Just wow. Now there is a concept that sells itself. It's easy to see the Total Addressable Market potential. Savings institutions such as Vanguard and BlackRock are completely embedded in our lives. Every high school student who graduating this summer was probably given the same advice to start saving early and I'm guessing for those who did, many selected a Vanguard fund. At least those not speculating in BTC and ETH.
For Asia's emerging middle class, solving the problem of where to safely invest for generational periods of time looks daunting but enormously rewarding. Am interested in hearing about all aspects of the issues and Piggy's solution. What are the cultural roadblocks to getting young Indian professionals who just want to spend on travel, living material goods, etc. to think about investing long term? What comprises the funds holdings? How do you solve the issue of liquidity? Are you considering developing your own products such as market ETFs for direct investment?
The concept isn't novel. In fact, I would argue that they're late to this game. I am using Scripbox for a while which works fine. As I see, they're not launching their own fund, they would be investing in existing ones, which kind of makes "Vangaurd for India" a misnomer.
I think the addressable market is huge, partly because the major things allowed in the tax saving section 80 (C) are life insurance premium, a government backed retirement fund (PPF), and long term mutual funds. The last one is the easiest to invest into. That means it's relatively easy to onboard working professionals if they are want to save tax in that section.
One issue is that the public isn't knowledgable enough about merits of equity markets. For some, it's a gamble and would rather go with fixed-rate funds.
It surprises me how successful these companies are already. I don't think to have more than $20K MRR is any less than having a product-market fit (of a lesser scale, maybe). It's almost as if YC is not taking bets at all because the companies that are applying seem to know well what are they solving. And although it's not obvious from the article, it sounds like they scaled to that revenue pretty quick (comparatively, to say the least).
If I compare with the companies in the batch 5-6 years ago, the difference seems conspicuous. Where are the companies like Segment, AnyPerk that were struggling to find a product-market fit and presumably, were working on bad ideas? The companies who wouldn't have a good answer to what they're solving and why? There are bets, like Greo, Goosbump, which would find it hard to attain a sustainable revenue, but I think the numbers are still low.
Paul Graham used to insist that their first priority is the team, but I think they have inadvertently raised the bar. Or, it could mean that startup wisdom of building MVP, talking to users, has become mainstream to warrant the decline in the bad ideas.
YC has global reach and is now very well known. That increases the applicant pool and that in turn means there are more quality applications as well. Having a larger pool of quality applications means that it becomes easier to select companies before a batch is considered 'full', lower quality applications will therefore have a much smaller chance of getting selected in a given batch.
So even if YC's first priority hasn't changed at all there is still a very plausible explanation for the effect you are seeing.
I'd argue it's just much easier to get to $20k MRR than it used to be. A lot of companies barely have traction before YC and get it during YC, and $20k isn't that hard to get to.
I think you have to remember that these TechCrunch bio's are written after their YC class. So they might have come in with $1000 MRR and have scaled up in the mean time.
Maybe, but I'd sort of have expected the "nonstandard" deals to become more common as they've gotten more into non-software startups. How far could you really go with $120k if you're building autonomous passenger aircraft?
It's still helpful for allowing founders to support themselves and focus full time for a significant period, which may be what it takes create a prototype or IP that's good enough to attract more investment.
I always ask this myself. I think like you said, startups are so mainstream now that the traction bar is higher now. But the problem is that YC also seems to be getting less prestigious. As great as these companies are, I am sorry but I don't believe that 100+ a batch is the same YC as what started a decade ago. YC is now a factor, not a family.
> I don't believe that 100+ a batch is the same YC as what started a decade ago. YC is now a factor, not a family.
You are not wrong.
The batches are of noticeably lower quality. I wont name names out of respect for the founders obviously, but you certainly have to wonder if some have been chosen solely based on their touting the latest cool tech buzzword in their application. My opinion also is that YC has moved from its earlier mandate of discovering talent to funding companies that the partners consider 'promising', where 'promising' == 'safe bet'. A lot of talented founders do not have the resources to build a company that has gained traction by the time they apply; heck a lot of talented founders not even have a viable company/idea at the time of first contact.
YC now funds companies that in another era would be considered stable, non risky investments. Could AirBnB, Reddit, Segment and DropBox (companies founded by wild youngsters with only an idea,in the case of Segment and Reddit founders a bad initial idea, and no market presence) be funded by YC today ? I'd bet not. Why? Because YC now places safe bets. You know which other institution plays it safe when giving out money ? Banks. The partners were on to something when they announced YC fellowship in 2015, it would have been a way to return to their roots and explore anew the lost idea of seeking out and funding talent, but sadly they shut it down. YC has grown big and successful and perhaps is itself ripe for disruption.
As a company (YC), as you grow and set aside more $ (or have access to deeper pockets thank to your past success rate), you are willing to take more risk than before.
I actually think its a positive thing, especially for those who apply!
It looks like it's a review generation / marketing automation / CRM solution for small businesses.
Just off the top of my mind, i can think of the following venture backed companies that do the same (at least on the reviews / marketing for SMB front):
Based on my understanding, YC doesn't invest in just one company in an industry. They invest in markets and founders. Because they are investing at an early stage, they choose to invest in multiple ones.
Startups are tricky and it's really difficult to pick a winner early in a company's lifecycle.
My initial thoughts were they weren't focusing on a single aspect that local businesses need. Seems like a broad set of features. My opinion is to start small and build from one or two solid features that your customers love.
My sleeper out of the bunch: Loop Support sounds like a really awesome idea.
Companies will pay tens of thousands of dollars/month to hire good support staff. If Loop can automate easy tickets away with a knowledge base (with NLP/ML + humans), the unit economics of their pricing seems really good. Any company with a large volume of non-technical support tickets could benefit from Loop. Does anyone know how competitive the space is?
Some advice to Loop founders though: please learn how to design a website - looks like a badly clobbered Bootstrap job.
Retool sounds great. I've wasted so much of my time building internal tools that are relatively simple and are just a bunch of forms and always thought that finding an easy way to build internal tools is a massive market opportunity. But I wonder if it's even possible to create a one size fits all solution. Hope they find a way.
Ah, that gives a bit background. The visual programming language sounds cool. Would love to play with it. About to set up a internal tool architecture and so far it looks like it's gonna be react toolkit + separate graphql endpoint.
Sure isn’t! I just loaded it on my computer and everything is fine. Can you open up dev tools and see what’s failing? We’re on cloudflare — maybe something weird happened there?
Great variety of companies, really looking forward to some of the biotech in particular. I am a bit worried about Vanido (The singing app), though, as for me (With no ability) a 34% improvement might leave me in the same place ;).
The marketing choices are interesting. I don't think we'll see that line in their B2B copy. The names Covetly and PreDxion feel like a tonal mismatch for their more rulebound audiences. The cartoonish visuals of Construct Simply and CarDash also feel a bit off relative to a pick-up truck or motor oil ad. But in those cases, the clients often drag the service providers to the platform.
Do these companies let existing sublease their own space on say a seasonal basis. Some companies need lots of space in their own buildings at certain times of the year and not others. Limited time subleasing seems like it could be a win.
Entocycle stood out to me as having significant long-term prospects. Bug protein is a fundamentally disruptive product at a time when demand for sustainable protein is growing all over the world.
From what I've heard, the problem isn't finding customers, the problem is breeding and raising bugs at scale. I think if you solve the scale problem, you will be successful.
Looks like pretty impressive monthly revenues for some of them eg. Leon & George. If YC is the first investor (which is what I expect) they have done very well being bootstrapped so far.
I don't understand Leon & George though (plant delivery). The TC bio talked about finding the right plant for your space. Seems like they just sell a few plants. I can walk into any florist, garden store or even IKEA and get the same or better selection. So the value prop is delivery I guess? But does delivery large plants across the country scale?
Bloom & Wild (https://www.bloomandwild.com/) do flower delivery and they're doing very well. They're only in the UK at the moment, but I think they have plans to expand internationally.
Seems like it's just exploiting the Instagram/"aesthetics" crowd who are too lazy/dumb/rich to go to a nursery. LA has a ton of nurseries, and fiddle leaf fig trees can be found for $60 (4 ft) and $150 (6ft). Actually the planters (pots) are actually more expensive than the plants. Real Case Study planters go for $150-300. You might as well get a fake off of Etsy for half price.
I don't think that's odd at all. We should be doing away with our reverence for this or that technology. Ultimately if there's no token/coin involved, it's none of our business.
I think there is definitely a market for OneLocal[0]. I've been renovating my house lately and dealing with trades is a mess. I had a few very reputable AC guys come in and quote on installing a unit. After they left there was no follow up whatsoever... no email, no text, no call, not even automated stuff. If OneLocal could solve that problem they could probably help SMBs convert more customers.
I did some work for a company doing this for home improvement contractors back...geez, it must have been a decade ago. The problem is they don't respond to middlemen like this any more than they do end customers. It's a lot of work to manage them, even just on the customer relationship side of their business.
I was expecting Slik[1] to be on this list. Anyone know why it was not included? There were quite a few articles about this company since it was founded by a 15 year old and a 16 year old [2].
There was also a WSJ article[3] today though I did not read it since it's paywalled. Anyway to read the article?
I'm curious how the crowd around here feels about the ethics of this company. This is a website where we all regularly talk to each other in myname @ the google domain specifically to avoid to spammers picking up our email accounts and bothering us.
Good: Hardly any entry of "Uber for X". That's a relief considering most "uber for X" are not viable businesses.
Bad: we are going after "billion dollar market". How do you even estimate the market size ?? why dream of revenue in billions why not millions. A small company can be a great company.
Bad: 50%-60% companies from day 1 or day 2 do not have mission critical business. Their business is finding a problem for some kind of solution that claim to have.
There's nothing wrong with million dollar businesses but I think these companies are going after VC money and well, that TAM better be in billions for those VCs to give a damn.
It's the fundamentals behind investing. Basically, you make no money gambling $10 ten times on 10% chance of success with $100 returns, but you make money if the returns are $10,000.
So, for investing in companies, there is no point funding companies aiming for millions as you can't get a good return because of the failure rates. They're basically taking up one of the slots of a potential billion $$$ company.
The point is for every 10 companies funded, have 1 become a billion $$$ company, while most of the rest will fail.
Say YC has a 6% stake, which gets diluted down to 1%(? I don't really understand this side of it) and then the company sells for $10 mill. Great for the founders, but YC only make $100,000. That doesn't cover the other 9 companies that failed (10 * $16,000 = $160,000 = $60,000 loss).
It is, but the corollary to that is that nobody knew ahead of time which companies where going to be the $1B and up companies and which were duds, also-rans or simply solid small to mid sized businesses.
No investor ever invested in a billion dollar start-up to be knowing that start-up was going to be a billion dollar company one day.
So those stats are based on one thing only: survivor bias and each and every investor will have to be satisfied with investing in what they believe to be solid performers with potential upside.
As much as I appreciate that's the VC model, perhaps less would fail if VCs didn't push for billions in revenue? The failure rate might be less than 9/10 if it wasn't "all or nothing"? Guessing it still wouldn't make enough home runs as an investment vehicle though?
That's assuming 90% failure when looking for sustainable businesses. There are some upcoming VC's which are doing well funding smaller companies. Momentum Ventures is one I know of.
There are quite some "Uber for x," but I'm guessing no one will mention Uber in conversations as it brings up bad memories...look closely from day 1. Marketplaces are effectively "Uber for x"
Just wow. Now there is a concept that sells itself. It's easy to see the Total Addressable Market potential. Savings institutions such as Vanguard and BlackRock are completely embedded in our lives. Every high school student who graduating this summer was probably given the same advice to start saving early and I'm guessing for those who did, many selected a Vanguard fund. At least those not speculating in BTC and ETH.
For Asia's emerging middle class, solving the problem of where to safely invest for generational periods of time looks daunting but enormously rewarding. Am interested in hearing about all aspects of the issues and Piggy's solution. What are the cultural roadblocks to getting young Indian professionals who just want to spend on travel, living material goods, etc. to think about investing long term? What comprises the funds holdings? How do you solve the issue of liquidity? Are you considering developing your own products such as market ETFs for direct investment?