Secondly because so many of them now feels like "X for Y". Or just X in a new geography.
On the other hand, while I don't think it's bad enough for YC to suffer massively, they have presumably been helped in the past by having a strong following of techy people who just like YC and who assume that a startup funded by them is likely to be interesting. Will they lose that reputation, and if so will it matter to how successful they are? I've no idea, but it's not impossible.
The OP only said it seems that YC companies became less interesting over the years.
> MadEats is an online ghost kitchen food delivery service in the Philippines
That to me is nothing new, just a way to kill my local restaurants.
> An online store builder that claims to have a setup process 10x faster than Shopify.
Might be a cash cow and useful, but nothing exciting, eessentially Shopify in a different wrapping.
> Tinai aims to help modernize this with a digital bookkeeping service
Other than being in a new geography, it's nothing new.
> Membo: A premium way to grocery shop. Membo is a next-day grocery delivery service in Europe that optimizes for freshness and quality, instead of 15-minute speed.
We got many of these already.
There are of course exciting ones as well. But so much not-new that I just don't bother shifting through it all anymore.
At least in the Bay Area the ghost kitchen model seems to be a way for local food entrepreneurs to try new brands. I know of several brick and mortar restaurants that are operating ghost kitchens out of their storefront, along with “startup” restaurants operating from ghost kitchen commissaries.
Bookkeeping works and is that crowded of a space, so maybe with enough cash they can get some ROI. Same for food delivery.
I’m not saying this is good, and I could be wrong here. This is just an observation.
But… if you look at what happened to music in the last 20ish years you see basically the same shift away from creativity and variety and a focus on repeating what works.
I think starting a company these days has become much easier without funding though, so real hungry entrepreneurs _can_ bring excitement and creativity to this game.