There are maybe, <i>maybe</i> 10 promising companies in the mix these past two days. YC has really lost its prestige by diluting its batches so much, IMO. There are better pathways to funding nowadays for promising startups that don’t require surrendering 7% equity.
What is up with listing the pedigree of the founders? I noticed it on the demo day 1 article, also. Does being an ex-FAANG employee correlate with successfully running a startup, or is it just the easiest signal VCs have for "This person is probably smart"? It seems like a lot of YC's current model is to throw money at ex-FAANG employees with ideas.
I can't help but wonder what would happen if YC and all its influence was to be focused on only a bunch of startups per year doing truly far fetched things - namely space, biotech, finance, robotics, computing and VR. Is focusing on social networks for grandkids, instant food, the 50th sticker app and countless B2B products truly worth it when it could be directed towards the former? Who could possibly, genuinely want to work at such places by the way (I mean, for anything else but money)?<p>As for this year, I'm extremely pleased to see so many startup trying to replace meat and dairy. Ditto for aerospace.
There are so many startups that are getting funded by YC of which "I had the idea (first)". Of course I could think of the idea but this truly shows that the nitty gritty part is actually building the dream instead of coming up with an idea. On the bright side, if you ever find one of your own ideas or a derivative thereof being funded try to see it as market validation and get to work!
I can barely read a list of 60 new start-ups without melting my mind. The names and value props turn into soup after about 20. I can't imagine being there, making decisions about all 60 and then coming back repeating for a second day!<p>Does demo day work for the audience?
Anima seems really cool and ambitious; modernizing design <-> code seems like an obvious necessity and next step to modernize workflows in the front-end.<p>My prediction would be that, if successful, this would empower designers and commoditize front end developers (or optimistically, let them focus on more complex logic)<p>Good luck to the team.
There are some cringe worthy ones, but also a couple which I think are suprisingly good. I think ShopWith is brilliant (although I expect HN is not the audience to discuss this with).
64-x jumped out at me as having George Church as one of the co-founders; I've read his 'Regenesis' book and it's a good detailed read.
I'm not in SV, and very much outside the startup community in the rest of the world these days, especially since I no longer work in a coworking space.<p>I have to say, some of these legitimately look like parodies, like something out of the Silicon Valley TV show. Emojer cannot be a legitimate company with real funding. It just can't.
I have been reading YC lists for so many years. And this list has set a record for number of facepalms. Companies like Papa are stuff of nightmares. While others like AnchorUSD, SparkSwap etc seem like an attempt to ride a wave which was been gone for long.
I am curious what it is exactly the process of this Demo Day?<p>Is the normal flow: pitching for a couple of minutes, then Q&A and then at the final day a decision?<p>If someone who participated could share, that will be great!
Frankly I've found both days completely underwhelming and the only companies that have even a hope of approaching unicorn territory are the Pharma startups and even then they don't seem terribly groundbreaking.<p>YC has gotten stale.
<p><pre><code> According to Ixora, major film studios produce 100 blockbuster
films each year that feature than 1,000 CGI shots —
each costing them roughly $10,000 a pop
</code></pre>
English is not my mother tongue, does "a pop" mean each second ? Anyway USD/(second of VFX) is a bad metric.
Curious about the startup though, looks like they are putting the idea out there to see if people are interested because there's no information online about this
Great batch. I'm especially impressed by the hard tech companies that produce atoms.
But unfortunately, on demo day 1 there was a company that makes the world uglier and is supporting the massive ongoing trend of middle class and sometimes even upper class people imitating an aspect of the underclass.
On demo day 2, there was a shamelessly partisan company that makes the world worse. It wants to get more people to support a process that, contrary to entrepreneurship, brings out the worst in people who actively engage in that process.<p>May the companies from the S18 batch flourish, except those two.