Meet the YC S16 Batch | Hacker News Reader

Meet the YC S16 Batch

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129 pointsloyalelectron42 comments

This post isn't terribly interesting (introducing a new series), and the headline is incredibly misleading -- it's "Meet the first YC S16 company," not meet the batch of companies.

Perhaps this could be repointed to Revlo directly: http://themacro.com/articles/2016/05/revlo/

Agreed - I was expecting a profile on the entire batch based on that heading.

That's exactly what I referred to in my comment. Terrible title. Expected list of companies and what they do like in recent contest.

Did you subscribe to the feed?

I have noticed Revlo on Twitch! ("what on earth is a goon dollar???") No brainer selection for YC. Looks like a compelling digital currency solution for fan bases. And this space, whatever you want to call it, "internet video viewer engaement", is gargantuan, nascent.

Just curious, without given too much away, what's the endgame with Revlo? Create the ultimate platform on top of Twitch, Youtube, etc. that content creators can then use to run karaoke contests, create mini games, raffle prizes and such? Or scouting and developing talent and creating their own studio and channels? Good luck and congrats!

This is definitely a winner since there's a dearth of tools that help streamers monetize their audiences in a more engaging way. I wonder if this becomes something that Twitch would want to build into the streams themselves so it's seamless and can embed the mini games and raffles in real time into the video feed?

The other thing that came to mind was that Revlo could probably find a huge audience in the adult entertainment space where cam sites have been the most popular format in the past few years. The combination of real time interaction with entertainers and the amateur (girl next door) aspect have really fueled the popularity of the format. My research suggests that the tools for streamers are severely lacking for an audience that is heavily monetized.

Adam (one of the cofounders) here. Our long-term goal is definitely to help creators interact with and engage their fans regardless of what platform they use. Twitch was a natural starting point because interaction already plays such a critical role in the content.

Hi Adam,

do you think that Revlo suffers from the typical "building on top of someone else's platform" problem? It seems to me that this game always end up with you either being acquired by the platform or being screwed over. What's your view on this?

Congratulations on the work so far! :-)

I think it's absolutely a challenge building on someone else's platform, but I don't think those are the only two outcomes. Think of a company like Hootsuite, it leverages these social platforms but solves a set of needs for businesses that Twitter or Facebook can't solve themselves.

These streamers are building their livelihood and businesses off of multiple platforms and have a number of needs that Twitch isn't likely to solve. How do I keep my community engaged when I'm not live-streaming on twitch? How do I work with brands and sponsors?

Since this is something new we're trying for the S16 batch, we'd love to hear feedback. Is there any information about the companies you'd like to see? Formats you'd like to see us try?

It would be interesting to also see YC's perspective on the idea/company/founders. Why did you choose to fund them?

slightly off-topic, but "amazeballs" is a terrible terrible word :-/

on-topic: Why did you only include one company in this post? Are you going to reveal one daily or something?

(For context, neither YC nor any YC Company chose that word. It was a word used by a famous Twitch user to describe her "currency")

Thanks. I am getting old as I can measure by how far away I am from the gaming community now - which gaming is what got me into computers and the industry....

A 'famous' twitch user? Like Beyonce? I'm out of it, but I'm not sure Twitch itself is 'famous'.

from the article: "From now until Demo Day, Meet the Batch will publish profiles of our S16 companies and founders..."

Correct! We'll post a couple each week for the next few weeks. But once the batch starts (June 7) we'll post daily.

For once, list all the companies so we can do a quick overview of the entire batch.

We let companies decide when they want to announce YC funding - so we can't publish a full batch list until after Demo Day, but that's a good suggestion. We're actually planning to publish a full list of on-the-record YC companies soon. People have been relying on inaccurate sources like yclist.com to figure out who we've funded.

> People have been relying on inaccurate sources like yclist.com to figure out who we've funded.

The one time I emailed the yclist.com maintainer with a correction, he made the change within fifteen minutes.

Good, good. That's what my concern was. I suggest a simple format: each company's name, brief description of what they're doing, and link to more thorough description. The thorough description can be a page or a HN thread as in recent contests so founders can answer questions. Many of us just prefer to be able to get quick info at a glance to filter out what doesn't interest us.

We've yet to see what the format will look like when there's another startup added to the "Meet the Batch" section, but I'd recommend a table-like format that lets you easily digest the key details: Order of acceptance, category, availability, site, # of founders, etc.

Thanks. And what do you mean by "order of acceptance"?

I assume that means at what stage in this batch was the company selected, i.e. they were #1/25. I don't know how relevant that metric is though.

Correct. I find it relevant because it shows you if new ones were added since you last checked. I'd like to keep up with these postings but might miss one. Having them organized in one place in the order that they were selected makes logical sense.

a link to their website would be nice.

If you view it on desktop, there's a sidebar with more info

I do like the idea of Revlo. However could it be fair to consider Revlo a missing feature of Twitch? If Twitch bring out their own similar program I imagine it would spell bad news.

Secondly, is there any possibility Twitch would not like Revlo in that it might be increasing the number of people who leave Twitch running in the background but never watch it?

Also, is it fair to say you may be incentivising people to stream multiple times with multiple accounts to rack up the points and have a much better chance of winning the prize draws? My experience is prizes don't have to be that valuable for people to make big efforts to game it!

To answer your first point, you could argue that but the reality for Twitch is that they may not possess the bandwidth to build it themselves.

That's not to say that they aren't smart enough, or don't have the money, or don't possess some sort of hard skill or item that would let them do it. It's the nature of successful companies to focus on their core competencies and Twitch may consider it not worth the risk of distracting themselves. If it picks up traction, they will go to Revlo and look to invest/obtain warrants in the business. If it's even more successful, they'll try to acquire it and then they'll have the solution without all the risk.

This dynamic is played out in a lot of industries and is hardly a reason to not pursue this idea.

There's definitely some overlap between what Twitch would want to do and us, but we've found that most streamers also need to interact and engage their fans on other platforms as well (Discord, Youtube, Twitter, Facebook etc). We're exploring how we can help these streamers interact in all communities.

We're definitely monitoring the different ways that people may look to abuse the system, afk, multiple channels etc. Our long-term plan to combat this is to introduce more points into a creator's economy through interaction. By participating in contests, trivia, or someone's Discord community you can accumulate more points than just leaving it running in the background.

This is a cool format. I look forward to the coming profiles.

I feel like if I had a startup in the batch the bio for me would read like .. "normal guy trying his best". Makes me think I would never be suited for stuff like this.

Not to take anything away from this team, but one of the few points of one of the cofounders bios is the size of his bookshelf in minecraft...

Still an interesting fact. I am terrible at self assessment.

Is there a list of these somewhere with all the names, brief descriptions, and links in one place?

Since there are so many in this batch it seems like a good idea. I'm curious though; what happens to the companies that pivot? It seems like we hear stories from YC batches constantly where their original idea almost worked or maybe just never worked and they pivoted sometimes by a huge margin by the end. So the founder profiles for the first half of companies may be very wrong by the time demo day comes around.

Will there be updating? Will this be a permanent page where, 5 years from now, someone can see each batch from S16?

I like the idea and look forward to hearing about the companies outside of TechCrunch articles (not that there is anything wrong with that but like variety).

One interesting thing that will come out of this for some of us is that we will be able to see the number of founders for each company. I know it is said there are some solo-founders but I've never seen it said how many are in each batch.

Why is there no Revlo shirt for Julie? I'd also like to know a bit more about what James actually did at the non-profit. I'm assuming some sort of customer development/sales/acquisition as that skill is lacking from the description of the other two. If so that seems like a pretty interesting and balanced team.

Hey Kriro! We didn't know there was going to be a photo taken and Adam & I just happened to wear the same shirt haha. For the skill sets, you are right. I've done a couple of BD internships in the valley, and for the non-profit, I helped with planning, recruiting and fundraising!

Maybe I missed it, but was a list release providing the name, URL, etc. of the YC S16 batch?

If not, why? If so, anyone have a link to it?

There is no such list and won't be.

YC allows companies to choose when they announce their acceptance. It holds some press value, so may as well be used strategically. Transparency here is interesting to the community, but left up to the company founders as to when they want to go public.

This list appears to be unofficial, but pretty good:

http://yclist.com

I really liked the post on Revlo, which I agree it's the link I'd expect to see here.

Personally, I'd be also interested about the founders relation before starting the company, i.e. yc question on how did the founder meet.

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