Six best start-ups from Y Combinator demo day

The writeup describes Wattvision as being "whole-house only". For all I know, that's true.<p>However, if it's got sufficient resolution to give "15 second" updates, it seems you could train it to recognize certain draws: holding everything else constant, turn individual items on at exact cues given by the software.<p>(The software might even be able to form hypotheses about individual draws before they're exactly named. Then the user just goes in and recognizes certain steps on the constructed timeline: "oh, yeah, that's the hallway light I turn on when I get home from work, and that's obviously the electric dryer, and this random thing must be the refrigerator compressor coming on and off through the night.")

Am I the only pessimist here? After being bombarded with "ideas are cheap" nonsense all I can see is the same old "share, sync, discover, publish" stuff re-packaged and re-wrapped with different version of rounded corners, peppered with the same old&#38;boring punches like "groundbreaking", "easy to use" and "disruptive" over and over again?<p>I mean come on, does anyone really believe that sharing a photo on the net is an unsolved problem?<p>Hey, here's an unsolved problem for you: endless signups everywhere - every single person who owns a computer will tell you that they're fucking tired of logging into gmail or yahoo mail or whatever, and "remember me" checkboxes work only for a little while. But sharing a photo online? I never heard anyone complaining: we all have multiple "Share!!!" buttons staring at us in iPhoto, Picasa, Vista, whatever and we don't give a flying fuck.<p>And how about millions of people screaming in pain who sit in front of their half-dead Windows machines, overloaded with spyware, malware, bloated slow registry and 8174 useless "services" running in background, slowing everything down, showing marketing messages from Logitech and overall ruining their everyday experience? Who's smart enough to solve that mess in 3 months?<p>Those obvious, screaming-in-your-face issues remain unsolved because they are <i>HARD</i> and, therefore, fall into a problematic category of problems that work against conventional "release often, release early" wisdom. After all, it seems like sending 140 characters to a list of subscribers can pass as a billion dollar technology, why bother with stupid Windows users?<p>Actually I believe that great, ambitious ideas are very, very rare and are, by far, the most important ingredient for a true innovation, for a true sustainable business. Great idea, more than anything else, separates Googles, Microsofts and Yahoos from thousands of tiny "widget" startups, focused on minimal coding and fastest time-to-flip, created and sold-or-died within two years, leaving everybody but the founders with nothing but lesser quality of personal lives, which makes their "change the world with us" hiring songs look kinda hilarious.<p>Ideas are priceless. If you are a programmer and you aren't "plugged" into the bubble money, a great idea is your only chance. Crappy-idea-great-execution companies are usually examples of networking/salesmanship skills, something programmers aren't terribly good at.<p>In the end, not a single YC-funded startup can compete with something like Mongrel, a one-man non-commercial effort which, when measured in value it brought into this world, or how much people wanted it, is what defines wealth, according to PG's own writings. I've been following YC-backed companies for more than 2 years and not a single one produced something I wanted. Come on, I am a computer-savvy, technology-loving, ad-blocking geek with a huge PC-per-capita ratio and a hefty tech gadget/software monthly budget, how come none of these startups managed to get a single dollar out of me? Am I alone asking myself this question?

I would say that no problem is ever "solved". So, while "me too" offerings are ever abundant, it's always gonna be a few that offer something that resonates on a greater level, and offers yet a better way sometimes in arenas that we don't even see as problems.<p>I also think that beyond the login issue -- the whole social network concept ultimately has to be pulled from being site-centric into being web-centric. The web itself in its entirety <i>is</i> my social network; and I bring different friend combos and profiles with me to the different places I go -- gracefully evolving these rather than constantly recreating them.<p>Certainly there needs to be a "lightly branded" API for friendship/profile but beyond that I think the missing piece is a best-of-breed UI that sites can be "inject" to leverage the API. Should only require a few lines of Javascript code to add a friendship system. FB Connect can be learned from in this ... paving that road -- it's limitation in my opinion is the heavy branding and assumption that we only will need 1 set of friends or 1 profile and. Of course ...the challenge is adoption... without the easy add injected UI, complete coverage of friendship and profile management ...a simple API alone or universal login system is not enough.

The one thing I'm not sure about foodoro is... I understand paying one shipping price if I'm buying from a food catalog. However, buying six things from six vendors gets expensive pretty quickly. (Ten dollars of shipping for three fairly lightweight items?)

I like thesixtyone. I wish we could start over with music and eliminate all non-free music from the world. Sure, there is the one or other old gem I am still attached to (Radiohead for example), but the sacrifice would be worth it.

Foodoro seems most clearly positioned to make money. Some of the others look like it's acquisition or bust.<p>It's nice to see that most are trying to charge for something.<p>It's easy to see how cloudkick could make money, especially since their competitors already charge for similar services. However, they should probably put out a pricing plan soon. It might even draw more interest to their company (a giffen good!) because potential customers might want to do business with a company that looks like it is making money and therefore stable.

Another thing people aren't factoring in is the rush YC gets from being the "great uncle" to all these startups. Incubators are in, they are popping up all over the country. They themselves are a biz model thats attractive to investors. Seed money into multiple projects, get a window seat on all the advancements.<p>YC is in the biz of banking potential IP.

That's a sad bunch of start ups. Nothing excites me and it has all been done already. If implemented, they'll just add to the noise of little apps that I'd have to invest time in. Oh yea...how are they going to acquire customers and make a profit?

Is there any video coverage of the event?

I have an idea. Please comment on it. Idea is about a personal info mgmt site. The system allows user to define any number of entity like Contact (Name,Address, Phone No, ..), CC-Txion Info (...) in easy steps (like online form creator but easier) and add data to it. Allows to download data (Excel) and cleanup the data if needed. Common search feature to search for info across all entities. Basically this system lies between Unstructured wiki (Easy) and Complex website generator (Online form/page builder) (Complex).