The ideas from TechStars seem a lot more innovative than the YC ideas. YC companies all seem to be so 2007-2008, and the founders who make the news or ever get my attention all seem to be the same : 20-35 year old guys from somewhere in the U.S or U.K who went to some name brand college and already have something web 2.0 under their belt. There seems to be no promiment female founder, for example, or some guy from japan or some 50 year old jewish guy who has always been a baker or something like that.<p>That TechStars list far surpases anything that has come out of YC in terms of creativity or "newness".
ReTel is genius, if it actually works. I'm a little skeptical of something that comes out of three getting their MBAs (I don't know if they can code, but I assume someone there can if they got into TechStars), but it's a genuine business process issue.
I was reading this and thinking ... I wish someone had submitted some of these companies to HN. Some of those apps are very interesting and I think the discussion would have been too. Why haven't I heard about these apps before?
Wow I've actually just started working on something quite similar to the very first app listed here. It's somewhat discouraging to say the least. The travel social network market is rather large - there are a few existing sites that do an okay job at it and get fairly decent traffic numbers but none of them are clearly great. At least none were until I clicked on that link.<p>Edit: It's actually kind of odd for how nice the site is, it's virtually unfindable on Google. Even if it takes time to gain PageRank you could at least start advertising it with AdWords...