Y Combinator Demo Day Spring 2009 | Hacker News Reader

Y Combinator Demo Day Spring 2009

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Congrats to everyone!

reMail: what will you guys be doing differently then the new iPhone email search announcement from yesterday?

and

Wattvision: what are you guys doing differently then Googles plan for web based energy readings?

Wattvision: what are you guys doing differently then Googles plan for web based energy readings?

Well, for one thing, Wattvision exists. Google put out a press release. For another, Wattvision works with existing power meters. Google (and pretty much everybody else) is waiting for the magical day that everybody gets new meters.

(Just to be clear, I'm not part of Wattvision.)

To an outside observer, Wattvision doesn't exist yet either :). But given that I doubt I'll be getting a new meter anytime soon, it does seem a better bet. If anyone from Wattvision is reading, I would love to be a beta tester...

Hi Avi -- email me at savraj [at] wattvision.com and we'll see what we can do! And Gruseom is spot on with his answers -- thanks Gruseom!

I would like to beta test as well. I live in an apartment though so I guess I'll have to convince our officemanager to install this at work. Will give it a shot if you need beta testers.

Google seem to be intending some kind of magic platform that other peoples meters will send data to (kind of like amee/pachube), whilst Wattvision is device & app. Presumably Wattvision could output data to the google platform. Either way they're different products.

Congrats!

I'm intrigued that YC is doing more non-web/non-SW startups: Wattvision and Propable in this batch. Does YC add just as much value in such different areas?

I'd think that YC's contact network and funding would help a lot of different people - and I love that they're doing things based on more physical products. (I also really like PicWing for that reason.)

One of the basic premises of my firm (Shirlaws) is that all businesses are the same once you remove what they actually do.

In other words, the business advice, perspective and experience YC bring will apply just as well.

Note - this is based on my understanding, which is that YC help with the business not sitting down and helping you code.

all businesses are the same once you remove what they actually do

no offense, but this makes almost no sense. I mean, I guess when you remove what reader's digest, ycombinator, and my local model train shop all actually do, they're "the same" in that they have customers and exist to make a profit, but that's hardly a practical or helpful piece of information.

Why there were only 15 or 16 startups? Was it the initial number or have some companies not made it to the Demo Day?

airBnB did not present

I happen to now that the largest energy supplier in Germany has a concept similar to what wattvision is doing. The dude who was working on it was working at the same lab as I was, and he told me about the concept. It's some type of infrared thing you put on top of your meter, and it sends the signal per wlan and desktop client to the web.

So, the wattvision idea seems like it's going to be the new hotness in coming months.

This is a great list of the YC start-ups that launched, but doesn't look like it's an actual writeup of the event.

Was much more exciting in person.

Companies were phenomenal.

It seems that most of those companies have already launched. In the past, wasnt' demo day the point where everyone launched?

Demo day is for investors. No one ever launches on demo day. More people that are launched before demo day the better it is.

I hope this doesn't turn into a "let's pick winners and losers" thing today. We can do that tomorrow.

Let's just congratulate all 16 teams on being accepted into YC and for making it to Demo Day successfully. I hope you're all getting wildly drunk and then sleep for a very long time tomorrow morning.

They presumably wouldn't be getting drunk tonight, because there is a second (identical) day of Demo Day tomorrow. We can't fit all the investors into our building at once, so Demo Day is now actually 2 days.

That is incredible. There are that many legitimate investors are still out there? Wow. I'm just so impressed with YC.

(Send them my way. If they won't travel to Chicago, I'll come out to GDC next week. :) )

The audience today was one of the most encouraging signs I've seen that the recession is not going to shut down the startup world. Not just the number of people, but the degree of interest they had. You could not have told there was anything amiss with the economy if you didn't already know.

The technical term is "flight to quality" and it's actually an indicator of economic hard times.

presumably...

wow! wattvision is _exactly_ the idea I had for a personal project.

that was the idea my ex-startup did: i-conserve.com (it's been since sold to getgreenbox.com)

wattvision sounds interesting, hadn't heard of it previously

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