From Hackathon to YC | Hacker News Reader

From Hackathon to YC

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61 pointsrmason23 comments

> We record a demo and dent Akash’s car while recording, just minutes before the deadline. Judges love the demo.

I am not sure why it sounded like a good idea to mention potentially breaking the law during the application process...

The product sounds nice though. Are there any examples of successful email-related software companies? I can think of Superhuman. Maybe hey?

Boomerang: https://www.boomeranggmail.com/

I love your name, coincidentally the app mentioned here is called April - its voice only.

But for email companies - Superhuman is the most successful one.

Other solution which provide different features include Airmail, Sanebox, Mail0 to new a few - we feel this space need a bit of disruption as there is too much noise in emails while being one of the most important tool - we are trying by going voice first - will learn and implement based how it goes.

The thing with reading vs speaking to my emails is, it's much quicker and mentally less exhausting for me to just read and quickly reply or move them to folder in just a few seconds than having this kind of long conversation while driving and putting pedestrians and other drivers and myself at risk.

But let's be real, people need something to do while driving. They're not robots who can sit there tirelessly doing nothing but driving. Listen to music or podcasts or phone a friend. Something. If that something is talk with an AI about their emails, that seems better than having them look at their phone and trying to type into it while driving.

We didn't expect this will come on hackernews. But more on this - April is voice first app so you dont have to see/use your phone.

Crash was because of the panic - we were getting late and I reversed the car while taking a turn and didn't see the pillar - I crashed into it - this was before we started recording or started speaking with April.

But that is a good flag - will update the article with more details.

But it says in your article, "We record a demo and dent Akash’s car while recording, just minutes before the deadline." So I think the only thing to do now is to own up to it and please post the demo including the crash so that we can all have a good laugh, and also appreciate the demo that got you into YC?

Here is the submission of the hackathon which got us YC interview - https://youtu.be/6_Y_Xoj3q5A

There's been a number of projects on this pipeline

How do you stay alive when there's a billion AI email companies out there?

I must have interviewed for at least 4 or 5 of those companies the last couple times I changed jobs. A few of them were YC. I can't find their online presence anymore, or they have pivoted to something else.

In that case do NOT go to the YC list for Summer 2025 and do NOT Ctrl+F for "AI"

I wonder how this is not a tarpit idea that YC famously ask founders to avoid.

Should put an AI disclaimer on the title

half my youtube ads are about AI productivity/assistants, so many of them, good luck.

That is too funny. So we crash the car while distracted, filming the demo for AI powered voice email we do during our commute, and "Judges love the demo". Pretty funny when nobody gets hurt, not so funny when we rear end a family of 4 or injure a pedestrian.

It's a controversial story, generates buzz. But as usual, the human cost seems to fall by the wayside along the way. You need brainpower to process email, right? Can people really drive properly while trying to focus on something else? Seems like the answer is instantly no, and they are still in YC. Makes me a little sick.

You need brainpower to process music, right? Can people really drive properly while trying to focus on something else, like the radio? Or a podcast? Or a phone call with another actual human being over Bluetooth?

Frequently no. They can’t do those things well.

We have the data to prove it.

Do I really need to spell out that just because we have normalized some bad behavior that we shouldn’t do more of it?

Okay. As another argument, hands-free ADAS systems are becoming more and more prevalent, and also assist in this issue.

Another argument for what, exactly?

I love having deep conversations with fellow passengers while driving long distances. I've never felt like it distracted me while driving. I'd be curious to see any research to the contrary.

My hunch is that the moment some form of technology gets involved there is some form of interaction that has a detrimental impact. Maybe pushing a button or glancing at a screen or something else?

adults passengers can adapt the conversation to your needs, keeping quiet and even helping with decisions. screens, kids, dogs, people on the phone, etc can't do that

I think the funny part is they continue on promoting the service as something you can do while you drive after having failed at it. Plenty of value in the service, but the while you drive part would have been something I kept to myself after having had an accident doing it

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