Launch YC S21: Meet the Batch, Thread #8 | Hacker News Reader

Launch YC S21: Meet the Batch, Thread #8

97 pointsdang145 comments

Here's another batch of S21 startups for you all. The previous thread was https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28209928. The original description is at https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27877280.

There are 6 startups in this thread. The initial order is random:

AlgoUniversity (YC S21) - Job-driven virtual education hub for engineering students - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28233917

Enerjazz (YC S21) - Battery swapping stations for EVs and e-rickshaws - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28233919

Astek Diagnostics (YC S21) - Determine antibiotic treatment in one hour - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28233918

DigiBuild (YC S21) - Construction software powered by blockchain - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28233920

Karbon Card (YC S21) - Corporate credit cards for Indian Startups and SMBs - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28233924

Sequin (YC S21) - Debit card that builds credit for women - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28233922

View on HN

Hi, I'm Vrinda Gupta. I worked at Visa Inc. for years, launching popular credit cards. But when I applied for the Chase Sapphire Reserve (the credit card I helped develop), I was rejected! I'm now the CEO and Co-Founder of Sequin, a debit card that builds credit for women risk-free with no credit history required. My co-founder, Mark Thomas, spent over a decade at PayPal leading ACH products in various EM roles.

I was rejected from the credit card I helped launch because, despite having a high income, I lacked credit history. I had been using my debit card and was an authorized user on my dad's card - neither of which was building my personal credit history.

I saw in Visa data that 70% of women's spend (concentrated around young women), was similarly on debit or cards in other people's names. As a result, women were disproportionately being rejected by credit cards or getting lower limits and higher interested rates - even though we are shown to be better to lend to. Young women have the largest spending power of any demographic in history, yet there is a clear gender gap in financial services. We're leveling the playing field.

Our first product, the Sequin Card is the first debit card that builds credit for women. Unlike traditional debit cards (which do not build credit), Sequin fronts the money for purchases in the background and repays ourselves automatically from a linked bank account daily. We then report repayment history to credit bureaus - and voila, you're building credit.

Sequin users are primarily young women who are new to the workforce, and are looking to establish or build credit more effectively (towards a higher value credit card). Soon, we'll launch our own suite of credit cards geared towards women with smarter underwriting, targeted rewards, and safer repayment options.

Anyone can apply for Sequin - we designed the product to center women's financial needs (for the first time in history - women could be denied a credit card without a male co-signer until 1974)!

Looking forward to your comments!

Me and most of my friends had credit cards when we were in grad school. Amex had that student blue card issued. Most of my cohort used that card to build credit and move on to better cards. Universities also have a student union which issues credit card to students. Is this not the target market for this card?

Young women are less likely to sign up for those products or be pre-approved (b/c lowest financial literacy levels and thus,lower awareness of products). Target market is young professional woman who missed these opportunities to build credit early.

Congratulations! This sounds very exciting. I've heard about the inequality in financial products but didn't really understand why, thanks for the explanation of this particular bit.

I could imagine that this is a problem that women may not realise until it's "too late" – when they get to opening that credit card or applying for a mortgage. While Sequin would help address that situation if used in advance, is there anything that can be done at the point that it's already too late?

That's exactly what we're trying to solve here with Sequin. We're targeting young professional women / new grads to address the problem at the source.

Really cool! What's the biggest differentiator between Sequin and a secured credit card? Me and my wife used the latter as the first step to help build our credit history...but admittedly the limit was small.

Secured cards have high deposits ($200+) and can still get you into debt if you don't pay back / pay min / pay late - affects women more than men.

> can still get you into debt if you don't pay back / pay min / pay late

How exactly is your card different? Is there no obligation to make payments? If so, how many cards can I open?

We connect to your existing bank account and make the payments automatically to build credit. Traditional debit cards do not do this.

That is exactly what debit cards do. When you make a purchase the money is withdrawn from your account.

The only novel thing here is you are deceiving the processing networks by claiming your debit card is a credit card. My credit union tried to do the same thing many years ago (as a way to build credit for students) and it eventually got caught by the processing networks and recategorized. Within a month or two it dropped off everyone's credit reports and they were back to square one.

Sequin fronts the money to the merchant and pays ourselves back automatically from a connected bank account (unlike traditional debit cards).

We are an official Visa partner and deal directly with credit bureaus.

From my reading, you're spending your own money, but to the credit tracking side, it looks like you're spending on credit and paying it back without incurring a fee. Clever idea, as long as the credit system continues to work like this.

> I was rejected from the credit card I helped launch because, despite having a high income, I lacked credit history.

This happened to me. I got a job in Petaluma, CA where I was rejected for internet service because my credit history was "Unknown risk", i.e. I had no credit history. I was in my early 20's.

It was kind of a bummer to hear that this product is only for women, but seeing as it was a bummer to be a woman for most of history, I can hardly complain. :)

Best of luck! Looking forward to seeing where this goes.

Thanks for sharing your experience! We designed Sequin with women in mind but it's open to anyone to sign up.

Another use case where this is potentially useful: relocation. I've been rejected for financial things before after international moves, since I have no credit history _in that place_. Income? Doesn't matter. Previous history elsewhere? Doesn't matter.

This is _also_ an issue for self-employed people, contract workers, or...well, basically anyone who doesn't fit the "I stayed in one place and work full-time" mould.

Yes! Great point.

Well gee... there should be a passport depository box for workers who go to a foreign country to work but are robbed of their passports and forced into slave labor.

What a great idea!

Why aren't debit cards normally hooked into the credit history system?

We built a credit reporting engine on top of a traditional debit card. Traditional debit cards are meant to access your checking account directly.

I'm the case of identity theft/card #theft, credit cards provide limited liability, while debit cards do not, at least in the USA. How do you plan on protecting your customers if they want to use the card for on-line purchases and are therefore exposed to this risk? Or can you even us debit cards for online purchases?

You can use Sequin anywhere Visa is accepted (online, offline, etc). A cool feature is, you can actually set your daily limit on the card which protects against fraud - over traditional debit and even credit.

When you report, what are you saying the credit limit is? Utilization is a huge factor in your credit score and you technically don't have a credit limit for this product.

We actively decided not to report credit utilization, as it was hurting women's credit more than helping (lower limits = higher utilization).

> Our first product, the Sequin Card is the first debit card that builds credit for women

Serious question ... why only women?

I know you list reasons such as "women were disproportionately being rejected by credit cards", but at the end of the day isn't this something that can help out anyone?

I'm curious why you are throwing out 50% of your potential customer base. I don't fully understand what a "credit card for women" is ... are you going to come up with clone targeted under a different name towards males?

Because this product doesn’t seem to be doing anything different and the only way they can get buyers it is to try to proclaim that the service is made specifically for “insert underserved group here”.

It’s a common trend with startups being accepted into YC nowadays.

I don’t usually downvote comments, but this one is a combination of hubris (what are the chances you know better than YC plus the founders?) and snark (“common trend with YC startups…”).

The trouble is, you might be right! Maybe it is a trend. But if you phrase it as a question, it has a higher chance of being a substantive observation rather than a middlebrow dismissal.

I used to do the same thing. Habits can change; I found it worthwhile to try.

All that matters is whether the startup can grow. If these tactics lead to growth, can they be called mistaken?

I had the same thought, but (a) it’s open to everyone, (b) no one minds when Axe makes a deodorant specifically for men, and (c) it’s better to focus on a small group of customers that love you than a large group that might mildly like you.

I'll answer here. :)

Banks spend 13x more advertising to men than women. Young women have the largest spending power of any demographic ever - this is a seismic shift in the market.

Credit card rewards target where men are spending 60% more of the time, versus where women are spending 60% more (and control 85% of GDP).

Wow, those numbers are fascinating. I'd love to see the sources if you have them, so I can read up on the topic more.

Cool startup! I like the name. In my locale, “sekin” is slang for money.

That was the origin of the name!

This is wild! I had no idea such discrimination existed, though on reflection, my partner has had quite a hard time building her credit for not too dissimilar reasons. Congratulations on the launch.

Thanks! The opportunity to evangelize the mission with Sequin is one of the coolest (and most challenging) bits.

Congrats on launching. Seems the differentiating utility of your product is moreso about being marketed to vs built for young women? I.e. there isn't necessarily any product feature specific to female users but crucial effort is required to build effective channels to reach them.

So, I assume your sales/market building process will be more front loaded with an info campaign, due to many being unaware of how they're underserved/under-rewarded relative to their spending power and also per lower levels of financial literacy and product awareness that you cited below.

Awareness is a key piece, yes - however, they product is designed for women in a few key ways: 1) women are putting 70% of spend on debit cards which don't build credit, this is a debit card that gives them the same control, but builds credit.; 2) women are more likely to make avoidable credit mistakes - this is a risk free, interest free product;3) credit scoring - we don't report credit utilization which disproportionately impacts women's credit histories.

I wouldn’t have expected a need for a “gendered” debit card - it’s pretty crazy that young women are so disproportionately “behind” in building their credit. I will admit I fell in that category a few years ago (didn’t get a credit card until a few months before I graduated college) and I’m still regretting waiting so long to start building credit. I hope you can help other young women not make my mistake!

That's the hope!

Love this idea! Have felt the problem myself and have seen my mother/MIL/wife struggle with the same thing.

It's clear that you both have extensive experience in the space, too.

How can I help / get involved? :-)

Spread the word, www.sequincard.com!

>I saw in Visa data that 70% of women's spend (concentrated around young women), was similarly on debit or cards in other people's names

That's so odd. Studies on this outcome would be interesting.

Love the mission! It's also such a glaring light on how broken and stupid the credit system is.

Would you please contextualize your product against Apple Card Family?

Congrats on launching. I appreciate the mission you're on and bonus points for keeping it open to everyone!

Hi HN, we're Ravi and Pratik of Enerjazz (https://www.enerjazz.tech/). We make battery swapping stations (like gasoline stations) for electric vehicles, swapping discharged batteries with charged batteries in 2 minutes for light commercial EVs.

Commercial EVs or electric rickshaws have 2 pain points. One high upfront cost of battery (can be up to 50% of the total cost of vehicle). Two, high charging downtime resulting in loss of revenue.

While working as an analyst covering renewable energy developments at Shell, I (Ravi) came to the conclusion that anything that makes energy storage more affordable will have the most impact in the next couple of decades. That simple thought is how the idea of Enerjazz was born. Pratik is an expert in lithium-ion batteries (PhD from German aerospace center). In 2017, we moved from Europe to India to work on developing a battery for storing solar energy.

One day, we were walking back to our office after having lunch at a restaurant. We saw an e-rickshaw get on a footpath and drive into a narrow lane. We followed the driver and found that there were more than 20 e-rickshaws charging there in an open area. All of those e-rickshaws had lead acid batteries. On talking to the drivers, we realized the pain they had was far greater than the pain of storing solar energy. We started talking to e-rickshaw drivers every day after lunch and decided to do something about it. We started with making affordable lithium-ion batteries for e-rickshaws. Since we joined YC in June, we have done more than 2,500 battery swaps.

We enable e-rickshaw drivers to increase their earnings by 80% because their downtime effectively becomes zero. We require just a 70 dollar refundable deposit (cheaper than lead acid battery) for e-rickshaw drivers. We also have a patent-pending technology that reduces the cost of lithium-ion batteries by 50%. The technology is already proven as Enerjazz batteries have completed 4M+ kilometers.

We look forward to your feedback!

Good idea, and extra credits for not being another software and services platform. India needs more companies who actually build/manufacture, will be rooting for you.

Thank you so much. Unlike a traditional manufacturing company, we are going to be asset light though which will enable us to grow fast.

We started Enerjazz with the simple goal of solving our customer's problems. We kept talking to customers just like what YC recommends. After living for many years in Amsterdam, I often had to go to many e-rickshaw driver houses in renowned ghettos (godforsaken places) of Noida to fix their chargers in the early days. This is because they did not have proper charging infrastructure and their chargers will often go bad. With swapping, we also address this issue of bad quality power access to e-rickshaw drivers.

Super cool! I’m always super skeptical of people claiming battery improvements. Is the benefit more of the lithium ion to lead acid switch? Or swapping batteries between use? Keep up the good work. I’d love to see videos of the e-Rick shaws.

You mean another start-up by another professor in another university on another battery chemistry :). we get that a lot. You are spot on. Almost 96% of 2M e-rickshaws in India still run on lead acid battery (because of lower upfront cost). The only way to switch them to better tech (lithium-ion) is by making it more affordable for them.

Yeah, everything here sounds great except for "We also have a patent-pending technology that reduces the cost of lithium-ion batteries by 50%." That's a huge claim, which would immediately be many times more valuable than your swapping business. Is this cost reduction perhaps just vs. small-volume retail prices, in India, for specific battery formats, or some other reasonable limitation?

Even with half cost, we are more expensive than lead acid batteries. Typically lithium ion batteries are three times in price compared to lead acid batteries. Erickshaw drivers are very cost sensitive to upfront battery cost. We wanted to give them the most affordable battery solution.

Sure, but if you can reduce the cost of lithium-ion batteries by 50% in general, why are you not just licensing that technology to Tesla and others for gigabucks? Or is your cost reduction quite specific to the batteries that eRickshaw drivers need for some reason?

We will get into electric scooters soon. Focussed on commercial delivery scooter (like for Zomato and swiggy) initially.

So are you able to reduce the cost of a lithium battery by 50% or not? And if so, why are you not just licensing the technology to Tesla?

I apologize. I am not able to share much details on that part as our patent is still pending. Would be happy to do another launch once our patent is granted.

Very cool. Are you working with electric scooters as well? Ola recently launched electric scooters and have heard that the battery is not swappable on that.

Thank you so much. We are only working with e-rickshaws at the moment but plan to take the model to electric scooters (Zomato/Swiggy delivery fleets) soon. We believe commercial EVs will be the first ones to adopt swapping because they loose revenue when they have to charge in the day time.

$70 < [cost of lead-acid battery] < [cost of lithium-ion battery], so how often does a customer trade the deposit for a battery?

$70 is a refundable deposit they give us when they join us. They pay us per swap. We sometimes get customers who had their lead acid batteries stolen and who now have no money to buy a new battery. With us they pay as they earn.

What I was getting at was, if $70 is a lot less than a lithium-ion battery costs, do people just steal the batteries and give up the $70?

Great point. If erickshaw drivers steal the battery, we can remotely lock the battery. So these batteries will not charge or discharge and will essentially become useless. We also take documents (similar to social security in the us) from each customer before we onboard them.

Ah, that makes sense. Thanks.

Very good idea. Are you operating in the northeast part of india (Assam). I am from barpeta (781301) a small town in assam, india. Here charging is a big problem the ASEB electricity supply is not reliable. We sometime can not operate for battery. enerjazz can change our life.

Thank you. We are currently not in Assam. From what I understand, Assam has a decently good density of erickshaws as well. A couple of our employees come from there. We would love to launch there.

super amazing! as they say in south asia, mashallah!

i'm from pakistan, doing a phd in germany, back in pakistan we don't even have e-rickshaws. but godspeed to our indian brethren.

We got a lot of request from Nepal. There are hilly terrains there and batteries don't last many kilometers. We know Bangladesh has a lot of erickshaw as well. It will only be a matter of time that e-rickshaws are there in Pakistan. We started in Delhi because it is one of the most polluted cities in the world. 22 of the 30 most polluted cities are in South Asia.

Hi HN. My name is Mustafa Al-Adhami. I am the founder and CEO of Astek Diagnositcs Inc. (https://astekdx.com). We have a platform to determine antibiotic sensitivity in one hour.

Every year, 1.7 million Americans are evaluated for sepsis - and too many die while waiting days for the correct antibiotic. Imagine a one-day-old baby having to wait twice as long as they have been alive to receive accurate treatment. Or a cancer patient with bad immunity receiving 3 random antibiotics that might or might not work. This is a huge problem and I had an idea on how to fix it.

Every product in the market relies on identifying the bacteria to know what kills it. We thought, why care what the antibiotic is if you know what is killing it? We can do that by detecting the metabolic rate of the bacteria rather relying on phenotypic or genotypic methods--and, believe it or not, by mimicking the digestive system of mosquitoes.

I have a PhD in mechanical engineering with a focus on blood mechanics. Prior to my PhD I did customer discovery for 7 years. One day (my first day on a jet ski!) I got attacked by mosquitoes and had to rush home. The next day I went to the lab where I got bit by a mosquito again. I looked at the bite and noticed a sparkle on the bite spot. I looked it up and realized it was my blood plasma because mosquitoes urinate the plasma after digesting the red blood cells. This is exactly what I had been trying to do for years. I mimicked the digestive system of the mosquito and I got the missing piece of the product.

Astek’s first product will be the Eugris, a benchtop analyzer that can identify the presence of a bacterial infection in the blood and then perform antibiotic susceptibility testing (AST) of the bacterium in one hour. To accomplish this, a microfluidics device removes the blood cells from the plasma that would contain bacteria and adds resazurin, a fluorescence indicator. These steps take 25 minutes. In the presence of live bacteria, resazurin is reduced to resorufin, which is higher in fluorescence, by reacting with NADH, a ubiquitous intermediate in the metabolic process. The sample is monitored fluorometrically for 15 minutes, and metabolic activity is shown by an increase in fluorescence. The technique has been shown capable of detecting bacterial infection at a level of 10 CFU/mL (colony-forming-units). Antibiotic susceptibility can be assessed by incubating the plasma with antibiotics, where ineffective antibiotics fail to reduce metabolic activity while effective antibiotics diminish metabolic activity.

We have a prototype in testing in a clinical setting. Our initial target market will be clinical labs tasked with performing diagnostic tests for patients suspected of sepsis or septic shock. For these patients, rapid initiation of the correct antibiotic therapy is crucial: every hour of delay increases mortality by 7-8%. Currently, the gold standard for AST relies on blood culture, and takes 2-7 days to deliver results to the clinician. Most patients don't have that long.

Wow, very cool.

Thank you!

I love the mosquito story, your equivalent of Newton’s apple i guess!

Will this tell you what type of bacteria it is? Will it tell you for example if you have Limes disease? I think the current tests for that (at least available to me) aren’t too accurate.

It won't tell you what the bacteria exactly is. It only tells you whether it is a bacterial infection and what antibiotic you should use to treat it.

Are you familiar with Karius? They turnaround a diagnosis in a day (genomic). I could imagine both assays being run on the same sample.

Yes! Karius is great. They detect resistance genes to provide antibiotic sensitivity. We monitor the metabolic rate, that is how we do it faster.

Will hospitals be able to run your assay? If they have to send out to your lab then effectively it takes a lot longer to get a result.

We are selling our analyzer to clinical laboratories within hospitals. It is a very easy test to run using our cartridges.

real innovation saving lives. best of luck to you & your team

Thank you!

Congratulations.

Thank you!

Why did you go the YC route versus traditional biotech funding sources? And why did YC accept this versus “things that scale” like software?

YC has biotech mentors that I wanted to work with. I can't speak for why YC accepted us, but there at least 20 other biotech companies in my group.

This is super cool. I don't work in medicine but I understand that, in less cases than sepsis, testing often isn't done at all. I'm sure this leads to a lot of wrong or unnecessary prescriptions and increases antibiotic resistance in the population.

What you're making here is the kind of Star Trek medicine that can really improve lives for millions of people. Kudos!

What a neat story ! Congratulations and all the best Are you hiring ? :)

Thank you. We are currently not hiring. Are you in the DC area?

Hi, we’re Rob, April and Ivan, cofounders of DigiBuild (https://digibuild.com/). We build construction software powered by blockchain. Our tools help large companies, like VCC Construction, improve the schedule and budget on projects and save over a million dollars annually.

I grew up in construction with my dad and saw first hand the issues companies face everyday. The building process involves 50-100 stakeholders (ie. suppliers, contractors, architects) who suffer from low margins and work on projects that fail 70% of the time. Large builds create upwards of 750,000 documents. It is very complex and costly to manage them.

For every physical construction process that occurs, an “intangible asset” like a workflow or piece of data is created as well. Current software solutions offer some efficiency but fall short because they’re centralized databases or data silos with no transparency. From a risk management perspective, each construction stakeholder needs to review, verify, or otherwise build trust manually to make sure they’re protected (i.e. let me double check that document so I know you didn’t screw me over). The trust established with blockchain allows us to codify many of those processes and touch points, making them automated and giving more line of sight to construction teams. This is possible because unlike a centralized database, the blockchain is not owned/monopolized by any party and it is auditable so transactions can be verified by all the stakeholders. This meets their risk management requirements to do business.

We have multiple tools solving customer pain, including a construction management platform for managing any project workflow; a procurement product to find, order, and track building material; and a payment product to streamline the collection of payment documentation and disbursements. Without blockchain, these workflows involve suppliers, subcontractors, general contractors all sending contracts, invoices, and data sheets back and forth. This is manual trust-building which adds time, costs, and risk. Using smart contracts allows us to codify these processes, automating 90% of them for all of the parties and providing more transparency.

Our team has managed over $5B in construction projects. I’m also the former CEO of a nationwide construction company and our engineering team has worked on projects alongside Coinbase, IBM, Iota, and Linux.

We would love to hear from you and hear feedback. We’re especially excited to be challenged and to brainstorm around our use of blockchain in this market - we know HN has a wide spectrum of views on that, on both sides of the ledger!

Which blockchain did you use? If it's privately run, wouldn't this be the same as a centralized DB? And if a public chain, how did you encrypt the data? Thank you

Right now, our products are built using Hyperledger Fabric or R3 Corda. In the future, as public blockchains like Ethereum and Avalanche scale and become proven in business use cases, we will migrate over to them, becoming fully decentralized and utilizing a consensus mechanism like Proof of Stake or Gossip Networks. Short term, we needed to use enterprise blockchain that was proven in a business setting and doesn’t have scaling issues; our customers risk management needs dictated our decisions. Hyperledger Fabric and similar blockchains use a consensus called PBFT that serves our purpose of “trust minimization” needed to provide benefits to construction end users that can't be done in a system that has no trust.

A centralized database wouldn't work here because: 1)It is owned by 1 company, there is no transparency into what is happening with the data. Lack of immutability and provenance of data matters here. 2)Not auditable. No way to prove or verify the transactions without the database owner approving.

These issues prevent that centralized database from giving end users from both a behavioral and technical perspective.

+1 for chosing fabric

Consensus can be called Proof of Authority, established through negotiations. Highly scalable. This could be achieved without Fabric, or Blockchain, but Fabric has a lot of the common features needed for such a system anyhow.

Is the chain open source with permission-less validators?

We built on Hyperledger Fabric. I'll explain that piece in the question below......Users in our network can seamlessly become validators and also verify transactions or interact with the blockchain using a block explorer we've built out.

DigiProcure seems like it would be useful outside of the construction industry - really any manufacturer that has multiple stakeholders. Do you have any competitors in that product market?

We've heard that a few times. In the future, there definitely could be usage in other markets. Right now we're lazer focused on our construction customers though:)

Competitor wise there are 2 types: -Companies who still use pen and paper, email, spreadsheets or otherwise paper laden processes. -A few "generation 1" software solutions exist that are basically material market places that pair suppliers and contractors (Joyne, Agora, etc.).

We're different than those in that we do most of the work for the user.

Without blockchain, these workflows involve multiple companies all sending contracts, invoices, and data sheets back and forth. This is manual trust-building which adds cost and risk. Using smart contracts streamlines many of these processes and provides more transparency.

I think this is revolutionary though my guess is it will not please everyone.

Thanks! Yes we believe it is revolutionary as well. However, blockchain + construction is not the first use case you think of here and we know lots of companies have tried to slap blockchain on any use case.

It makes sense here though because The building process involves 50 dis-trusting stakeholders who suffer from low margins and work on projects that fail 70% of the time. They also create upwards of 750,000 documents which is complex and costly to manage. Companies on these projects send a lot of important information, and data to each other; blockchain creates a trusted digital environment that these companies can collaborate in.

> From a risk management perspective, each construction stakeholder needs to review, verify, or otherwise build trust manually to make sure they’re protected (i.e. let me double check that document so I know you didn’t screw me over).

Is fraud a common problem in construction?

Yes fraud or bad information is a $1 trillion dollar problem in construction globally.

General rule of thumb is that if there's high cash then there will be fraud.

From what I understand about blockchain, these databases are append-only, right? Meaning someone can't go back and alter the past entries? That kind of assurance could be really useful in this space.

Yes correct. The immutability and provenance of data are key characteristics that make blockchain useful here.

Thank you!

What happens if someone adds incorrect entries by accident or intentionally?

How do you ensure parity between the real world and the Blockchain?

you can build document versioning into a blockchain-backed protocol - I would assume that Digibuild have done this as documents can be both corrected and extended over time. The important factor being that the old version is not erased and thus you can see the history of the document, which could be beneficial.

But how do you know that what is on the Blockchain matches the real world?

This is the core to if a Blockchain can be trusted for anything which does not originate on the Blockchain.

By uploading said information you are claiming it is true. Whether other people believe it to be true depends on whether they trust you or otherwise have verified for themselves (which can also be asserted cryptographically).

No digital technology can solve epistemology and tell you what is true - but that's not the point, and blockchain applications are not unique in this.

> No digital technology can solve epistemology and tell you what is true

Exactly. So what is the point? Why is this better than GitHub?

I think a lot of companies, when talking about blockchain technology, really mean a merkle tree - distributed or not, with proof of stake/work or not. The whole point being to cryptographically prove things like chain of custody, who is asserting what facts etc. The benefit to such tools is transparency, which helps in low-trust environments.

I'm pretty sceptical of blockchain applications in general because it became one of the word examples of a technobabble buzzword, but in this case I can see the argument for it.

Thanks for the help you, you took the words out of my mouth haha......Per the question about a previous entry, a prior entry could always be cancelled out with a new entry. Remember business is still take place on the front end and the blockchain is a back end ledger to verify the data...In the real world, if you accidentally sent an incorrect contract and that metadata hit the ledger, the user would simply cancel the 1st contract and send a new one, this would append the ledger and one could see that a previous version was cancelled and a new contract sent. There are also ways to to verify version history as was mentioned in that previous comment.

> What happens if someone adds incorrect entries by accident or intentionally?

If you think about it, git is itself a block chain, and doesn't suffer from that issue.

This seems like a great idea.

I assume a forward looking city could hook directly into your apis to process things faster.

By fair housing will become the biggest issue in the next 50 years or so.

Would love to see case studies where your shown to reduce costs by a significant amount. Good luck !

Thanks!

Yes we definitely see a major use case in public projects which are notoriously wasteful and (sometimes) corrupt. Blockchain allows provenance of the data and the ability to have a better view of where the money goes. The audit capabilities are major benefit in situations like the one you describe....We're putting together some official case studies and we will share them. One of our clients is a billion dollar construction company that is using 2 of our products. They anticipate we will save them $1M+ this year as well as improving the budget and schedule outcome on their projects. Construction has over 150 typical workflows so the results here are significant.

I am excited to see this. I have been involved in both the physical and software side of large construction projects. This is an actual good use of a blockchain.

How will you respond when another vendor wants to participate in transactions? Is there a 3rd party API?

Yes we currently offer integrations into some of the current major software vendors out there so our tools can be utilized along side a customer's existing stack.... Our long term goal is that customers use DigiBuild across the board. But we needed a low friction way to let them try us on a smaller scale first. APIs like that do dilute the effectiveness of the blockchain a little bit, but the tech is still effective in removing uncertainty around information so it works.

Congrats on the launch! The idea is very attractive. Btw how do you solve the confidentiality problem where you have to put private data into public blockchain?

Thanks! And great question.... So we're currently built on Hyperledger Fabric which allows us to insert permissions to the data. So certain parties can't see the private data of others on a construction project that they shouldn't. When needed, we can guarantee the accuracy of data without exposing a customers. This means you know the data comes straight from the source and isn't tampered with but not the identity of the user.

In the future, if/when me migrate to a public chain, that functionality will be there as well with implementations like ZK Snarks and other zero knowledge proof solutions.

What is the purpose of putting the documents "in the blockchain"? If customers trust you, why not just build a normal database and put it there?

Instant valuation multiplier for the startup.

Quite the opposite in the current venture world. Proving blockchain is a key element because there have been so many bad use cases that slapped blockchain on and tried to raise (hello many ICOs). Might've been true a few years ago but now blockchain makes many skeptical.

Customers put trust in us to run the front end, but the verification layer of the blockchain is still maintained by a distributed consensus and we won't be able to tamper withthat. So there is still a small amount of trust with DigiBuild, but much less than any normal database....If DigiBuild died tomorrow, customers would lose the front end functionality but still have the previous data and protections around that data in place on the blockchain and they could interact with it via a block explorer. In the future we will look to fully decentralize once the market and technology (ETH, AVA,etc..) So not fully trustless but trust minimized which allows more efficient transactions between these parties.

That’s a great explanation. It’s why the DMV uses AWS QLDB to track vehicle ownership. I think data that is highly valuable and transactional, and/or highly contestable, is a great fit for blockchain/ledger storage. There’s business continuity elements at play as well. It will get more popular over time.

Congrats Ivan and team! Awesome to see.

-Tim from UIC

Hi HN, we are Manas, Swapnil and Sailesh, co-founders of AlgoUniversity (https://www.algouniversity.com/). We bridge the gap between the CS curriculum taught at universities in India and the skills that are required by the tech industry. We offer live classes, industry-relevant projects, and learning products that prepare students for software engineering jobs at top tech companies.

We started AlgoUniversity in our final year of college. Both Manas and I (Swapnil) were interested less in our academics and more in software engineering, products and things going around us. After securing internships/placements at Alphagrep and Apple respectively, we started working on side ideas/jobs. Manas taught a dozen students during college for interviews that helped them to land jobs, and realized that he could scale it. I had started working in an ed-tech startup where I was training students to get into Google through Google’s own program for these students called WTEF. After successfully placing 2 students at Google and helping the rest get offers from other tech companies like Microsoft, Gojek, Oracle etc., I realised that there was a gap between what edtech startups were doing and what could be achieved if proper focus were put on quality education, upskilling and first-principle problem solving. There is a better way to prepare for interviews and be a natural problem solver (and hence good at job) than mugging up GFG and Leetcode problems!

We went on to start AlgoUniversity, starting from one batch of 25 students last year from two tier II colleges in India, and achieved good placement results for our first batch: 100% placement, 21 LPA avg CTC (1.5x more than top universities in India), 3 people placed in Google, 3 getting Bytedance Intl offers. The international offers were big for us as students apart from tier 1 colleges in India don't have exposure to international jobs and their hiring process. We have now started to take in more students and multiple batches from this year onwards.

The thing that differentiates us from existing solutions in this space is our product-led approach: we have built a suite of microproducts that develop this problem solving attitude from scratch, simulate the actual interview experience and so on. We still have a lot to do in terms of scaling our teaching infrastructure to multiple batches, partnering with companies for hiring and hitting product-market fit. We have described some of our experiences here: https://www.algouniversity.com/blogdetail/, if anyone is interested.

Thanks for reading. We would love to hear your thoughts and experiences regarding the above, or finding jobs or interview prep or hiring candidates. We are also live on https://www.algouniversity.com. Please share your feedback with us!

Congrats guys!! AlgoUniversity is great!

Thanks Aditya :)

Hi HN! We are a rather unusual team of six founders (Pei, Amit, Sunil, Jack, Bo, and Kartik) spread across India and China, building Karbon Cards (https://www.karboncard.com/). We help companies in India get instant access to a corporate card.

We came across this problem separately while Amit was doing VC and Sunil was running his own fintech. We saw that a startup with $1M in the bank was facing mind-numbing issues in getting a card with a $5k limit. After speaking to finance managers in other companies of all ages and sizes, we realized the problem was massive. Seeing Brex at the same time growing so quickly gave us the kick to go out and figure out a way to solve this issue.

Before Karbon card, our customers were either using personal cards for company's card expenses or put a fixed deposit at a bank to get an equivalent credit limit on a card. Both options are painful in the long run: using personal cards leads to compliance issues, and putting a fixed deposit for a card locks your growth capital. Since we are a free product (we make money on interchange fees) and onboarding is simple, it is better to get a no-hassle corporate card from us.

Today we have a solution wherein a company completes a 10 minute application process and gets access to a virtual credit card right away. We are known across India’s startup community for quick card issuance (10 minutes vs 5 weeks), 10x higher credit limits compared to banks, and self-serve controls that help reign in unnecessary spending. We’ve also launched a vendor payment product that makes banking less cumbersome moving towards our longer term vision of becoming the only financial product a company would need to run it’s business aka India’s first corporate Neo bank.

Companies today use our product to run their marketing campaigns, infrastructure spends, pay SaaS vendors and take care of employee reimbursements. We work with clients who are as young as 2 weeks old to publicly listed companies in India. That alone shows the depth of the problem and the need for a company like us to help make corporate spending easier--it is the last thing a company should be blocked on.

Some of our customers are creatively using our card in ways that we have not even imagined. Our customer, Rajat, runs a marketing agency, and he issued himself 120 Karbon cards. He gave these cards to his clients and asked them to top up their cards to run Facebook ads. Another customer, Akshay, uses his card and payment product to process salaries and make vendor payments.

Please share your thoughts and questions and comments!

Me and my current co-founder did face this issues or atleast were discussing about this issues. It is a big problem. Also, problem is india is just simply incorporating a company.

It becomes even more difficult when both the founders do not live in India. Relevant problem, huge market. Good luck! We will probably be a customer if you guys execute well. One of the things that I love about brex and if you could replicate would set you apart is customer experience. If you build some very customer centric that would completely change the game.

Thank you for your valuable feedback.

It is difficult to incorporate a company in India, especially if you need it to make a subsidiary of an Indian company.

We are planning to add bank accounts in the near future. Our existing customers use virtual bank accounts accounts to transfer salaries and vendor payments. https://karboncard.freshdesk.com/support/solutions/articles/...

In terms of our approach to customers, we are customer centric, and we try our best to get fast refunds and resolve transaction issues ASAP. We have used our test cards to do transactions on customer's behalf.

When you need a card for an Indian company, do let us know at support@karboncard.com. We will get you the card on the same day, and you would love the experience.

why do you want to incorporate in india?does your product has some regulatory requirement?(fintech/govt. sector) otherwise you can sell your products/services in india from whereever it is easier for you to incorporate or i am missing something?

As of now, we can only offer our product to Indian companies. This is a regulatory requirement for corporate cards.

This looks great.

I run single person company (proprietorship), do you think KarbonCard can help me in running my business in any way? or it is designed for bigger companies?

We have a number of proprietorship as customers, and they like us. They use our card for digital marketing spends, SAS payments, and telecom payments. Few of our customers do not want to put their main bank's debit card on online portals, and they prefer to put our cards as it comes with numerous controls.

Since our card is free of cost, there is nothing to lose and everything to gain.

If you do not have a CIN, please enter your GST number in the field.

Below are the steps to apply for the card. https://karboncard.freshdesk.com/support/solutions/articles/...

If you face issues, do reach us via email at support@karboncard.com or via whatsapp at 828-756-9687.

I believe, Kodo[1] is also another YC Company doing something similar - Brex for India.

1. https://www.kodo.in

That is correct. The problem and market is there for them and other players to take.

Do let us know what you think of us. We would love to provide Karbon card to your company - https://valinor.earth/ .

One of things I noticed that you guys have 6 founders. Could you elaborate a bit on that, how do you manage the role, segregate responsibilities and manage conflicts if any. I am asking just out of curiosity. I have noticed that in Indian start up you generally find alot of founder for eg. Housing.com

Assigning Roles is not so hard, as there are so many hats to wear when you are a founder - Operations, Sales, Account Management, Product, Lead Generation, Tech, and Investor relations.

Since we are six guys, we bring multiple ideas on the table, and sometimes it is hard to choose the right one for the company. Like every company, we manage conflicts.

I think we would see more than two cofounders in Indian companies, as companies mature. Deepinder from Zomato promoted multiple folks as cofounders at the later stage of the company. https://economictimes.indiatimes.com/tech/startups/zomato-ap...

Congrats Amit and Team on launch. I think vision is good. Are you repeat founders? Since you have 6 founders from different countries, do you think this may cause conflict in future while scaling? What are your thoughts?

Are you guys located in US/India and China?

Yes, a couple of Karbon founders are repeat founders.

3 founders are from India, and 3 are from China. It is not easy to launch a fintech product in China, but we would be able to overcome that since half the team is in China.

How’re you handling the MasterCard suspension? Are you able to onboard new accounts now?

Hello Sudhir. We recently switched to VISA, and we are giving VISA cards to our new customers. Life is good !

Based on a quick glance at the name, I guessed your company sold some kind of carbon offset credits.

My cofounder, Amit, came up with the name Karbon (Carbon)- the basic element of organic matter or life.

We give minimum of 0.5% cashback of prepaid cards, and one of our customers suggested us to donate that cashback to charities. I liked your idea of carbon offset credits. It is something we could consider doing in later stages of our company.

I currently use open.money to manage our startup. What's your pitch to move to Karbon? Also, none of the virtual cards worked with AWS. Have you checked if your cards work with AWS?

Hello Sagar,

Our cards work on AWS. On monthly basis, our cards process around Rs. 5 Crores worth of transactions on AWS. Plus, your company might qualify for flat 2% discount on your AWS bills.

There are other features as well that you would love when you switch to Karbon. Unlike other companies, we are focused on cards, and our cards are the best in the industry.

Send an email with your coordinates ( email and phone number ) to sales@karboncard.com, and we can then share additional details with you.

Congratulations! Could you tell me what has been the most challenging part of operating in Indian Fintech ecosystem?

The most challenging part in the beginning is finding a good partner bank.

Once you found a banking partner, you need to win trust of your potential customers, as customers only want to work with trusted financial entities even when you are giving credit.

Once the above two issues are sorted, the compliance issues drown fintech startups. There is always something new one needs to do every month.

I'm curious what the recent data is on the success of YC companies - beyond raising large seed rounds. How are YC co's doing at the growth stage now, vs early batches.

I too am curious about this.

I imagine those at growth stage would comprise a refined batch of investment opportunities.

And perhaps also serve as good business case studies for Stanford et al.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com