To those who think this list will help them get into YC, or lament "why didn't I get into YC when my idea was squarely on this list":<p>The YC application is a sales pitch, and you're not selling your idea, you're primarily selling your charisma and capacity to spin vision and sell. Second, you're selling your chemistry with your cofounders and stability of your relationship. Third, you're selling your capacity to build, at least some usable prototype, but this a low bar.<p>At no point are you actually selling the concrete idea, unless you're doing something extremely specific that seems valuable and you're one of the few who can build it. For the rest, the idea is a rhetorical vehicle to sell the other things.
I spent a great while inside of medical during the pandemic and it was… interesting.<p>There are some incredibly large interests in the space that wield intense power and control over various markets. There is also a profound degree of inefficiency in a lot of what’s happening.<p>The question is whether many of those inefficiencies are technology problems or if they are intentionally constructed for the many reasons these things are created.<p>I feel like there needs to be almost a Walmart size company pushing down on prices with that kind of scale before many of these structures will be broken, and unfortunately that doesn’t appear to be the direction most things are going (oh they exist in scale, just not direction). I was hoping Amazon’s entry into the market would do it. It didn’t.<p>Might be time for a different direction in health care entirely. Kaiser had it right, but I don’t think they executed well and they are largely a company rooted in past thinking in how they are structured.<p>Combining health care and subscription with ongoing medical care is definitely the direction of things to come. The fundamental shift needs to be moving the system from fixing problems to keeping people actually healthy, and that means that healthy people need to pay for the system or the entire thing gets it’s incentives inverted (as it is now). This is a fundamental shift, but if it were done right it would be a massive company and really change the world. I’ve been looking in to how to build this over the last year and know I want to go in this direction.<p>And there is also a ton of interesting businesses in generics.<p>Just some thoughts from someone who has been in many aspects of the medical industry over my career. Hope it inspires some good discussion with my favorite community.
Last time I checked this page was several years ago, given that, my main takes on this list are:<p>* Crypto currencies are clearly on a decline given their location and volume in the list. It seems that the hype is mostly gone.<p>* Naturally, AI dominates the list, but the focus is on various applications such as healthcare, robotics, enterprise, and the always-a-hit: traditional industries.<p>* YC lists three and a half requests with a strong geo-political aspects: army technologies (justified by current global wars), startups manufacturing in the US (the role of the US in the 21st century), space and climatech. Our zeitgeist (and as such YC’s justification) is that large changes occurring in the world and they aims to take part in it. This is both bold and on-point.<p>* Companies relying on open source as part of their core business. YC identifies such companies as having multiple advantages and would like to see more such companies in their portfolio. This is a valid statement that I truly believe in, but I also think that this is only a part of the criteria and not something that solely holds an investment thesis.
> NEW ENTERPRISE RESOURCE PLANNING SOFTWARE<p>Very curious if anyone knows how to pull this off. There's so much value to be unlocked but it's just impossible to break through.<p>I've personally met three very talented founders that tried and failed (one was accepted to YC as a mid-market ERP and successfully pivoted into an application tracking system) and failed very quickly.<p>I'm guessing an important feature would be an integration system that maps data from the current ERP seamlessly into the new ERP. And that assumes you can even get through the enterprise sales process to even get the company to migrate.
Most of those take a lot more time and money than YC usually offers.<p>There are some opportunities in "New Defense Technology". Something like a low-cost replacement for the Javelin anti-tank missile based on off the shelf phone camera parts ought to be possible. Of course, once that's out there, every insurgent group will have some.<p>"Explainable AI" is really important.<p>"Stablecoin finance" is mostly how to make sure the issuers don't steal the collateral.
Maybe the people behind the stablecoin have an explosive collar welded around their neck. If the price drops, it detonates. That might work.<p>"Applying machine learning to robotics" has potential. Get bin-picking nailed and get acquired by Amazon. Many people have failed at this, but it might be possible now.<p>"Bring manufacturing back to America". Is it possible to build a cell phone in the US?<p>"Climate tech" - think automating HVAC and insulation selection, installation, and analysis.
Installers suck at this. See previous HVAC article on HN.
A phone app where you walk around and through the building with an IR camera is one place to start.
Map the duct system. Take manometer readings. Crunch. That's do-able on YC-sized money.
These are all so CapEx intensive it is totally disconnected from YC reality. Which implies if this is really what YC thinks is the direction we are headed, then the approach will essentially be much fewer bets at larger check sizes, for a very small subset. Also the business model for some of these is not exactly obvious. It’s either that or, public equity and/or massive debt heavy capex financing becomes more prevalent earlier on, so some type of high risk debt instrument. Alternatively this is partly a content marketing play to show how forward thinking and visionary they are.
Today I learned that YC not only funds military companies, but encourages new startups to focus on killing machines and spying. And to point to the spy firm Palantir as an example of a model company shows how morally bankrupt YC truly is. Anything for a buck, right? All this while those same defense firms are currently making tens of billions of dollars supplying hardware to kill hundreds of civilians a day right this very instant.<p>Make bombs people want, I see.
I would still like to see RFS 5 "Development on Handhelds" (<a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20140428231118/http://ycombinator.com/rfs5.html" rel="nofollow">https://web.archive.org/web/20140428231118/http://ycombinato...</a>) fulfilled.
I asked sama about it in 2015: <a href="https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10361215">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10361215</a>.
The state of the art has advanced since.
Termux (<a href="https://termux.dev/en/" rel="nofollow">https://termux.dev/en/</a>) on Android is a viable development environment.
With a Debian PRoot (<a href="https://wiki.termux.com/wiki/PRoot" rel="nofollow">https://wiki.termux.com/wiki/PRoot</a>),
it feels a lot like "normal Linux".
What I want to see,
though,
is something that takes advantage of graphics and touch input.
Structural touch-based editing of s-expressions in particular
seems like it could be practical and fun.
Think Snap<i>!</i> (<a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Snap!_(programming_language)" rel="nofollow">https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Snap!_(programming_language)</a>) but built for multitouch devices.
For the AR/VR space, I'm curious about YCs thinking about the addressable market and the possibility to have a unicorn-scale company developing solely for VR/AR in the foreseeable future (that isn't a device manufacturer).<p>The devices seem to be getting better and better, but the software seems rather lacking (currently typing this from a gorgeous giant display on my Vision Pro, which I use mostly exactly like how I would use my computer). Even in gaming, where the use-case is a lot more mature, we haven't seen the kinds of investment in AAA content that you'd expect, even though clearly the platforms could benefit from it.<p>I'm curious what YCs thinking is, and if perhaps they just feel no one has earnestly taken it on yet?
Eliminating middlemen in healthcare<p>In the spirit of Jeff Bezos’ “your margin is my opportunity”, we believe it’s possible to build a highly profitable business and make the system more efficient at the same time.<p>Didn't Amazon try this and is now shutting down part of its healthcare (pill selling) play?
ELIMINATING MIDDLEMEN IN HEALTHCARE<p>by creating another middleman in healthcare. This was first proposed by Jim Clark's Healtheon. "We want to empower the doctors and the patients and get all the other assholes out of the way." … "Except for us. One asshole in the middle." — <i>The New New Thing</i>, Michael Lewis.<p>The reason we spend so much is that public healthcare is a public good and private companies aren't good at managing public goods. They're good at making money which is a different purpose (which has probably served most people reading this very well). We need Single Payer. Indeed we have Single Payer in Medicare and TriCare and other areas. It works pretty well. We need to eliminate middlemen in healthcare by actually eliminating rent seeking middlemen in healthcare.
>New defense technology<p>If you want to build machines that kill people, you should at least be willing to say it clearly. If it makes you uncomfortable to talk about, maybe that should tell you something. And it's not a very good excuse to argue that you didn't build a weapon, you just built something that makes it easier to use weapons.<p>Arms races are not the way. The biggest threat to the West isn't somebody else's weapons, it's that Indonesia's elections today went to a candidate who doesn't want to align with the West, relations with India are increasingly strained, and even Brazil and Turkey are starting to lean out. Geopolitics is politics, and politics requires appeal. Our brand image is significantly worse than two decades ago, as far as I can see.<p>If the West can't gain allies on friendly terms and maintains power through the development of ever-more advanced military technology, then what kind of world have we built, exactly?<p>It's extremely disappointing to see this.
This is the first YC request for startups I’ve seen in a long time that I’ve found inspiring<p>I’m not sure the companies who actually have a shot at solving any of them can benefit from YCs approach or even network<p>Most of the industries are won through long standing insiders partnering with exceptional engineering talent<p>Not really YCs model
> <i>We have a fair chance of avoiding catastrophic climate change if startups offer commercial solutions to decarbonize society or remove carbon from the atmosphere.</i><p>Either this is sloppily phrased, or the SV techno-optimist kool-aid is way stronger than I would have thought plausible. Does anyone seriously believe that a reasonable solution to climate change has exactly one thing on the list and it's "more climate tech start-ups"? Of course climate tech has to play a role (we need everything we can throw at the problem), and start-ups will certainly provide a subset of that tech, but claiming that this alone provides "a fair chance" is extremely revealing of certain bias (and ignorance)
There is an unfulfilled niche for rapid defense applications. If you have ever used a military information system you are already fully aware of the many constraints imposed for security. I have always bypassed these limitations by writing my own applications in JavaScript because they simply execute in the browser.<p>I have always found it interesting that JavaScript is one of the most consumed programming languages in the world and nobody can write in it, especially in the browser. When I say <i>write in it</i> I mean without abstraction libraries (React, Angular, jQuery, and so on) and doing something other than CRUD apps. Until last year I was writing JS full time and met only 3 or 4 other people who do this and of them had security clearances.<p>There is a huge opportunity there that nobody is filling. While the talent for it is completely absent the surprising thing is that it’s ridiculously easy to train for provided the candidates are smart enough to follow simple instructions and write original code.
Anybody interested in talking to a potential customer for:<p>* Developer tools inspired by existing internal tools<p>* LLMs for manual back office processes in legacy enterprises<p>Feel free to message me. Having worked in-house for the last 15 years, I've seen a variety of these, have built more than a few of them myself, and am in the middle of building some new ones using LLMs right now — all within large enterprise legal departments.<p>I won't be able to share any confidential data, but I'm happy to answer questions about patterns I've seen across a few different organizations and where the unmet needs seem to be.
It's surprising to me that Tech never seems interested in conflict resolution. A lot of issues in the world are basically negotiation problems, yet they get treated as competitive ones. A better world is probably one in which conflicts are defused early, not one in which arms races are treated as the default.<p>Why is that? Is conflict resolution too much of a non-tech thing and more in the realm of politics? Or is there simply no money to be made in reducing warfare and hostile nation-state competitions?
When PG wrote this essay (last year?) about climate tech, it was a deep dive into what the problems were, what the potential solutions and roadblocks could be, and who they're looking to fund in that space. This essay is "Solve cancer," "stablecoin finance," and "ml in robotics." Like, thanks for the insights, lol.
Small comment about the "Stable Coins":<p>> $136b worth of stablecoins have been issued to date but the opportunity seems much more immense still. Only about seven million people have transacted with stablecoins to date, while more than half a billion live in countries with 30%+ inflation. U.S. banks hold $17b in customer deposits which are all up for grabs as well. And yet the major stablecoin issuers can be counted on one hand and the major liquidity providers with just a few fingers.<p>This is not entirely true. There has been a stable coin for over 50 years now, and most billionaires should be familiar with it because it's used to pay for satphone calls.<p>SDR (Special Drawing Rights) is IMF's stable coin. US$935.7 billion SDR are currently allocated. It has been called paper gold and an international reserve currency.
One interesting thing about this is that this what investors want you to make for them to invest in, not necessarily what you want to make. Investors are very happy with moonshots (1% chance of you succeeding, but 10,000x return if you do). But I don't think any rational founder should be.<p>Not all of these are moonshots, but some of them are (e.g. securing defense contracts seems lower risk). Also I imagine getting that defense contract may be a very different value proposition depending on what connections that investor has.
Cool list! I hope yc will also fund creative consumer companies. Ways to have fun, enjoy life, build healthy habits, cherish memories, dream about the future, and deepen relationships with friends. This is 100% selfish - I want more fun and meaningful products to use.
> A new startup model has emerged as an alternative to PE ownership: the MSO (Managed Service Organizations) model.<p>> The MSO model enables doctors to run their own clinics by (1) providing them software that can handle back office tasks such as billing and scheduling and (2) channeling patients to them.<p>> These functions are largely what PE ownership provides. Doctors who are part of an MSO model can continue to run small, physician-owned practices while competing successfully with large, PE-owned conglomerates.<p>I feel this is building off a false hypothesis. PE isn't out-competing independents. Sure, there is a tiny bit of synergy and some bargaining power that comes with the scale of having a portfolio of clinics. But most independents concerned with that have joined one of the numerous GPO/networks that exist. What's really happening is there is a huge generation of providers reaching retirement age and PE is a well capitalized buyer for them to sale their practice. New doctors are more likely to be employees versus being entrepreneurial in the past. I think for this to work, you would want to find ways for new providers to own a practice which means taking on debt that would out bid PE. It might be that the startup that gets this right, provides said financing with the management fee income as an addition to the debt service/income for risk. This could be interesting and new doctors might see this as an attractive path towards practice ownership; but getting the financial model for all constituents to be attractive is going to be tough IMO.<p>MSO for back office synergies is possible, but from what I've seen it's usually more cost effective to have your under-utilized receptionist wear many of these hats and that's what independents tend to do.
"ELIMINATING MIDDLEMEN IN HEALTHCARE"<p>I honestly am game for this even though I have zero experience in healthcare but as a consumer, where do I start how bad it is. I would do anything to change our shitty healthcare system where there are so many middlemen b/w me and my doctor.<p>Recent event: Went to ER because my toddler son spilled hot coffee on him (thankfully he is ok and wasn't as terrible as it could have been). There was a pediatrician on call who looked at him for like 2 mins and then left. A nurse came in and most of her questions were about "insurance details".<p>Then they didn't tell me what the heck was going on and after pressing, they said "we are getting stuff for him. wait". Then after almost 1.5 hours of waiting where my son is wailing, they got some bandage (I kid you not) with some Over the counter stuff (bacytracin) and applied it on the burn. Then we went home.<p>Bill = $2000 after Insurance coverage. Our premium for family is $1800+/month btw . Then there is the deductible. Supposedly, the insurance company only partially approved the claim. Whatever the f that means.<p>If you don't see a problem with this whole cycle of experience, I don't know what else to say. And no, don't tell me to get better insurance. I want to get rid of all these middlemen mafia.
<i>Developer tools inspired by existing internal tools... they often don’t realize that the internal tools they had at prior jobs are a great place to get inspiration from.</i><p>Interesting that YC is willing to toe the IP theft line on this one. I think plenty of us do in fact realize that homegrown corporate ideas / apps could likely be turned into external new businesses, but then the blurred ethics and legality of doing so occurs a few thoughts later.<p>An F100 I worked for had an entire corporate group for the purposes of spinning off their IP so that it could be done ethically/legally and give the employees' new startup the boost it needed. Several of these startups have gone on to $MMM/$B valuations. If you're at Boring BigCo and thinking of ripping one of their developed ideas for a small YC check, I'd advise against it.
<i>APPLYING MACHINE LEARNING TO ROBOTICS</i><p>Exactly what I thought would be absolutely terrific: a robot commanded by voice that poses floor tiles. That's v1. V2 builds a house.<p>I can't think of any "toy" as exciting as this atm. Plus you pose the <i>first tile</i> of this and you're a trillionaire.
Man, it's pretty sad looking at this list. I feel the world's just rocketing out of reach of understandability.<p>My background's in education. I always wonder whether a solid bet would be on overhauling the system totally so the foundations of these new 'future trades' are solidly grounded from 4 years old somehow.<p>It seems our knowledge is an abstraction layer upon an abstraction layer upon... There's just so much shit to know, and it feels all muddied. I feel what I learnt at school hasn't equipped me for anything in the 21st century whatsoever.
(Tangentially related to, “A WAY TO END CANCER”)<p>After seeing how my doctor iteratively ordered up different sets of tests for me over the course of a few months, I got to thinking about improving decision trees for blood testing (and maybe others).<p>However, when I spoke to a (first year) med student about this he suggested that doctors actually don’t want something like this. I don't think I followed the thought process completely but it was something along the lines of, “we’ll always find something.”<p>Would be interested if someone could elaborate on this line of thinking.
Most of these seem aspirational for YC to produce them and less of something that they can offer value to the entrepreneur. They can offer very little outside of SAAS style company that is tech for enterprise or tech for consumer. If you are looking space, arms, robotics, GovTech etc you are better looking for some corporate VC or another specialized accelerator. No one is truly a generalist.<p>But don't expect a corporate VC to be as fun or cool as YC.
Have YC applications always required a LinkedIn? Why not my personal site which has served as my LinkedIn, instead of the actual LinkedIn I deleted over a decade ago?
Some of these are not like the others.<p>Also some are way more achievable by software-type engineer-types and the financial associates in their ecosystem, due to extreme familiarity with that particular landscape. Some also require a little more commitment than starting a small software company.<p>If I was going to split the combined vision into <i>only two</i> categories it would be like this:<p><pre><code> - Applying machine learning to robotics
- New defense technology
- Bring manufacturing back to America
- New space companies
- Climate tech
- A way to end cancer
- Foundation models for biological systems
</code></pre>
and then the less moonshotty efforts:<p><pre><code> - Using machine learning to simulate the physical world
- Commercial open source companies
- Spatial computing
- New enterprise resource planning software (ERPs)
- Developer tools inspired by existing internal tools
- Explainable AI
- LLMs for manual back office processes in legacy enterprises
- AI to build enterprise software
- Stablecoin finance
- The managed service organization model for healthcare
- Eliminating middlemen in healthcare
- Better enterprise glue
- Small fine-tuned models as an alternative to giant generic ones
</code></pre>
Interestingly, #1 rose to the top of my list well over 40 years ago when I had a chance to do a little machine learning to guide automated systems. Was very lucky to have such powerful advanced equipment under my complete control in the laboratory at such an early time. Needed custom gear to bump it to the next level though. Figured all kinds of people would be doing things like that once "personal" computers were no longer a rare curiosity.<p>The remaining things in the first group are some other things I (and I'm sure many others) have had in mind since before personal computers became accessible.<p>"Too bad" my ambition has grown with age and it would take about a $10 million company to build my prototype hardware, and that's before any deployable machine learning can commence.<p>So it's been an interesting 43 years keeping in mind how I would apply automation and machine learning to almost everything all the time, and refining my intended approach for a greater number of decades the earlier I had the idea.
The defense-tech one is interesting. I wholeheartedly agree that more people should be involved in the space and it is critically important -- I think the war in Ukraine clearly shows the need for the Western world to be prepared to fight for freedom and democracy -- but as far as venturebackable business models go I don't really understand how many defense tech co's will fit. Most defense firms, other than perhaps Palantir which has a unique position as a commercial provider trade at extremely low multiples to revenue on public markets, whereas tech stocks usually have a relatively large boost. Perhaps not as much concern at early stages but not sure how the financials work out long term.
> <i>Occasionally we gather up all of these ideas and share them in what we call a Request for Startups, or RFS — a Y Combinator tradition that goes back over a decade.</i><p>I wonder how many YC startups joined due to a past RFS and went on to be successful.<p>My impression is that YC emphasizes the quality of the startup founders over the quality of the startup idea, so I find it interesting that this RFS tradition persists.
"Robotics hasn't yet had its GPT moment, but we think it’s close"<p>From what I have been reading from those who run top-tier research labs in the field most agree that we are really far away. Why would people casually quote 30y away?
<a href="https://techcrunch.com/2023/12/02/robotics-qa-with-metas-dhruv-batra/" rel="nofollow">https://techcrunch.com/2023/12/02/robotics-qa-with-metas-dhr...</a><p>It is because core issues remain unsolved, has nothing to do with some old engineering process that can be disrupted and more so with the fact that science isn't there yet. Most of the GPT wrappers that are used as reasoning still sit on top of classical low-level control.
Personally, as someone who works in AI specifically around robotics I believe there is headway to make here.
Most of the stuff on the list is either so far out of achievable reach from its current stages, or just generic America-first proselytizing. What all of them have in common is that they require massive amounts of capital, the kind that most VCs don't have/aren't ready to invest. Those who have the capabilities to start a company targeting these problems are not the YC crowd of young college students and techies under 40 looking for cred - they are either folks who have massive amounts of dry powder to deploy, or have the connections who have that kind of capital to combine with their experience. In both cases, none of those guys are stupid to give away 7% of their company (effective 15%) for $500k.<p>It's kind of laughable how YC is now requesting for startups in these lines when 10 years back, they rejected us (DefTech) on exactly the above premise. While we didn't manage a multibagger exit, we did manage a non-acquihire exit, which is more than what most YC companies can manage. The right time to invest in these problems was 10 years ago, when all the low-hanging fruit still existed.
Great that they are looking at Stablecoins, and by extension blockchain / crypto. The unwarranted hate on HN for this tech is a very interesting mirror on perspectives of economics and finance. The crypto economy advances year after year, as does the tech, but you would never know it perusing HN.
Ooh, I’d love to know how the HN community reacts to YC’s own words on this. Will HN’s very strong anti-crypto anti-blockchain sentiment continue when it’s their own mothership accelerator contradicting them?<p><i>STABLECOIN FINANCE<p>- Brad Flora<p>Stablecoins are digital currencies that peg their value to some external reference. This is typically the U.S. dollar, but it can be other fiat currencies, assets, or even other digital currencies. Their transactions are recorded on a digital ledger, usually a blockchain. This means they can be traded at any time of day between any two wallets on the same network, transactions settle in seconds, and fees are a fraction of what you see in traditional finance.<p>There’s been much debate about the utility of blockchain technology, but it seems clear that stablecoins will be a big part of the future of money. We know this because YC companies have been effectively incorporating stablecoins into their operations for years now – for cross-border payments, to reduce transaction fees and fraud, to help users protect savings from hyperinflation. This utility is so straightforward it seems inevitable traditional finance will follow suit.<p>In fact we’re seeing signs of this. PayPal recently issued its own stablecoin. Major banks have started offering custody services and making noise about issuing their own.<p>It all looks a bit like digital music’s transition from the realm of outlaw file sharing in the early 2000s to becoming the norm as players like Apple entered the market. Importantly, those major players were all outmatched in the end by Spotify, a startup founded during that same transition moment.<p>$136b worth of stablecoins have been issued to date but the opportunity seems much more immense still. Only about seven million people have transacted with stablecoins to date, while more than half a billion live in countries with 30%+ inflation. U.S. banks hold $17T in customer deposits which are all up for grabs as well. And yet the major stablecoin issuers can be counted on one hand and the major liquidity providers with just a few fingers.<p>We would like to fund great teams building B2B and consumer products on top of stablecoins, tools and platforms that enable stablecoin finance and more stablecoin protocols themselves.</i>
Jared Friedman and Gustaf Alströmer want to make it easier to kill other human beings, and turn a profit while doing it. Shame on them and anyone else who works on "defense technology."<p>> I have told my sons that they are not under any circumstances to take part in massacres, and that the news of massacres of enemies is not to fill them with satisfaction or glee.
I have also told them not to work for companies which make massacre machinery, and to express contempt for people who think we need machinery like that.<p>Slaughterhouse Five by Kurt Vonnegut (p. 19)
Slight tangent - but I feel that our need for "explainable AI" might lead to us missing out on some fundamentally different ways of thinking and reasoning that AI could provide. Machines might reach conclusions in ways that simply can't be "dumbed down" to human reasoning. That doesn't mean that these means are esoteric or outside of logic, but it just takes a few levels of derivations and statistic to make something really hard to comprehend for us.
>"1. Introduction<p>2. Applying Machine Learning To Robotics<p>3. Using Machine Learning To Simulate The Physical World<p>4. New Defense Technology<p>5. Bring Manufacturing Back To America<p>6. New Space Companies<p>7. Climate Tech<p>8. Commercial Open Source Companies<p>9. Spatial Computing<p>10. New Enterprise Resource Planning Software<p>11. Developer Tools Inspired By Existing Internal Tools<p>12. Explainable A.I.<p>13. L.L.Ms For Manual Back Office Processes In Legacy Enterprises<p>14. A.I. To Build Enterprise Software<p>15. Stablecoin Finance<p>16. A Way To End Cancer<p>17. Foundation Models For Biological Systems<p>18. The Managed Service Organization Model For Healthcare<p>19. Eliminating Middlemen In Healthcare<p>20. Better Enterprise Glue<p>21. Small Fine Tuned Models As An Alternative To Giant Generic Ones"<p>If I may suggest one:<p><i>22. Help The Growing Number Of Homeless People In Our Country</i>
The first priority should be, "BRING MANUFACTURING BACK TO AMERICA", as that will create a sustainable and strong economy, but in my view, A.I. will takeover that job sector along with many others. So, the question is, when AI takes over the world, who will hire humans to work so that they can pay for goods and services. The answer to this of course depends on whether money will still be in use. Just a thought :)
<i>This "glue code" — ETL pipelines, integrations, and custom workflows — is the dark matter of the enterprise software universe.</i><p>Hmmm...solving glue code, the "dark matter of [enterprise] software". Maybe I should apply? ;-)<p><a href="https://blog.metaobject.com/2021/06/glue-dark-matter-of-software.html" rel="nofollow">https://blog.metaobject.com/2021/06/glue-dark-matter-of-soft...</a>
> Robotics hasn't yet had its GPT moment, but we think it’s close.<p>Hmm Tesla is using end to end GPT-style model for FSD V12. It actually works surprisingly well.<p>For actual robotics, Electric Sheep is doing something similar for their lawnmower [1]. However, I am a lot more skeptical about that than Tesla's FSD.<p>[1] <a href="https://sheeprobotics.ai/technology/" rel="nofollow">https://sheeprobotics.ai/technology/</a>
I’ve been looking to join or co-found a startup for a while now but I never come across anyone interested in these type of problems. It’s always things like options research platform, medical records service, fitness app, etc.<p>I thought I was just being overly picky but this request shows that there are lots of exciting ideas out there.<p>Why do I see such a disconnect?
I think there is a germ of an idea in<p>- antithesis
- topless computing
- programmable company<p>I was surprised to see ERP as a real option - interesting
I created an open sauce project called propertywebbuilder for creating real estate websites many years ago. I got distracted with other projects, but recently I've started looking for someone to work with to life again. If anyone is interested please reach out to me.
> Developer tools inspired by existing internal tools<p>Is something I'm working on right now - it's all Open Source but I'm looking at what could make it Commercial Open Source or what additional offerings would make sense to businesses
> The UK became the world's richest country in the 19th century by being the workshop of the world<p>Ahh.. haha. Yes it was certainly the innovation and industrialism of the UK that did it, not the inevitable result of centuries of imperialism, conquest and subjugation.
these are great. if anyone is interested in or already exploring the enterprise + AI opportunities shared, message me<p>alternatively find me on the founder matching platform: <a href="https://www.startupschool.org/cofounder-matching/candidate/tEBpP9KQt" rel="nofollow">https://www.startupschool.org/cofounder-matching/candidate/t...</a><p>for reference these are the ideas:
1/ New enterprise resource planning software (ERPs)
2/ AI to build enterprise software
3/ Better enterprise glue
4/ LLMs for manual back office processes in legacy enterprises
Are there any open-source tools or charts for modeling the tax liability for a pre-revenue startup that primarily is doing software development R&D with some number of employees and some amount of investment?
I’ve mentioned this one before but I would really like to see a startup make an attempt at prison reform. It’s not completely a technology problem but I do think there are ways in which a combination of technology and smarter segmentation of types of prisoners can work more toward rehabilitation and careers post-incarceration, while also supporting families and relationships.
> AI to build enterprise software<p>One idea is getting rid of backroom office workers, the other is to replace developers. Plenty of underlying sadism here.<p>Who will peruse Hacker News if no one is a software engineer?
> A way to end cancer<p>What they’re proposing here seems so doable. Certainly not EASY, but POSSIBLE. Companies tackling this problem could legitimately change the world.
The fact that YC overlooks the dire need for next-generation cybersecurity solutions is quite shocking. In the coming years, cybersecurity, trust, and safety will be essential needs of every customer and enterprise application. For example, the whole fiasco with the spread of fake Taylor Swift's nude images is just the beginning of the exploitation of internet data on an industrial scale. We can already see attempts to commercialize services similar to ransomware-as-a-service that, for a small amount of money, generate atrocious content about every possible person and spread it online automatically. We are on the edge of a new revolution that will bring malicious tools and services even closer to regular consumers and make them more affordable. I think that our cybersecurity tool chain is far from ready for what is coming.
“ L.L.MS FOR MANUAL BACK OFFICE PROCESSES IN LEGACY ENTERPRISES”<p>That one sounds more like a salesperson + consultant rather than a software startup.
"Eliminating middlemen in healthcare"<p>Unless YC is looking for a startup that lobbies against for-profit health insurance this is more like "eliminating middlemen and replacing them with our own in healthcare"<p>"Uber for healthcare" now pivoting to "OpenAI for healthcare"
Does no 4. include startups that are developing systems to protect innocent civilians from US weapons and drones used by Israelis to conduct their genocide? I'm certain it will have many sales and be a viable business or do they have to be in line with American and Israeli imperial aims?<p>Defense startups should not be normalized. If you are going to forcibly normalize it then don't pick sides as that's not good for business.
Regard Explainable AI ,I'm building a prompt sharing platform <a href="https://www.thepromptsquare.com" rel="nofollow">https://www.thepromptsquare.com</a>.<p>The idea is to provide a square where users can discover ,share, collaborate discuss on various chatGPT prompts and their corresponding outputs .
I submitted an application for w24 that fits in the "Developer tools inspired by existing internal tools" category but wasn't accepted. I suspect my pitch probably needed work, and I also haven't started building at all yet and submitted as a solo-founder which it seems has less chance of being accepted.<p>Here's the pitch and some details, in case anyone else is interested in the idea:<p>> Supportal uses AI to generate internal tooling for startups that enables founders to scale customer-support without having to rely on engineering resources.<p>> Given some simple input context like tech-stack and a database schema, Supportal uses AI to auto-generate internal tools which allow customer-support to easily answer questions about and take action on customer-data without needing help from an engineer.<p>> Supportal offers founders a fully-featured self or cloud-hosted web UI.<p>Retool (<a href="https://retool.com" rel="nofollow">https://retool.com</a>), Zapier (<a href="https://zapier.com" rel="nofollow">https://zapier.com</a>), Airtable (<a href="https://www.airtable.com" rel="nofollow">https://www.airtable.com</a>), Superblocks (<a href="https://www.superblocks.com" rel="nofollow">https://www.superblocks.com</a>), and Google AppSheet (<a href="https://about.appsheet.com" rel="nofollow">https://about.appsheet.com</a>) would likely be primary competitors, although their products require heavy user interaction to build internal tools either through composition in a WYSIWYG editor, low/no-code solutions, or integrations expertise using a full programming language.<p>Although I'm no longer there, we actually evaluated and/or used all of these tools at Pulley, so I've had first-hand experience with their friction and where the gaps exist that Supportal would fill.<p>These tools are also all targeted at integrations-experts who have the technical knowledge to write code and spend time building the tool they want.<p>Supportal aims to generate the tooling you need intelligently via AI introspection and get you up and running with useful command and query tools to help your customer-support team take action and gain insights without help from engineering right out of the box.<p>My most recent experience comes building internal tools for Pulley; I built the initial version of the internal tools in ~3 weeks and added features to it within Pulley over ~2 years. Roughly ~2-3 months of full-time work spread over that time period.<p>Features were added as we identified gaps in our support agents ability to answer questions and take action, which often required dedicated engineering resources to help with, leading to a productivity loss for both groups.<p>That said, I haven't actually built out anything that would _generate_ tools like this yet, but I've done enough adjacent work in the codegen/AI space in the last couple years that I feel confident I could put the pieces together.
Anyone else shocked the elephant in the room, AGI, wasn’t mentioned? First mover advantage on that announcement is going to be unspeakably potent, just culturally speaking. I imagine many on this path share my thoughts that early venture capital is a little unnecessary/outmoded in this context, but it’s still disheartening to be forgotten.<p>Did the YC folks have a falling out with OpenAI and disagree that AGI is here? Or maybe the opposite - they’re letting OpenAI take the industry uncontested… What’s the hacker news policy on casually floating (ill-informed) accusations of cartel activities? ;)<p>PS big laughs from me on seeing “cure cancer” halfway down a list of otherwise fairly capitalist short-term priorities. I’m sure they made that decision for a reason but I think the end result is a Freudian slip on behalf of our entire culture
In the back-office automation example is:<p>- Assessing applications for a mortgage or a business loan<p>Really? Are we really giving these things as prime examples of what LLMs can automate.<p>I do not want my mortgage application or business loan rejected because some un-auditable, non-deterministic, inference decided so.<p>The tech upper classes really are sheltered from the real impact on real people that trusting IT can have.<p>There's countless scandals of faulty algorithms (which are tractable) causing people real pain, often with suicides resulting.<p>Using a black-box inference machine instead is MUCH worse.
I find it strange that they would write "The hollowing out of US manufacturing has led to social and political division and left us in a precarious place geopolitically." And then suggest the answer to that is robotics and ML, which does nothing but exacerbate the social and political divisions - unless government and enterprise make the hard choices to provide a real safety net. And then, if we do that, it doesn't matter if the US is excelling in manufacturing as a source of revenue or not - providing revenue to fund these programs is coming in from somewhere, the source is far less important.
It's bizarre to me that Tesla gets cited as an exemplar for operating as an American manufacturer for physical goods, given that it's been the subject of numerous scandals regarding quality control of the physical components manufactured there, many of which I've found out about through this very site. If manufacturing comes back to the US in the form of more companies that operate like Tesla, I would guess that American-manufactured goods would come to be distrusted more<p>Of course, to put this solely on Tesla isn't completely fair. A lot of the problems with how Tesla does business are symptoms of the larger crisis in how businesses are run here, but I think that trying to bring manufacturing back without solving the corporate governance problems that make doing it well infeasible (and indeed caused a lot of the offshoring in the first place) is likely a fool's errand. Most businesses face little discipline on quality in the form of either regulation or competition (which tends to be eaten by mergers even when it arises), and intense pressure from investors to cut corners at every turn
Some real bangers on here, such as "new ERP" and "new defense technology" (ew) ... also seems crypto bros aren't quite dead yet.<p>Interesting to see that overall the VC ghouls seem a bit out of ideas on how to squeeze more cents out of a dollar.<p>The one thing on that list that remotely makes any sense is leveraging LLM tech to automate legacy manual processes. Scalability on that though, whew.
I am building a company that falls under two categories (commercial Open Source and developer tools based on internal tools), but I would never take YC money for it.<p>Because of that stake, they want an "exit" in some form, and the drive to that exit will pave the road to user-hostile software and make it the path of least resistance.
Just plain marketing. In reality they will invest in incremental startups of serial entrepreneurs or well known people in silicon valley.<p>They became traditional corporate long ago. Shows in their recent portfolio.
Do no evil unless there are massive profits.<p>YC is seeking startups for<p>"NEW WAR TECHNOLOGY"
Killing is our business.
and business is good.<p>Yes, what we need are startups focused on killing people in ever
more efficient ways, with the least amount of threat to our own
people.<p>Hopefully, we can invent a even more efficient way of genocide
by inventing something much stronger than a hydrogen bomb,
but with less radiation.
Friendly and looks good on TV.<p>The future so bright.
I gotta wear shades.<p>Many years ago, when the state was more honest the US had a "Department of War".<p>Which it ought to have kept given that few wars ( or "military conflicts") that the US engages in is about Defense of our home country.
Our patch of dirt.
Easy to see since they usually take place on a different continent.<p>In 1984 they call it "Department of Peace".<p>--------------<p>>NEW DEFENSE TECHNOLOGY
- Jared Friedman and Gustaf Alströmer<p>The US is now engaged in large-scale conflicts in several regions that threaten to change our world. While the US has historically led the world in defense technology, the defense contractors it depends on have grown slow and inefficient, bloated by decades of cost-plus contracts.<p>SpaceX showed the world that a private space company could be vastly more effective than the publicly-funded United Launch Alliance. New companies that sell to the DoD like Palantir and Anduril are showing that the same thing is true for defense tech.<p>Silicon Valley was born in the early 20th century as an R&D area for the US military. Early Silicon Valley companies were largely funded by the DoD and played a key role in WWII by building military radar, code-breaking equipment, and components for the atomic bomb.<p>This decade is the time to return Silicon Valley to these roots.
@Dang, and @SAMA<p>--<p>In this list without a single request for managing corruption in .gov, the senate, how we address world situations which difficulties are FN COMPOUNDED by the very tools youre asking for -- AND the fact that you claim Alignment is an important feature...<p>Palantir muc, inqtel much, every fn defense thing<p>Your list is literally CONfinment.<p>2. AI for defense == We can profit here.<p>5. Are you fn daft: East India Company, do you speak it? Show me how many hands you have. "<i>The UK became the world's richest country in the 19th century by being the workshop of the world.</i> Death, murder conquer brought this, not some hipster Build a Startup They Said.. meme claim"<p>10. Enterspiese resource mgmt ; so HR on AI jax? FUCK that.<p>15. DC much?<p>19. Ive built more hospitals than you can shake a stick at. This is a nuanced comment:<p>Eliminating the middleman in healthcare, your startup list will ONLY be medical records "disruptors" against EPIC and such and a boon to insurance - you cant kill the Pharma PornStars slinging pills. If you want to eliminate 'middlemen' - KILL PHARMA ADVERTISING AND PHARMA PILL PUSHING. (Source, I have designed built, implemented, commissioned and GO-LIVE more hospitals than you have been admitted to in your life. (this is a political issue, not a tech/pharma issue, per se -- the middlemen are the political policy makers and this is just a money hole)<p>Your RFS is written by grifter VCs who have no soul.<p>Prove me wrong.<p>I want technological improvement, but the nuanced self-serving focus of this RFS makes me want to puke (its not the what, its the how, and the complete abrogation of any sense of historic context on all the technological platforms that brought us here, and the lack of awareness by these requests...<p>These requests are NOT to inspire you - they are to feed their input....<p>When we heard AI was dangerous... think of a single one of the RFSs that do not include @sama.<p>-----<p>@Dang, and @SAMA<p>--<p>In this list without a single request for managing corruption in .gov, the senate, how we address world situations which difficulties are FN COMPOUNDED by the very tools youre asking for.<p>---<p>Where <i>EXACTLY</i> do <i>YOU</i> think we should be plannig for and that includes<p>SERIOUSLY<p>What are HN's motives.<p>------<p>Seriously
I can't believe that there's a US-supported genocide in Palestine and YC is advertising for "New defense tech". The most tone deaf thing I've ever seen
> Every week the YC Group Partners meet and discuss the current batch. One common area of discussion is ideas — what kind of ideas are these founders having the best luck with? Which ones are they pivoting away from?<p>How about: do you have any path to profitability, or you're still on the path to lose hundreds of millions of dollars per year or get sold to the highest bidder?
> BRING MANUFACTURING BACK TO AMERICA<p>That explains the admin on this forum throwing a "you're a nationalist!" at me recently, turns out I was ahead of the game on that (only that I was doing it for the wrong geo-political bloc)<p>> NEW DEFENSE TECHNOLOGY<p>Ooo, that certainly explains lots and lots of stuff, including the "warnings" whenever the comments don't support the correct geo-political bloc mentioned above.<p>All in all very interesting, turns out that YC and the money behind it has smelt where things are going and are following the likes of Eric Schmidt. Let's see what the time will tell.