10 startups to watch from Y Combinator’s Demo Day | Hacker News Reader

10 startups to watch from Y Combinator’s Demo Day

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38 pointszende11 comments

I've spoken with a field engineer about building something similar to PlanGrid, but their concerns revolved around the ability to convert to AutoCAD automatically. From what I gathered, generally on a site people will draw everything out on paper, and then take the plans back where people will draft them up in AutoCAD. Unfortunately, CAD isn't an open source format. If these guys can make that happen, I think this would be HUGE.

If anyone from PlanGrid reads this, here's another idea that makes this useful (if you haven't already done this) -- for site checks, right now field engineers just have to go around and check things off to confirm they are where they supposed to be on the plan. You can use the camera on the iPad to snap a shot and attach it to the coordinates in your plan to actually guarantee it's there.

Actually, we just added the ability to attach iPad taken photos to project drawings in our last version.

You're right that people really wanted the feature - we're getting amazing feedback on it from our users.

More software defined radios (Per Vices and the Phi)? Yes, please! This stuff is rather expensive and the field needs more options.

> According to founder Ryan Sutton-Gee, the construction industry has some 17 million people who use blueprints. With an average charge of $35 per person per month, that has the potential to translation into a $7 billion addressable market.

Yeah, about that ...

See, if you charge every facebook user $1 month this makes ... ah ... nevermind theoretical markets :)

Noticed that 50% are primarily mobile[1]. I wonder how this compares to past YC batches? Obviously this figure does not represent this YC batch, but it definitely seems like YC is interested in mobile.

[1] iOS: PlanGrid, Pair, iCracked; Android: Sonalight, Kyte

iCracked is about hardware.

I think there's also some bad choices by the author, both of which are apps.

PlanGrid has been vastly over-hyped by the author, it's an iPad blueprint viewer. Big deal, tiny market. The construction industry already shares files electronically, sounds like the author bought into some PR bullshit. Kyte I also question being included too, a subscription model for a simple family filter for your phone? They'll be undercut in no time.

> iCracked is about hardware

Yep. Mobile hardware. So that makes iCracked a mobile oriented startup.

Unlike previous YC startups, most of these seem pretty trivial, and do not really solve any problems.

Perceived problems (e.g. PlanGrid): Do they actually know someone who works in constructions and has said "If only I could view plans on a computer instead of paper!". Paper is cheap, easy to use, sturdy and mobile with infinite battery life, and I'd guess works fine for most folks in construction.

More trouble than it's worth (e.g. Pair): Keep in touch with my SO? There's these things called phone calls, text messages, emails, skype... If I want to connect more with my SO, the last thing I want to do is spend time on yet another social network.

Bad economics (icracked): It's not hard to find somebody who does iphone screen repairs. The real problem is that the repairs are quite hard and therefor expensive, and I don't see how adding a middleman would make it cheaper.

What's missing is the obvious gain in efficiency that came with previous YC startups like Airbnb or Octopart.

Or maybe with the increased number of YC startups, PG is just throwing more ideas on the wall to see what will stick, or what the initial concept will turn into?

That being said, I wish all those guys good luck and success, and after all they are out there doing it, while all I'm doing is writing snarky comments.

Oh come on. This article is based on 2 1/2-minute pitches. Surely you can at least imagine that there's more to these startups than 3-sentence descriptions? Your assumptions are completely arbitrary. More detailed articles on iCracked and PlanGrid (and maybe others) made the HN front page a while back. If you're going to criticise, at least do your research first.

Seems to be a lot more interest in doing hardware than previous batches?

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