YC W17 Launch: Hogaru, Elemeno Health, Playment, Hivy, and Bulk MRO | Hacker News Reader

YC W17 Launch: Hogaru, Elemeno Health, Playment, Hivy, and Bulk MRO

blog.ycombinator.com

32 pointscraigcannon5 comments

Curious how a cleaning company (Hogaru) basically identical to Homejoy that shut down and failed can simply focus on another market (country) and still get into YC? If it doesn't work in the US (arguably the best market in the world), what conditions make it more likely to succeed in South America?

FYI, I spent 2 months in Chile as a digital nomad, and quite honestly most people in South America don't have a lot of disposable income. House cleaning is definitely a luxury item there, way less common than the US.

There is also a German startup Helpling doing the exact thing for the German market (which in my opinion is a better market). https://www.helpling.de

The world will not be accommodating to startups associated with an organization with obvious bad ethics. Thiel helped get a fascist into office. AirBnb is complicit in eviction. This is less political than business advice for anyone. The US brand is very tainted, the SV brand more tainted, the YC brand most tainted.

Isn't Playment a direct competitor to another YC company, ScaleAPI? How often does YC invest in competitors?

Interesting to see more focus on non-American markets in this batch.

I think this has been a trend over the last few batches. PG has a tweet in early 2015 (?) where he said something like "Interesting how many YC founders in the latest batch are international. We may have reached a tipping point."

Makes sense, we're in-between technology cycles here in Silicon Valley, and so until the next big paradigm is invented, much of the many will be made through diffusion of existing technology to new markets. Some of that may come through application to domestic industries that have historically been slow on the technology uptake (eg. Elemeno, Hivy), and much of it will be abroad (Hogaru, Bulk MRO).

Reply on news.ycombinator.com