Ask News YC: What market is your startup in? | Hacker News Reader

Ask News YC: What market is your startup in?

6 pointsrobmnl39 comments

Hello, I'd like to introduce myself. I'm an applicant for this YC funding cycle, and would love to get to know some of you guys+girls.

I'm curious as to what market your startup/idea is in? If you feel like sharing.

Mine is about on-demand software/SaaS.

I expect all of us will be sharing more soon. I am missing community feeling on this board, hence this post to generate some introductions.

Really look forward to meeting you, these are exciting times.

View on HN

We want to change the world of politics- web-based CRM. App was for a simple communications tool that would allow you to easily complain to government.

Our first product was Fantasy Congress <www.fantasycongress.com>, we made that as a hobby first and then received amazing press coverage on it and should have applied to YC last summer. We made the choice to ditch our post-grad plans and are bootstrapping out of Washington DC (but man do we want to get back to where the tech is). Our second product is an election game which we're working on with a media partner, but the YC application we've submitted is going to be the core of how we're going to help make political communication more effective.

now that's interesting. I had a similar idea, not one I submitted, but an idea for an app. Basically it would be for lobbyists, or groups working for a common goal, that try to talk to politicians and convince them about issues. So you'd have all these politicians in your tracking system, see who you already talked to and who not, and where these people stand on the issue. That way you can more effectively deal with their concerns.

Is that kind of what fantasy congress is?

Rob, sorry haven't checked my threads in a while. Fantasy Congress is fantasy sports for a political junkie. Instead of drafting football players, you draft members of Congress. Instead of touchdowns and interceptions, it's votes, legislation, and news. What happened was we created this cool tracking system when we created Fantasy Congress and we didn't really know of its other uses until after.

The CRM idea is cool because it would use the same tracking system.

We are making a collaborative business webapp that integrates project and task management using constraint enabled workflows that you can template and interconnect. In a sense, our system establishes workflow as the spine of business networking, allowing businesses internally (staff) and externally (with their customers and vendors) to collaborate on any project. We have been coding since January and are finally launching our private beta next week. (Email us if your're interested in a peek) http://StreamFocus.com

That's awesome - I'd love to, just sent you an email.

Checked out your homepage, you have a good project description.

I had the same problem you had: being overwhelmed with tasks in my task management software. I solved it quite simply by marking certain tasks as "in progress". That allows me to see what I should be focusing on - and if I'm not, I re-evaluate where I am at, and set different tasks to "in progress" that make more sense.

For sure not as thought out as your solution - yet it has been working fine for me. Yours is for a team though, much more complex/interesting problem. Nice work & thoughts.

Hi robmnl, thanks for the encouraging comments. Unless your real name is Louis, we haven't received an email from you yet to add to our private beta test list.

That's strange, I sent an email to web@streamfocus.com - can you send me an invite to my email? It's in my profile. Would appreciate that very much.

Ahhh, I just found it - google marked your email as spam for whatever reason. Thanks! (and you sent it from a gmail account too - hmm - could be a problem) I marked is as "not spam" so hopefully that will help for the future.

Hi Rob,

 We are building a natural language interface to databases tool. I figure that forms, key-word and hyper-link interfaces have their limitations. Our orientation is mostly scientific/technical, but we figure that if we can deliver a solid, usable solution, there will be many, many uses. 

 But of course there are significant challenges. :-)

 take a gander at our demo clip for VLDB.
 
 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fWio8bHq4wQ

no way, that's brilliant.

I very much believe you that there are many challenges. In case we both meet on Nov 3rd, let's have a chat, I'm really curious on how you do that.

I could definitely see many uses for this, develop this thing further.

Thanks for the encouragement. Yes, let's keep our fingers crossed and hope to meet in November.

That was our first startup idea with Organon Technologies. We realized that it was going to take us a couple years to build it out, so we switched to streamfocus.com instead. Good luck!

Well I will tell you that it was quite an effort. There are lots of moving parts under the hood - a theorem prover, search mechanisms, spell checker, etc.

It took several years to get it to the current beta. The nice thing I have tenure as an associate professor in Sweden so I can grind on this problem with little interference and a quirk in Swedish law lets Anaphoric Systems (our company) own it. The sacrifice has been that my publication rate slowed down. But honestly I don't really care (that much).

Still I have been told that it is hard to sell a generic database interface tool. I have had lots of advice to specialize in one vertical or another. But which one to pick?

My own dream would be to sell it on the database tools market as a general solution.

Still if our Anaphoric Systems start up fails to get traction, we will probably just open source the whole project -- and I will get back to publishing on areas like causality, probability logic, etc.

I just looked at your demo - nice job! If you're interested, our application streamfocus.com might be a great platform for you - perhaps we could collaborate?

Absolutely! I just looked at your website and I think there is an area of possible collaboration. Let me study it a bit more. But a quick question, to what extent are you using relational databases to represent base level facts in your system?

Great! We're using Mysql for our database, so I think it would be the perfect platform for seeing what you can do with real world company data and hopefully adding excellent value to our service - a win win. (I've just emailed you to get on the beta)

Business model idea: We could let people use your search free for the first month, and then let them decide if they want to keep using it for an additional amount of money on top of our base subscription per month.

mine is productivity combined with issue tracking [i.e. issue tracking combined with effective planning methology] (issuesdone.com)

That's a truly pretty app, I love the design.

Nice feature you have is keyboard navigation, I think that's a must have for web apps.

Your site seems to require Open ID and Firefox or Safari. Why ostracize a large number of people this way?

The reason behind Open ID is to limit early users number by a kind of simple barrier. We are not yet able to handle all users at this early stage. Early adopters are usually advanced enough to sign up for OpenID (especially given we have an affiliate program with myopenid)

The reason behind requiring Firefox or Safari is simple enough too. We have not enough time yet to support every (even popular) browser. We'd like to spend time doing essential things, not tweaking HTML and CSS these days. Again, early adopters are those who are relly interested in using our app at the early stages and they seems to have no problem using FF or Safari to access our application.

I am the affiliate coordinator over at Vidoop and just wanted to mention that we have an affiliate program as well. It is a simple sign up process and is basically the same as myopenid.com's affiliate sign up. Another point to make is that offering users a few recommendations to a few "good" OIP's is good practice and let's them know you are helping them select a reputable OIP. The sign up is at affiliates.vidoop.com

our idea stemmed from a recent trip to tahoe. we were bummed because we wanted to rent a sailboat, but we couldn't because they were all too expensive.

however, when we got there, we noticed that there were about, oh 2000 boats sitting unused in the water.

i was an only child for 15 years, so my mom made it a point to emphasize sharing :)

I like that, I wish there was a system that allowed us to share resources wisely. The thing is, the burden to put your unused resources into a web database is too high. This should be a system that would work automatically, that connects you with the people that have a surplus of something you need.

i dont think so at all, look how much time people invest in facebook, and they dont even get anything tangible or useful out of it.

now think about how much more time people would invest if they got cheap access to, say, a sailboat out of it, or conversely if they got a tidy return on an otherwise dead investment.

true point. the thing is, are the people that own the sailboats going to use it? and all the other people who might have useful stuff? the thing is to reach a critical mass, I haven't done that before, but is possible for sure, just takes some time. best of luck with you project, sign me up for beta invites if you are going to work on it.

I'm not a YC applicant; but I'm doing online backups, with an emphasis on security.

Thanks for the post. So you're already in the market and launched?

No, I'm still writing code. I'm not applying to YC because (a) I'm a sole founder, (b) I can't move to the bay area (unless someone wants to pay my medical bills, I need to stay in Canada where things are mostly free), and (c) I'm busy leading an opera orchestra on the November 3rd/4th weekend.

I submitted my startup which is in private beta now, as well as detailed three other concepts.

Im a sole founder, but didn't let that stop me from submitting!

I think I have an interesting story, as my startup has been created over many months with the help from others all over the world(Washington D.C.,Sydney, Mumbai, Helsinki & Prague).

We will see though.... Good Luck to everyone!

Any chance to get private beta invite?

That's really nice - a musician. Anyway sign me up if you have some kind of launch newsletter, I'd love to know more. Let me know if you need any advice or opinion, or want to exchange ideas.

Hi Rob, my cofounder and I are doing genetic testing.

That field is so interesting, however, I am not sure why people would want to test for the "HIV-gene"? So that they can "screw around" with an easier mind afterwards? But it doesn't seem to indicate 100% resistance, so what good is it?

It provides peace of mind to certain individuals, it does not allow anyone to have unprotected sex. It is more explicitly useful to those that have HIV because the mutation indicates the disease's rate of progression.

I think this field is incredibly interesting and am looking forward to watching this amazing technology improve over the next five years.

Can you explain further? DNA comes to mind, are you talking about that? Or unit tests that go through an evolution process?

DNA testing, we have one test we're launching now but hope to expand in the marketplace as funds allow.

voip startup, nothing social about it

why not? make it special

Reply on news.ycombinator.com