Ask News YC: What market is your startup in?

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=67216

by robmnl • 19 years ago

6 39 19 years ago

news.ycombinator.com

Hello, I'd like to introduce myself. I'm an applicant for this YC funding cycle, and would love to get to know some of you guys+girls.

I'm curious as to what market your startup/idea is in? If you feel like sharing.

Mine is about on-demand software/SaaS.

I expect all of us will be sharing more soon. I am missing community feeling on this board, hence this post to generate some introductions.

Really look forward to meeting you, these are exciting times.

cperciva2• 19 years ago

I'm not a YC applicant; but I'm doing online backups, with an emphasis on security.

robmnl13• 19 years ago

Thanks for the post. So you're already in the market and launched?

cperciva2• 19 years ago

No, I'm still writing code. I'm not applying to YC because (a) I'm a sole founder, (b) I can't move to the bay area (unless someone wants to pay my medical bills, I need to stay in Canada where things are mostly free), and (c) I'm busy leading an opera orchestra on the November 3rd/4th weekend.

rms3• 19 years ago

Hi Rob, my cofounder and I are doing genetic testing.

robmnl13• 19 years ago

Can you explain further? DNA comes to mind, are you talking about that? Or unit tests that go through an evolution process?

rms3• 19 years ago

DNA testing, we have one test we're launching now but hope to expand in the marketplace as funds allow.

Tichy• 19 years ago

That field is so interesting, however, I am not sure why people would want to test for the "HIV-gene"? So that they can "screw around" with an easier mind afterwards? But it doesn't seem to indicate 100% resistance, so what good is it?

rms3• 19 years ago

It provides peace of mind to certain individuals, it does not allow anyone to have unprotected sex. It is more explicitly useful to those that have HIV because the mutation indicates the disease's rate of progression.

I think this field is incredibly interesting and am looking forward to watching this amazing technology improve over the next five years.

gibsonf16• 19 years ago

We are making a collaborative business webapp that integrates project and task management using constraint enabled workflows that you can template and interconnect. In a sense, our system establishes workflow as the spine of business networking, allowing businesses internally (staff) and externally (with their customers and vendors) to collaborate on any project. We have been coding since January and are finally launching our private beta next week. (Email us if your're interested in a peek) http://StreamFocus.com

robmnl13• 19 years ago

That's awesome - I'd love to, just sent you an email.

robmnl13• 19 years ago

Checked out your homepage, you have a good project description.

I had the same problem you had: being overwhelmed with tasks in my task management software. I solved it quite simply by marking certain tasks as "in progress". That allows me to see what I should be focusing on - and if I'm not, I re-evaluate where I am at, and set different tasks to "in progress" that make more sense.

For sure not as thought out as your solution - yet it has been working fine for me. Yours is for a team though, much more complex/interesting problem. Nice work & thoughts.

gibsonf16• 19 years ago

Hi robmnl, thanks for the encouraging comments. Unless your real name is Louis, we haven't received an email from you yet to add to our private beta test list.

yrashk2• 19 years ago

mine is productivity combined with issue tracking [i.e. issue tracking combined with effective planning methology] (issuesdone.com)

robmnl13• 19 years ago

That's a truly pretty app, I love the design.

Nice feature you have is keyboard navigation, I think that's a must have for web apps.

louisadekoya• 19 years ago

Your site seems to require Open ID and Firefox or Safari. Why ostracize a large number of people this way?

yrashk2• 19 years ago

The reason behind Open ID is to limit early users number by a kind of simple barrier. We are not yet able to handle all users at this early stage. Early adopters are usually advanced enough to sign up for OpenID (especially given we have an affiliate program with myopenid)

The reason behind requiring Firefox or Safari is simple enough too. We have not enough time yet to support every (even popular) browser. We'd like to spend time doing essential things, not tweaking HTML and CSS these days. Again, early adopters are those who are relly interested in using our app at the early stages and they seems to have no problem using FF or Safari to access our application.

ALee2• 19 years ago

We want to change the world of politics- web-based CRM. App was for a simple communications tool that would allow you to easily complain to government.

Our first product was Fantasy Congress <www.fantasycongress.com>, we made that as a hobby first and then received amazing press coverage on it and should have applied to YC last summer. We made the choice to ditch our post-grad plans and are bootstrapping out of Washington DC (but man do we want to get back to where the tech is). Our second product is an election game which we're working on with a media partner, but the YC application we've submitted is going to be the core of how we're going to help make political communication more effective.

robmnl13• 19 years ago

now that's interesting. I had a similar idea, not one I submitted, but an idea for an app. Basically it would be for lobbyists, or groups working for a common goal, that try to talk to politicians and convince them about issues. So you'd have all these politicians in your tracking system, see who you already talked to and who not, and where these people stand on the issue. That way you can more effectively deal with their concerns.

Is that kind of what fantasy congress is?

ALee2• 19 years ago

Rob, sorry haven't checked my threads in a while. Fantasy Congress is fantasy sports for a political junkie. Instead of drafting football players, you draft members of Congress. Instead of touchdowns and interceptions, it's votes, legislation, and news. What happened was we created this cool tracking system when we created Fantasy Congress and we didn't really know of its other uses until after.

The CRM idea is cool because it would use the same tracking system.

anaphoric4• 19 years ago

Hi Rob,

 We are building a natural language interface to databases tool. I figure that forms, key-word and hyper-link interfaces have their limitations. Our orientation is mostly scientific/technical, but we figure that if we can deliver a solid, usable solution, there will be many, many uses. 

 But of course there are significant challenges. :-)

 take a gander at our demo clip for VLDB.
 
 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fWio8bHq4wQ

robmnl13• 19 years ago

no way, that's brilliant.

I very much believe you that there are many challenges. In case we both meet on Nov 3rd, let's have a chat, I'm really curious on how you do that.

I could definitely see many uses for this, develop this thing further.

anaphoric4• 19 years ago

Thanks for the encouragement. Yes, let's keep our fingers crossed and hope to meet in November.

gibsonf16• 19 years ago

That was our first startup idea with Organon Technologies. We realized that it was going to take us a couple years to build it out, so we switched to streamfocus.com instead. Good luck!

gibsonf16• 19 years ago

I just looked at your demo - nice job! If you're interested, our application streamfocus.com might be a great platform for you - perhaps we could collaborate?

anaphoric4• 19 years ago

Well I will tell you that it was quite an effort. There are lots of moving parts under the hood - a theorem prover, search mechanisms, spell checker, etc.

It took several years to get it to the current beta. The nice thing I have tenure as an associate professor in Sweden so I can grind on this problem with little interference and a quirk in Swedish law lets Anaphoric Systems (our company) own it. The sacrifice has been that my publication rate slowed down. But honestly I don't really care (that much).

Still I have been told that it is hard to sell a generic database interface tool. I have had lots of advice to specialize in one vertical or another. But which one to pick?

My own dream would be to sell it on the database tools market as a general solution.

Still if our Anaphoric Systems start up fails to get traction, we will probably just open source the whole project -- and I will get back to publishing on areas like causality, probability logic, etc.

joeguilmette2• 19 years ago

our idea stemmed from a recent trip to tahoe. we were bummed because we wanted to rent a sailboat, but we couldn't because they were all too expensive.

however, when we got there, we noticed that there were about, oh 2000 boats sitting unused in the water.

i was an only child for 15 years, so my mom made it a point to emphasize sharing :)

robmnl13• 19 years ago

I like that, I wish there was a system that allowed us to share resources wisely. The thing is, the burden to put your unused resources into a web database is too high. This should be a system that would work automatically, that connects you with the people that have a surplus of something you need.

joeguilmette2• 19 years ago

i dont think so at all, look how much time people invest in facebook, and they dont even get anything tangible or useful out of it.

now think about how much more time people would invest if they got cheap access to, say, a sailboat out of it, or conversely if they got a tidy return on an otherwise dead investment.

rokhayakebe• 19 years ago

voip startup, nothing social about it

robmnl13• 19 years ago

why not? make it special

Ask News YC: What market is your startup in?

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