primary OB does not offer Pelvic Floor Physical Therapy or anything like our Pelvic Training + Recovery. These are most often found at a PT or with a fitness trainer. Our methodology is proprietary and speeds up recovery with a targeted approach and 1:1 sessions—as opposed to videos, group sessions, or longer PT appointments that have low adherence due to a long time commitment.

We are for birthing people with acute issues! But we are also a great preventative option for those who never want to get there in the first place. Pelvic floor prolapse gets worse over time and with the birth of more babies by an individual.

We hope to make maternal healthcare better for every body—including your wife's!

anaskar4• 5 years ago

Hey HN! We’re Daniel and Arjun, founders of StandardCode (http://www.standardcode.io/). We make it easy for companies to comply with child data privacy laws such as COPPA and GDPR by providing APIs for collecting parental consent and ID verification of minors.

COPPA regulation makes it difficult for companies to cater to children under 13 without building in safeguards to collect and manage parental consent and to block third-party sharing of data without transparency. As a result most companies just prohibit users under 13 from signing up for their services, either as a policy or by having an age gate that prevents an under-13 child from signing up.

However, with a record number of under-13 users on the internet due to the pandemic, behavior is permanently shifting and many companies now want to cater to all audiences. By providing APIs to manage the collection of consent, we allow companies to safely acquire underage users while minimizing friction in the sign-up flow.

Our customer-facing REST API presents a few high-level resources that are needed for collecting parental consent and ID verification for children. Customers typically make 1 API call to create a profile for a child, and then 2–3 more calls to collect parental consent or verify age and ID if necessary. Afterwards, we push data to a webhook endpoint to notify the customer when consent has been collected or an ID has been verified.

Our business model is based on usage — we charge a small fee per user for whom we need to collect parental consent or verify age and ID.

We'd love to hear from you, especially if you have experience with products catering to children!

pierre• 5 years ago

Nice work!

You mention COPPA and GDPR but which country regulation do you cover (and in which language?). How do you ensure that the Parents giving consent are the parent of the child (and that you are not getting spoof?). How do you keep up with the changing regulations, with some country having multiple layers (Union, Federal, State, City, ...).

I like the focus on Childs, but you could also extend it to do KYC for financial institutions, the market may need a cheap and reliable solution.

anaskar4• 5 years ago

thank you! We’re starting out of the gate with COPPA and will fast-follow with GDPR so we currently cover the United States (in English).

re: spoofing. this is a tough problem to solve and no existing solution guarantees this. we would be able to see suspicious behavior though like multiple verification attempts, time between submission and verification, etc.

Changing regulations is tough. We work with a privacy lawyer to keep us abreast of changing policy and have researchers maintain a database of applicable state, federal, and international laws as well as recent lawsuits.

Financial KYC is interesting for sure. Right now we’re focused on child privacy and very much believe there’s a lot of work to be done there still.

jvalencia• 5 years ago

Honestly, this is great. So many applications do this poorly if at all and COVID has not helped the situation. I do wonder about compliance across state/national lines.

anaskar4• 5 years ago

thanks! the laws do change across country lines. while we’re focused on the U.S. right now, we’re actively researching applicable laws in other jurisdictions.

bartman• 5 years ago

Great to see innovation in this space. How does your service compare to offerings like those from PRIVO? Something we get a lot of value out of is their review of whether our practices are compliant (and if not, how to achieve it - all done in the design phase of new features etc) on top of offering a widget for verifiable parental consent. Is this something you also offer?

anaskar4• 5 years ago

thanks! so far the companies we’ve talked to are delaying full-blown reviews as long as possible because of the stage of company they’re in.

We certainly do work very closely with each company to work through their product and integrate as seamlessly as possible. whereas we don’t offer an official security review as of now, it is something we’re considering for the future. would love to chat, DMing you now!

santmaldonado4• 5 years ago

Hey HN! I’m Santiago Maldonado, CEO and Founder of Lernit (https://www.lernit.mx/). Our platform makes it easy for companies in Latin America (Latam) to train their workforce, even when they are remote.

According to studies, 74% of CEOs worldwide are concerned that a lack of essential skills in their employees is threatening the future of their organization. With the increase of remote work comes the challenge of keeping teams aligned and pushing in the same direction.

When I graduated from college, the biggest learning platforms were Coursera and Udemy, and it hit me that there is an immense gap between what you learn in an on-demand course and what you do at your job. Usually, these courses were outdated and had no relevance to what employers wanted their employees to learn. So I saw a huge opportunity to create Lernit, where companies could ensure that their employees were learning valuable skills that could be used at their job.

We allow companies to develop online courses on the specific skills their employees require for accomplishing organizational goals and personal growth while staying focused on priorities. These priorities are easily visualized and aligned to the company's main objectives through OKRs (Objectives and Key Results for a specific period). Each individual can check in and track progress while receiving feedback and mentoring in a collaborative environment.

We offer an all-in-one solution for HR teams where companies can set, align and track goals, evaluate performance, train and develop their workforce and build culture without the trouble of managing different tools at expensive prices.

We are eager to help companies reach growth and more than happy to answer any questions you may have about our talent platform, so if you have any or are just curious please leave a comment!

lucyrubio• 5 years ago

Congrats on the launch! I know first hand how aligment and visibility helps on keeping teams focused, I love using Lernit on a daily basis. Keep it up.

santmaldonado4• 5 years ago

Thanks a lot Lucy, happy to hear this !

notsureaboutpg• 5 years ago

There are a lot of tools like this out there: SuccessFactors, Bridge, etc. And there's always room for more, imo.

What are you going to do differently? How are you going to gamify this in a way others don't?

I've worked in lots of places and interacted with many software portals that try to do this right. A lot of them falter by not keeping up with the actual current state of information within an organization (especially a rapidly growing one). Many of the courses end up outdated and they're really only useful for onboarding.

It's probably because of the time it takes and the friction needed to create a course or update a course. Because of that friction and because it's easier to just post to a Wiki / Slack channel / internal blog / etc. the small updates and changes, these courses sometimes languish.

Just questions that come to mind. And congrats on the launch. Wish the best for you!

santmaldonado4• 5 years ago

Great question!

Currently there’s no solution in LATAM for medium sized companies, and with more companies working remotely the need for tools that will help keep teams aligned and focused on priorities while filling learning gaps is growing as well.

The friction needed to create courses for specific skills or roles is the whole reason why Lernit is now a reality, we want to make upskilling available for every role and level, and thanks to our authoring tool that enables companies to create courses in minutes, our marketplace with up to 6 new courses per week and our strategic alliances with great universities that gives our users access to learning programs is that we are able to keep up with a fast evolving market and organizational needs.

santmaldonado4• 5 years ago

The best part, everything is included through licensing at an affordable price.

Please let us know if you have any additional feedback or questions, we will be happy to hear back from you.

GuillermoLM• 5 years ago

Great!!! It is a fact Lernit comes to change the way employees develop their own skills and achieve their goals at the company. Really proud to be part of this family!

santiagobasulto• 5 years ago

Saludos tocayo! Best of luck with Lernit. I think it's a very interesting model. I did a similar startup back in 2019 and sold it to an American company (all from Argentina). If you need any help lemme know, I'm moving to angel/advising now.

My only piece of "unsolicited advice" would be: raise prices and focus on value added. Anything that is value added will be difficult to copy and will be your difference with anybody else: community, cohort building, etc.

Best of luck!

ChrisMischler2• 5 years ago

Hi HN, we're Christian (ChrisMischler) and Raphael (raphco) of Deskimo (https://www.deskimo.com/). We provide on-demand access to professional workspaces, where users rent desks by the minute. We've started with Singapore and Hong Kong as our initial markets, with the intention to expand into other markets soon.

Raphael and I have been working remotely for most of the past 10 years. During the pandemic, all of our friends suddenly saw themselves thrown into a similar position and we've observed how they adapted. Many don't have a suitable home-office setup and while for most the pros of remote/hybrid work clearly outweigh the cons, having access to near-home desk space would solve the downsides of working from home for most.

We give users access to a wide range of professionally run workspaces in central business districts as well as in residential neighbourhoods. By giving users access to near-home workspaces, we give them an opportunity to work for a few hours and not waste precious time on commuting. We also have locations close to schools, shopping centers, and other places where our users need to go throughout the week.

There is no need for a membership, upfront payments, or long-term commitments. Access works similar to ride hailing: location-based and instant. A user scans the QR code of the app at the reception to start the session and scans the code again to check out. We charge at checkout for the duration of the work session; the maximum charge per day is capped at the rate of a day pass at the specific location. Our customers consist of companies who provide Deskimo accounts for employees, and individual users who prefer our flexibility over the cost and commitment of a coworking membership.

Hexcles• 5 years ago

As someone living in Canada, the name stood out to me as insensitive. https://www.uaf.edu/anlc/resources/inuit_or_eskimo.php

biztos• 5 years ago

I don’t live in the great frozen North and I had the same reaction, FWIW.

The name is super witty and probably nobody in SG/HK cares, but I don’t think the people generally called Eskimos like being called that.

Then again, Volkswagen doesn’t get flak for selling Tuaregs as far as I can tell.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tuareg_people

version_five• 5 years ago

As someone also living in Canada, we unfortunately have a vocal minority that wants to feign offence at anything it can find to criticize. Ignore them.

legostormtroopr• 5 years ago

Eskimo refers to more ethnic groups than just the Inuit and is perfectly acceptable when refering to circumpolar groups outside of the US & Canada.

Eskimo isn't an offensive word, and is only considered inappropriate when its used to refer to Inuit peoples. Which this isn't.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eskimo

raphco4• 5 years ago

Thanks for raising this. In our target markets (SG, HK, Asia) this has not been an issue as majority of people are not aware of this. But we will take this into account as we expand down the road.

8jy89hui• 5 years ago

Many of your workspaces look like fairly standard hotel / restaurant lounges. This is in contrast to WeWork that builds more conventional office spaces.

Do you plan to build/rent more traditional/conventional offices?

I personally cannot imagine a room packed with professionals at different companies on lounge-chairs and sitting around tiny tables. However, I might not be have a good understanding of Singapore/HK culture.

ChrisMischler2• 5 years ago

We actually work only with professionally managed workspaces, meaning offices like WeWork (resp. their competitors). We have added 2-3 spaces which we call "alternative workspaces" that are close to residential areas to have a better coverage. There is for example the Furama Hotel in Singapore, which has converted a part of their event space into a co-working space. This space is open 24/7h (as it's a hotel), co-working spaces tend to close at 8 or 9pm and many of them are not accessible on Sundays, which is not ideal.

carlobadini• 5 years ago

Amazing work guys!!! You should expand to Europe next!

raphco4• 5 years ago

Thanks. Both Chris and I are actually originally from Europe and we have it in mind for our global expansion plans.

ohashi2• 5 years ago

Do you feel this goes against the ideas of coworking spaces and building community where you work? Even local coffee shops can have communities, but this idea seems to want to get away from that.

raphco4• 5 years ago

We believe we actually enable the community aspect within each workspace but also within each company we work with. We are an additional distribution channel for our space partners. For our business clients, we are a new way to enable their workforce to be more productive while saving overheads on their fixed leases.

mmahemoff• 5 years ago

Hi guys, I like the idea of this. I wanted to give a shout-out on Twitter, but @deskimoapp is currently suspended.

NickNaraghi2• 5 years ago

The title of these threads needs work!

Possible to group by theme or something?

Or just leave out the specifics. The 2-word pitch is cutting too much to be any sort of useful.

dang9• 5 years ago

It's true that the generic nouns don't say much, but the company names would say even less.

Since examples are the best way to learn, I would be interested if anyone could come up with a better title for this thread. It's not obvious how to do this!

icyc2• 5 years ago

As a start, matching the individual thread name format would be great, e.g: Launch YC (S21): 3D Web; Training... :-)

NickNaraghi2• 5 years ago

Thanks for doing the hard work of experimenting here!

How about mirroring the Who’s hiring format?

Launch YC: S21 (August 3)

kirubakaran• 5 years ago

Though I read the earlier post about batching launches, I'll admit that I was scratching my head trying to figure out what kind of startup would try to cater to pregnancy and desk rentals. Pregnancy + Child Privacy makes sense. Perhaps Life Sciences plays into it somehow too. But why throw in desk rentals as well? Can't blame my slowness on caffeine deprivation either. Anyway it was briefly amusing.

mottosso• 5 years ago

On first reading the title, my immediate thought was "Oh snap that is one diverse company!"

Maybe something along the lines of "Launch YC x 6: 3D Web; Training; etc.." could make it more clear how many launches are in a thread?

andrewstuart• 5 years ago

I'd prefer there was a "Launch" category at the top of the page with a star on it to show when there's something new.

Launch YC: 3D Web; Training; Child privacy; Pregnancy; Life science; Desk rental

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