Really impressed with this batch! These companies seem to be targeting a lot of really cool hard tech problems which is great to see.<p>In particular, a lot of super cool next-gen transportation: electric planes (Heart Aerospace), jetpacks/bikes (Jetpack Aviation), hydrofoil cargo ships (Boundary Layer Technologies).
Also seems to be a big focus on India, China and Africa, and a big increase in the proportion of bio/med-tech companies. There are even two (2) companies turning CO2 into cool stuff (Prometheus turning it into gasoline and Saratoga Energy converting it into nanotubes).<p>Feeling very optimistic about the future and looking forward to reading what Day 2 has in store.<p>Bonus: seems to be a handful of Harry Potter themed company names (not counting Centaur of course).
First, congrats to everyone launching.<p>Second, existential crisis time.<p>I clicked the link and saw "Here are the 85+ startups that launched at YC’s W19 Demo Day 1" and closed the tab.<p>These used to be some of my favorite articles every six months, kind of a view into what's coming next. But they felt digestible, with a few dozen startups featured each time.<p>Now it feels like a fire hose.<p>I'm not convinced there's going to be a YC circa 2007-2012 ever again, but I miss that. Probably not how the ecosystem works anymore.<p>As a disclaimer, I do take full responsibility for my turning 30 a few years ago and going through a darker, cynical period of burnout that has likely permanently affected my outlook on startups.
"VanGo: An on-demand ride service for getting your kids and teens around. The founders say that, because “moms trust other moms,” 85 percent of drivers on their service are moms and all of them are women."<p>Is that legal?
I don't share the cynicism in this thread. Some personal favorites:<p><pre><code> - Lumos
- Basement
- Ravn
- YourChoice
- Prometheus
- Loonify Space
- Dockup
- Glide
</code></pre>
Some of these are absolutely amazing, good luck to all the founders!
>Basement: A social network for your close friends<p>Seems like this would impose some serious limits on ad revenue generation (assuming that's how they plan to monetize). With only close friends the volume of friend-generated content would presumably be much lower than that of Facebook or Instagram (even if those individuals are generating more content), meaning you have a much lower threshold beyond which you start pissing off users with ads due to relative volume.
> VanGo: ... “moms trust other moms,” ... all of them are women.<p>Straight sexism. Cause a Dad driving his kids to school has gotta be a creep or terrible driver or something?<p>>Bento Club:<p>Cheaper than what is already there? Food is a losing business and these guys are going to race harder to the bottom.<p>> Slapdash:<p>Is just <a href="https://www.appdirect.com/products/appwise/features" rel="nofollow">https://www.appdirect.com/products/appwise/features</a>
The most exciting company here to me is Prometheus, who is mentioned in several threads here.<p>It bugs me though, that the TC blurb, and the comments here, and the Prometheus website, all say the company is turning CO2 into gasoline. That strikes me as alchemy. I think the company is more likely using CO2 in a separation process that is an alternative to the traditional distillation tower used in oil refineries.<p>There's a difference between "turning CO2 into gasoline" and "using CO2 to refine gasoline from crude oil".
> Bento Club: Customers pre-order food from a select set of restaurants, and Bento picks it up and brings all orders to a shared pickup spot within one block of the customer’s office.<p>Unless it's 10x cheaper, I don't see how this is any better than Uber eats, Doordash etc (that actually bring food to your door).
>Unicorn: Scooter companies that rent by the minute lose 2 percent of their fleet per day to damage and theft, and that means customers don’t have a safe scooter available when they want one.<p>Is this really offering an attractive alternative to Bird, Lime, etc. from a customer perspective? It seems like they're solving more of a scooter company problem than a customer problem. As a customer I can't imagine a case where I'd prefer to rent for weeks at a time vs. single-use or buying my own scooter.
<a href="https://instapathbio.com/" rel="nofollow">https://instapathbio.com/</a>
Hopefully this isn't a repeat Theranos
JetPack Aviation making a real-life speeder from Star Wars is one of the more audacious companies I've seen from YC in a while. Simultaneously impressed and terrified if this ever goes anywhere.
Wow, these are really creative and fun. Damn, impressed. Makes me jealous of future generations that will have access to so many more cool things than I grew up with.