Y Combinator Winter 2013 Demo Day, Batch 1: Meet Wevorce, FlightCar, Thalmic

Wow, this definitely is the strongest looking batch in recent memory. Interesting to see a few companies in the group that are or will be competing head-on with previous YC alums.<p>Airware is particularly exciting. There are a lot of parallels between today's hobby UAV market and the hobby PC market of decades past.<p>I love Circuitlab, but "the founders estimate their market to be $500 million, because of <i>CircuitLabs’ influence over which components the developers using the platform choose</i>" (emphasis mine) is annoying.<p>Fivetran seems pretty ambitious, but it will be very cool if they can make it work.

I'm worried about Airware. Checking out their site, they list (prominently) among other advertised features "Free of ITAR restrictions". First of all, I'm not sure such a thing can be claimed (due to the nature of the decisions as to whether specific technology or scientific arts count as arms).<p>It also looks like none of their products are particularly innovative in this space. 3D robotics, Ardupilot, Micropilot, Openpilot, ZeroUAV, VeiYu Tech have dozens of different products in this space. <a href="http://diydrones.com" rel="nofollow">http://diydrones.com</a> does a pretty good job tracking all of those.<p>Compared to the big commercial players: CloudCap's Piccolo and Kestrel APs, I don't see the value add. Major consumers of APs (&#62;100 units) tend to choose these because they're consistent and trusted. Building up clients trust in an AP is a very hard thing to gain (why should I risk my $250,000 experimental aircraft on your dinky little AP) and a <i>very</i> easy thing to lose.<p>I'm also curious how will AirWares OS and "Apps" will fit in the current airworthyness certification model, which has whether DO-178B compliance is on their roadmap. Maybe the answer is "that doesn't apply to us" just like ITAR? :)<p>Good luck to them, and good luck getting a CoA for anything with one of their products in it.

I've been using Bitnami VMs for years. Surprised to see them in a 'new startup' batch.

So I went down through the list, curious about what this batch looked like, figuring most of it would be social networking junk or suchlike but hopefully there should be a few gems in the list.<p>... and as far as I can see, it's actually pretty much all gems! Most of these are solving real problems, and even the print on demand T-shirts is something for which there seems to be an actual market.<p>So, congratulations to everyone involved and hopefully in a few years we'll be going "oh yeah, it was back in 2013 I first heard about..."

I think buildzoom is going to be big. I'm remodeling a condo in Florida, and it has been a nightmare to find contractors.<p>In fact on the flight on the way home I penciled out some ideas to improve this that aren't too different from what buildzoom is offering.<p>Edit: After reviewing my notes, one thing I considered was that for better or worse, a lot of the industry is under the table and transient. Maybe buildzoom will force the industry more into the open.

I see 4 very strong, smartly chosen brand names in this list: wevorce, fivetran, simplyinsured, errplane. But, wevorce wins this round.

Oh, I didn't realize Bitnami was taking part in YC. Enhorabuena, Daniel!

It seems a little strange that the TC article references DOS in two company descriptions (Airware, the "DOS of drones", and CircuitLab replacing "DOS-era tools").

I like this batch.<p>Getting lots of Apache errors in the listings on Zaranga - <a href="http://www.zaranga.com/" rel="nofollow">http://www.zaranga.com/</a>

As an ecom professional, fivetran is the most exciting to me.

I am of course preparing for the downvotes but the first two companies to me proffer the future of tech start ups.<p>Wevorce I really had to double check to be sure I was not reading an extended parody of the HN front page. Try saying "tech-powered standard for civilised divorce" without hearing Jon Stewart.<p>Then airware, already trying to turn UAVs into a app platform - UAVs are a big open frontier - but a hardware led one.<p>One company that is browser only - and is filling in the gaps left over from Web 1.0 and 2.0. And one that is driven by hardware. And while I cannot comment on the company- boy are they in a growth industry<p>I suppose I am saying that way back when, connecting the virtual to the physical was simple - music, text, video. We have taken the already connected and transformed it<p>Now we need to provide the connection to the physical as well as the application to drive the next generation - which means the next big waves need to come with dongles. Pycon beware.