Six best start-ups from Y Combinator demo day

Wattvision sounds cool, but I'd be worried about their business model since PG&E are replacing their meters with digital ones that report back to PG&E. I seem to remember hearing that they are rolling out a similar service, too.

You're right -- there's a lot of stuff Wattvision can do with the data we gather today. There's no reason we can't make smart conclusions about what's running (as gojomo suggests) or or eventually expand to per-device sensors. We're just starting simple.

I'm sure that a lof of the people who this could help already know about it.

If you're in Queensland, Australia, the Climate Smart Home Service costs $50 and you get: - a wireless energy monitor - up to 15 compact fluro lightbulbs - a water/power efficient showerhead all with installation.

http://www.climatesmarthome.com/

>> Come on, I am a computer-savvy, technology-loving, ad-blocking geek with a huge PC-per-capita ratio and a hefty tech gadget/software monthly budget, how come none of these startups managed to get a single dollar out of me? Am I alone asking myself this question?

Dropbox is one that immediately comes to mind that has solved a very hard problem that I pay for.

Also keep in mind that these startups are 10 weeks old and are at most 3 people. Sometimes solving hard problems takes time. Sometimes it's the byproducts of the original idea that end up solving a really hard problem (such as a new web server).

As for not "hard problems," there's nothing disreputable about completing an achievable unit of concrete work for your own edification and profit. Maybe hard problems are hard because they don't fit into anyone's idea of an "achievable unit of concrete work." So, earning experience and capital by solving smaller problems to create tools which may help solve bigger problems is a respectable and intelligent approach to solving hard problems. On the contrary, in my experience, an obsession with a "great ambitious idea" without an obsession for solving an innumerate small, immediate problems which arise from that great idea is the "most important ingredient" for non-productive, self-deluded thrash.

As for YC companies: I pay for Wufoo and Dropbox. I also like Virtualmin, but I have yet to purchase a paid subscription. I will when I deploy my next intra-company web application since I can then claim that I outsourced tech support. Then, I can blame Joe to my coworkers when there are problems with the server. >:) The free blame is worth the extra few dollars a month.

I understand the burnout from the constant cheerleading in the push press. So, unsubscribe from the news. If something is important, you'll learn about it in a few weeks by word of mouth or when you search for it to learn something specifically.

However, while the "same old share, sync, discover, publish stuff" seems trite to us in technology, it is still a miracle of technology from a historical perspective. I mean: wow, you can send any information anywhere anytime immediately for nearly free. I don't think the applications for that deep magic could be fully exploited yet.

a large number of YC companies have thousands to millions of users who love them.

flickr was not the first sharing photos website by far. youtube wasn't the first video online. and your example, yahoo and google. yahoo was an online list of interesting webpages, hand edited. google was another search engine.

yes yahoo grew up to be a portal, and google showed us search means great ads. but they hardly did it in three months.

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oh yeah, and yahoo is burning out. and google is still only making money in one way (ok plus search appliance last i heard).

I suppose Google was just another me-too search engine and MS-DOS was just another copy of CP/M -- one that they didn't even write themselves.

We are at a time where the Internet is changing the world in significant ways, and the biggest changes I expect haven't fully come to fruition yet. They are forged in the minds and the blood sweat and tears of lots of startups, including the ones that you just dismissed carte blanche.

YC has created tremendous value, as have many other startups that you personally probably would never use or care about. So rather than sound the misguided cry of "where's the innovation?", perhaps it would be better to look within oneself and find the fire to create it yourself.

Finally, some sanity within the Web 2.0 circlejerk.

There's only so many apps you can aim at "early adopters" before they say "enough, i'm tired of signing up for yet another gimmick app!".

Where's the next innovation aimed at the mainstream? Where are the startups with a business plan, and a product customers will want to pay for?

The deluge of "we will fund it with ad revenue and then get bought by Google" has got to stop soon. And when it does, when all the widgets and gadgets and mashups that create no value finally collapse, the bubble..will..burst.

I agree that ambitious ideas are important, and technically hard solutions are inspiring, but I think it's a mistake to assume those qualities always make better businesses.

Great businesses solve problems people care about in a way that makes money. Identifying those problems is often as hard as creating the solution. The notion of releasing early and often is important because it lets entrepreneurs quickly identify the problem users want solved and test their solutions.

I'm happy people tackle hard problems, but keep in mind that precious few arrive at their solution (or even figure out the real problem) in 3 months. Wait a few years and I'm confident you'll see great innovation out of YC, or YC-like programs.

> Ideas are priceless. If you are a programmer and you aren't "plugged" into the bubble money, a great idea is your only chance.

It may be your only chance at becoming the next Google (although I disagree). It's definitely not your only chance at creating a relatively small business that has revenues of millions of dollars per year.

There have always been and always will be plenty of markets that are being neglected for one reason or another. Finding one and owning it is not rocket science, and it doesn't have to involve a grandiose vision for changing the world.

Whether you want to spend your time shooting for the stars or building a small, but less risky, business is a personal decision.

History has shown that it's quite possible for a business that looks tiny at first to hit a deep vein and become a huge monster. I wouldn't bet against YC having at least one of these.

I've really noticed a slow down in truly interesting startups over the past years/months due to a personal metric of mine. I'm finding fewer and fewer interesting announcements to share via google reader to all my slightly less techie friends that follow my shared items.

I used to be sharing announcements from Techcrunch, Venturebeat etc like mad but now there seems to be very little to get excited about.

Has everyone else been noticing this too?

The measure isn't whether something is hard, it's whether people will use it. It's great when that something is both.

There are tons of copy-cat websites because they are addressing huge markets with many different niches and until the demand curve is perfectly filled out, there will continue to be more of such sites. The most successful sites you see are as good as they are because people did use them and they gave feedback to make them better and fill in the holes -- they more often than not started out pretty bad. (check out YouTube: http://web.archive.org/web/20050428014715/http://www.youtube... )

I suggest taking your ideas and doing something with them. You'll find out that your ideas aren't so priceless after all. Fantasies made into reality are not necessarily solutions that work for other people. You have got to prove that your fantasies are really solutions, and repeatedly. You'll find out the sites that even bubble up to your attention have gone through many months/years of hard work and maintain themselves off some level of merit and integrity.

But even before that hard work, it takes time to develop skills and relationships that will prop you up when you need it. This is not just true on the web but in any profession. Your offline skills and the ability to communicate your ideas are extremely important and often overlooked by many programmers who aspire to be more than 9-5ers.

Maybe the "you" market isn't that large? Everybody tends to assume that their needs form a large market. In any case, presumably you did not find something like Weebly a hard problem -- most programmers don't -- yet we're undeniably providing value to quite a few people: 1.5 million and counting.

You can't criticize someone for working on the needs of a large market, just because that large market doesn't happen to include you.

When you step back, Mongrel is hardly life changing is it. In your particular small tech circle, perhaps.

>> "ad-blocking geek with a huge PC-per-capita ratio and a hefty tech gadget/software monthly budget, how come none of these startups managed to get a single dollar out of me? Am I alone asking myself this question?"

Because it's orders of magnitude easier to get a few average users to click on a few ads.

>> "And how about millions of people screaming in pain who sit in front of their half-dead Windows machines"

The technology in that problem has been solved for a while - use something other than windows. Now it's just a matter of marketing, pricing, etc to get the average user to do it.

> "Ideas are priceless. If you are a programmer and you aren't "plugged" into the bubble money, a great idea is your only chance."

Think about plentyoffish.com - a multimillion one-man company. His 'priceless' idea was to let people to see others contact details for free, which in 2001 was quite new. Then all he had was to fight off spam, every day. Great execution really.

Just about every startup in the web scene since 2004 has been banking on the momentum of the scene.

Its pretty proven that niches can gain substantial visibility ie, a twitter, and the hope is that alone can break off and big a big cash cow, and you better do it while the trend is hot.

Most really good ideas are based around perfect timing around the convergence of technologies and mindsets. Your right about the endless signup fatigue people experience but openid tackled that and still hasnt caught fire probably because its trying to change the behavior of the user, and it hasnt integrated itself into every angle where a user could use it.

Lately I've been seeing web2.0 startups like art. They are expensive art. People are addicted to going to gallery hops to see all the new artists and their related works. Its a big show off fest. With the barriers to create and maintain so low, these pieces of art could be around for a long time, even if they make nada, they can still be there, we see that now. Eventually they will fade or other artists will snatch them up either to destroy that piece of art or to play off of it.

Wow, for all your ability to rant, your two ideas are so humdrum I can barely believe you offered them as "unsolved" examples. Microsoft Passport and 1000 different anti-malware programs have been around for a long time. The first one failed because no sane person would ever trust such a thing.

There's a bit of chicken and egg problem with this, though. I know of people working on hard problems and there's no funding at all. Maybe a grant if they're lucky.

The investors are just as into the get-rich-quick-scheme madness as the developers. It can be a terrible circle.

That said, I think there are really interesting ideas out there, and I'm proud of what a lot of people have done at YC, but this post is good reminder that it's easy to get lost in the superficial feedback loops -- and that what we all (ok, what I think most of us) really want is to come up with true innovation and honest steps forward into the next and better.

Probably not the weight so much as the need to have items shipped quickly to maintain freshness. Even so, when you pay almost as much in shipping as the food item the value add drops off rather quickly for me.

Plus, I'd rather see a company encouraging people to buy local and depend less on high-energy infrastructure. I suppose specialty food shops could themselves buy local and avoid supporting mega-corp farms, and there are likely other 'goods' I'm not seeing right now. Nonetheless, this strikes me as the wrong direction. Maybe I'm temporarily blinded by recent 'rebuild better over the recession' optimism.

Not everyone gets the Amazon shipping rates. Shipping is actually one of the toughest areas to try and compete in for a small ecommerce site, and it's probably the number one complaint received since people have come to expect free or extremely low cost shipping.

If using UPS/Fedex, you get the fuel surcharges, residential charges, and rural charges that can make a small profitable order become unprofitable (and cuts into profit margins of others). It can even be almost $10 to ship a 1-lb package in-state if to a rural area. And then you have to consider box cost, and void fill cost. I switched to USPS last year for 90% of my shipping, and it's still a loss at times from what I charge for shipping.

That's an awful mindset to have.

With all respect to TheSixtyOne, the minds in the world that are making the best music aren't putting their stuff into a social commune. They're aware of how talented they are, and as such they're looking for compensation for their ability.

In all of history, the vast majority of the best art has come to us commercially. There are always exceptions, and it tends to be that the free breeding grounds lead to the next generation's brilliant artists, but people do things for money. To quote a brilliant actor in a film by a gifted director, both of whom were paid substantially: "If you can do something well, never do it for free."

usually it isn't filmed because people haven't launched. it is an investor event, not a publicity event.