YC Demo Day Session 4: Shoptiques, Pair, Daily Muse, Per Vices, iCracked | Hacker News Reader

YC Demo Day Session 4: Shoptiques, Pair, Daily Muse, Per Vices, iCracked

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50 pointscanistr24 comments

Wow. With Pair ze frank's vision from years ago (2007) of a social network for two has become reality.

http://www.zefrank.com/social_network/

http://www.trypair.com/

I am curious about Pair's user acquisition strategy, as the concept is (by definition) almost as anti-viral as possible. It seems like it would be much easier to create something similar for cliques, make it support up to 8 people, and market it to middle- and high school kids. And then enable anonymous inter-group (as opposed to intra-group) messaging, so that way there is a vector of virality. Obviously a smaller market though.

It's not anti-viral; I tried it out with my significant other to see how it worked, and I'll recommend it to people who travel frequently or are in long-distance relationships. Obviously, I won't be using it with them, but that's different.

Per Vices is every geeks dream but how on are they going to get past FCC regulations?

Software Defined Radios have been sold for a while -- just not so cheaply, and as easy to use. (I think the Ettus USRPs have been around for a while; first as kits and now as assembled devices; SDR itself has been built into a lot of shipping products).

The FCC actually came out with revised regulations in 2005 and 2007 to make SDR easier to approve, and to allow open source software for them. I think there are different regimes for test equipment vs. type-approved consumer devices.

I see, I was under the impression they could only be used for non-commercial purposes, i.e. not sold. My impression was that this was partly why people weren't selling GNURadio's but rather the kits.

Re: pair, what if you have more than one chick?

I am so impressed with icracked and their 2 awesome business models. Onsite Technicians and repair yourself tool kits. This is a real business. Hope they succeed big time.

In case the Per Vices people are reading - I tried to go to the "Buy It" link but I'm getting a PHP error.

Thanks - The Per Vices people are reading, and the link is fixed.

You're also using file URIs in some of your web pages. Check out the community_form.html where it handles shortcut icons.

And what's so cool about AnyVivo?

People buy a lot of pets, Amazon won't touch them (one of the few legal areas of commerce which Amazon can't dominate; guns are another...).

They've been making a lot of money (and 50-60% margin) in the past few weeks selling jellyfish, which I didn't realize was even possible to keep as a pet. Presumably as they move into other more interesting pets, they will make more money.

I guess, it's good business but I never noticed YC backing such "trivial" kind of business.

You're right that they don't solve any open problem in computer science or mathematics, but neither did Facebook, Amazon, Apple, Google (I think), etc., and they seem to have done ok. :)

Not to take away from your main point, but Google did need to solve a fundamental computer science problem: how to compute eigenvector centrality efficiently. It would have been impossible to calculate PageRank at web scale without the Power Method (and applying EC to the link structure of the web in the first place involves lots of nontrivial math).

What makes selling live animals trivial?

I think he means the "change the world" vibe we get from a lot of startups. I think its great YC is broadening its scope into more traditional businesses.

Well, you got it right - YC is broadening its scope - that means that this investment is really kind of new type for Graham and co. I guess, I should not ask what was so cool in AnyVivo but try to say in another words that it looks like a turn to traditional spheres to me.

It's probably true that YC companies are more willing to have a physical component (producing hardware hasn't worked out very well, but service, inventory, etc. might) now than in the past, but that is probably true of startups in general (Square is a great example; a tiny loss-leader physical product which is the wedge into a trillion dollar business).

I guess, online shops were kind of innovation when Amazon emerged but now they are rather common phenomenon and making them sell live animals is more about right organizational process than about building strong online product.

Maybe nothing. But they're out there selling $150k in jellyfish a month on 50% margins, and probably having a blast doing it. Their potential market isn't exactly small. Not sure what else you're looking for.

I'm not sure what Paul Graham is looking for that's why I asked. :)

Maybe this is just step 1 for them and they have some kind of world-changing ambition that they plan to implement once they have enough cash and customers.

  1. Sell jellyfish online
  2. Make money, acquire customer base
  3. ???
  4. Take over world!

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