Ask YC: Your favorite startups lately

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=747735

by gaia-forming • 17 years ago

58 67 17 years ago

news.ycombinator.com

What's some of your favorite innovative startups lately?

I like the approach that RethinkDB is taking with their SSD DB technology.

* = Doesn't have to be YC

pclark2• 17 years ago

dropbox. still.

gaia-forming4• 17 years ago

I agree, Dropbox is a really nice startup; really polished.

mtrichardson• 17 years ago

Dropbox takes up all of my CPU these days. It's very depressing how little I use it now.

raptrex• 17 years ago

The CPU usage is kinda high, thats why I only run it when I need it

dotcoma• 17 years ago

dropbox and spotify.

jackchristopher• 17 years ago

Dropbox helps gets things done but stays out of the way. It's so subtle I forget I even use it. That's exactly what I like in a program.

blender• 17 years ago

cloudkick, I think those guys did a great job.

Delivered something of value, freemium business model that I believe will work extraordinarily well for them.

My hat is off to them! Just wish I would've thought of it first.

gaia-forming4• 17 years ago

I guess it's about execution every time, and yeah, they execute well.

hynek• 17 years ago

Dropbox

mrduncan• 17 years ago

280 North for re-inventing how web apps can be developed.

bdmac972• 17 years ago

Heroku...

After that I'm a bit partial to launchly but that's probably because it's mine. :-)

gaia-forming4• 17 years ago

The heroku guys do a really solid job.

What's launchy?

bretthoerner• 17 years ago

http://www.launchly.com/

Readmore• 17 years ago

Yeah Heroku is awesome, I'm really enjoying their new deployment platform.

christonog2• 17 years ago

I'm really finding Evernote a great tool for syncing my daily to-do lists.

paul9290• 17 years ago

Is Evernote a YC company? I can find any info to this regards. Here is a list of YC companies http://www.crunchbase.com/company/y-combinator, though not sure if it's a comprehensive one?

christonog2• 17 years ago

No, but I realize how the title might be misleading. I realize now this question was maybe geared toward those who started YC companies, which I haven't.

zaveri3• 17 years ago

Prefer ShoveBox, however only available for OS X... http://www.wonderwarp.com/shovebox/

nick007• 17 years ago

that's 2 votes for shovebox. great organizational tool for the mac! also with an iphone client now that is super useful on the go.

jasonlbaptiste• 17 years ago

Favorite Startups of 2009

vark.com listia.com saynow.com

PStamatiou2• 17 years ago

I like Etherpad, but I'm not sure why. I'm a big G Docs user, or at least was in college, and use both for the same features (don't do too much heavy collab). But I use Etherpad Pro to consolidate all the random text files I have lying around usually. I think I like it because it's simple, non-nosense and logging into google docs is a pain. I have it on google apps and i never remember the URL so i have to log into mail, click the icon, etc. Granted I could setup a CNAME but I digress..

Maybe I like em more than gDocs b/c they're also a startup..

alexsolo3• 17 years ago

I agree completely. Etherpad is a lot better than Google Docs. The big reason for me is that it provides instant collaboration. When I type something in, the other people editing the doc can see my changes instantly.

For Goog Docs, it takes a few seconds to see someone's changes. It's great for solo editing, but very annoying for collaborative work.

PStamatiou2• 17 years ago

> but very annoying for collaborative work.

tell me about it. i wrote a 33 page group paper in Google Docs once.. PITA.

jseeba• 17 years ago

Posterous. It just works.

zaveri3• 17 years ago

Amazing how they continue to crank out feature after feature. They are wicked fast..

jmonegro• 17 years ago

You don't know anything yet! Too bad I can't talk about it. :(

pclark2• 17 years ago

no themes yet. still.

rokhayakebe• 17 years ago

YCombinator.

mrlebowski• 17 years ago

Cloudera! Their tutorials kick-ass :)

kalvin• 17 years ago

Aardvark for potentially kicking off a new way to search (and even if not, for having awesome diction)

Kickstarter for being beautiful and the first crowdfunding site that looks like it has a chance to explode.

paulgb• 17 years ago

GitHub really impresses me.

icco2• 17 years ago

I agree. I really like their release cycle and transparency. They produce a solid product, they understand their market, and they are innovative. The only thing I don't know is how profitable they are.

pjhyett• 17 years ago

We're doing well and will be around for a long time.

calvin• 17 years ago

GitHub has found its way into my workflow for web development work. Plus, the sheer number of useful projects and source code available from other developers keeps brings me back to the site frequently.

eel• 17 years ago

thesixtyone, probably. It's replaced Pandora for me. It's a little too social networky (I just want to listen to music!) but it works.

adamhowell• 17 years ago

+1 thesixtyone. The idea of giving users quests to reward them for exploring a site/app more is inspiring.

gehant• 17 years ago

big fan of thesixtyone - has one of the best streaming music players on the web...quality product.

Plus, huge kudos to them for not relying on RIAA as is true with most other online music services.

tripngroove• 17 years ago

ahh, the sixtyone is great. stellar way to find new music.

also, they make it super easy to buy music that you like. i just wish more artists on the site had stuff for sale!

clistctrl• 17 years ago

I never heard of it before, but I love it! My girlfriend is going crazy about it too :)

prakash• 17 years ago

Angstro

revertts• 17 years ago

Spideroak impressed me. It's a service similar to Dropbox, but with more emphasis on privacy. I found their devs really accessible and interesting to talk to.

turtle4• 17 years ago

Nice. New to me.

pg2• 17 years ago

Picwing (http://picwing.com) is probably the one that has improved our life the most lately. It is the perfect thing for people with new babies. Your relatives get a regular stream of new prints with near zero effort.

zaveri3• 17 years ago

Sry downvoted by mistake, on iPhone...

ivankirigin2• 17 years ago

Do they no longer make hardware?

pg2• 17 years ago

For now, no. It turns out that a lot of the photo frame market actually prefers prints.

dfranke• 17 years ago

Tarsnap is unique among the startups that get play here in getting me to open my wallet to the tune of more than the price of a T-shirt.

plinkplonk• 17 years ago

Tarsnap! Solo Founder, great product, great payment terms. What's not to like?

icey2• 17 years ago

Does anyone know if Colin has anyone working with him on Tarsnap yet? Or is he still the only person working on it?

cperciva3• 17 years ago

Thanks for the vote of confidence! :-)

alexsolo3• 17 years ago

Chatterous. I have it hooked up to my IM, and I use it for group chat all the time.

alexsolo3• 17 years ago

Billmonk, for splitting restaurant bills with friends.

htsh• 17 years ago

grooveshark, still wonky interface but its as close to spotify I can find on our shores.

..of course I still use dropbox .. who doesn't? I stopped using evernote as I got tired of having to use Wine to run it..

nwjsmith• 17 years ago

Github takes the cake for me. It makes reading and finding code a breeze, and for the relatively unexperienced (like me), it has dramatically lowered the barrier to entry for OSS.

A Facebook for hackers, I love it.

agotterer• 17 years ago

Makerbot is pretty awesome

mhb• 17 years ago

Shapeways

icco2• 17 years ago

Rightscale. They put out such a solid product and make using ec2 so easy, it's not even funny.

slvrspoon• 17 years ago

not to denigrate the smart people and great work done here, but i think this is a pretty depressing list when looked at from on high. this is the creme of the crop of all the yc hacker intelligentsia? suprisingly banal imhop.

bkudria• 17 years ago

"yc hacker intelligentsia"? Sounds like your expectations are way over-inflated. Consider reconsidering your concept of "intelligent".

mahmud• 17 years ago

Twilio. Top notch.

dshah• 17 years ago

I like the following (may not as cool as some of those listed, but they're great startups and driving real revenue):

1. ZenDesk 2. Freshbooks 3. 99designs

Ask YC: Your favorite startups lately

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