Companies that launched at YC’s W19 Demo Day 2 | Hacker News Reader

Companies that launched at YC’s W19 Demo Day 2

techcrunch.com

57 pointsclioharp27 comments

I'd be curious to read some coverage of what some of these companies achieved during yc. What they had coming in, what did they work on, manage get done, etc... Writing software, getting customers..

For example: "Withfriends: Membership programs for small businesses like bars, theaters, and barbershops. So far they have 80 small businesses on the platform, with over 5000 members*

How much of this was achieved during YC. Were they writing code in a flat? Selling businesses door-2-door? Did they have product and get the customers? Both? Neither?

Generally investors tend to care more about growth (especially the second derivative), so whenever I see only a zero’th order datapoint, I’m skeptical and wary of strategic omission.

Allure feels borderline dishonest to me. Clothes are mostly designed to fit perfectly on models. If you warp images of models onto other body shapes, I think you'll get images of clothes which fit perfectly on those other bodies.

The actual article of clothing probably won't fit perfectly though. Taking pictures of the larger sizes is a sort of proof of work that they can look good on at least one real person that size.

I don't know, this particular use case feels acceptable-ish to me. I suspect other versions of "ML-powered advertising doesn't necessarily match meatspace product delivered" will be seriously annoying in the future though.

>increasing shopping conversion rates by 14 percent

To your point on fit, I suspect the 14% conversion rate they're claiming isn't accounting for what could be a material return rate.

How is a company like Allure an acceptable entrant? The fashion industry already falsifies clothing fitment by photographing tailored clothing on extremely attractive people. When you buy the same clothes, they don’t fit like they do in the photo, and you definitely don’t look like the model in the image.

Seems super scummy.

YC has funded scummy companies before. InstallMonetizer comes to mind.

In their defense, I don't think YC claims to not find scummy shit. To me it seems that they have a moral compass comparable most financial institutions, i.e. none.

> Qwest: Lets people pay money to skip lines at venues like clubs and bars. They’re currently at 10 venues in 2 cities, and say they should be at 100 venues in 6 cities this year. They aim to expand to events like music festivals and sporting events.

Aren't most lines created deliberately for security reasons? Like: crowd control, maximum number of visitors, metal detectors, luggage checks, etc.

I can imagine that some clubs deliberately create lines outside to give the impression of popularity and exclusivity. But for any other situation it is of economic interest to the owner to keep lines as short as possible (visitors can't spend money while in the line).

What I'm trying to get to is: I don't get why any event organiser or bar owner would want this.

You pay money to skip the line. So, the event organizer gets money, plus gets a pre-qualified lead. You know that someone who pays $20 to get into club is more likely to spend money on alcohol than someone who waits in line for an hour to get in for free.

Most places in NYC with a line + bouncer situation you can usually slip them a $20 or something and skip the line anyway. So I guess this is a way to put control of this kind of situation in the hands of the venue itself.

I actually consulted briefly with a company that tried to do what Qwest is doing.

Popular bars and clubs have lines out front for a variety of reasons. It exists, and while "we're at capacity" is one reason, its not the only reason.

The issue they encountered was that right now, "skipping the line" is something you pay the bouncer to do in cash. They're also the ones you have to convince to use this app. But you're asking them to use an app that kills that revenue stream for them, it transfers all that $ to the club owner instead. So bouncers would only half use it, or "forget" to use it, or quit and go to another club.

Maybe offer commission to bouncers to encourage them to "sell" the crowd on paid line skipping. Their earnings per person would be lower, but volume would likely be higher since I suspect more people would be willing to pay through an app when prompted rather than taking the initiative to grease a bouncer with cash.

Perhaps. The company I helped out built out rev share as well as other things to help encourage bouncers to use the app, like a shared capacity counter so that multiple bouncers on multiple doors (maybe one person doing an "in" door and someone else on an "out" door around the corner) could keep an accurate capacity count. Was still a tough sales problem. Had to sell the club owner, had to sell the bouncers, and then had to reach and sell the club-goers.

FWIW the company closed down because they couldn't solve the business problem.

Edit: This is also a concept I've seen at like Startup Weekends before. IMO for Qwest to make this work, they need some really strong business connections or a really fresh take on it, which they may have.

Could solve the problems you're describing by charging people to move to the front of the line rather than charging for immediate entry. Could even have people bid for next entry to encourage competition.

I'm really curious to see how their pharmaceutical/medical bets play out.

This is a space that's very competitive with low R&D returns that seems outside YC's previous domains. I think it will be rougher than they thought breaking into it, but if they can prove out a better funding model for pharmaceutical development that could have a huge impact.

I really like some if the companies this year specifically those with a social aspect. Wish there was a YC fund that average people could invest in. It would give a real opportunity to vote with money for more socially relevant companies at early stages instead of waiting for them on the stock exchanges

How is it OK for a company to be named "Woke"?

Isn't that the past tense of wake?

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

I'm not drawing conclusions, but I do want to point you to the end of the link you provided:

From Wiki: By the mid 2010s, woke had been adopted as a more generic slang term and has been the subject of memes and ironic usage.[10] For example, MTV News identified it as a key teen slang word for 2016.[16] In The New York Times Magazine, Amanda Hess raised concerns that the word has been culturally appropriated, writing, "The conundrum is built in. When white people aspire to get points for consciousness, they walk right into the cross hairs between allyship and appropriation."[12]

I'm not clear on what you want me to get from that passage. I think the word is too culturally loaded. It seems like the kind of potential problem one would avoid when naming a company or creating a brand.

That the word seems to have multiple meanings to multiple people. This particular team may not have thought about the word the way you (and others) did.

I also recognize the parallels between this and say, a confederate flag. Some people in the deep south truly believe that it is not racist. But... the vast majority of people in the US believe it is a racist symbol.

You don't want your company name to be the equivalent of that. IMO, they should probably revist and rename. More to your point, if I named a company, I'd probably google the name a few times which would reveal the other possible meanings.

Seems tasteless, especially for a company that doesn't do anything related to social justice.

Pet peeve: if you use the first sentence or two of your elevator pitch to tell me what college you went to, you’re doing it wrong.

> Launched by a pair of Stanford grads, the startup helps teachers create tailored lesson plans by sending short quizzes to groups of students to figure out the best lesson plans for those students. In the last four weeks, 2,500 students have received lessons from Tailor-ED. Operating under a freemium model, the company says they are targeting a $1.5 billion market.

Its an education startup with students as users

It's TechCrunch's reporting of them. They're not telling you - TechCrunch are. I don't know if that was their elevator pitch or from some other information.

While that is true, the paragraph is a paraphrase of their demo day pitch.

It's no different than applying to a startup and mentioning what other startups you've worked for. It's all a boys club (figuratively speaking, not literally)

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