[HN Gopher] The YC Winter 2022 Batch
___________________________________________________________________
The YC Winter 2022 Batch
Author : todsacerdoti
Score : 110 points
Date : 2022-03-29 14:50 UTC (8 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.ycombinator.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.ycombinator.com)
| ankit219 wrote:
| > 55% of the batch raised money before YC
|
| At this point, it seems like YC is just optimizing on execution
| risk, and only care about those startups where market risk is
| eliminated (more or less). If someone has already invested in
| more than half the batch, YC's already has a pointer about a big
| well defined market (or expected to be), just needs a team which
| can execute well.
|
| People used to apply to YC because they would be able to get
| support without a network. If a startup has to raise funds before
| getting into YC, I don't know, just does not sound right.
|
| This may also be the reasoning behind accepting many startups on
| just basis of an idea(29%) provided they worked in big-tech or
| hot startups previously[1], and working on problems in Dev Tools
| and B2B Saas space (similar to problems they solved already, or
| seen). Market is defined, they are just looking for good
| executioners. (In dev tools and Startup related Saas tools,
| market is other companies of the batch on occasions.)
|
| [1]: YC indexes heavily on anyone from an Ivy League college, or
| who has worked at FAANG, or unicorn startups like Uber. Going
| through their companies list, ex-FAANG/Ivy leaguers building a
| dev tools (or planning to) is the most repeated pattern.
| dang wrote:
| With a sample that large you have to be careful not to draw
| conclusions too quickly. Just looking at the recent Launch HNs
| I see a bunch of startups that go way beyond just "execution
| risk":
|
| _Launch HN: Carbon Crusher (YC W22) - Carbon Negative Roads_ -
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30793076 - March 2022 (93
| comments)
|
| _Launch HN: Charge Robotics (YC S21) - Robots that build solar
| farms_ - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30780455 - March
| 2022 (79 comments)
|
| _Launch HN: AirMyne (YC W22) - Capturing CO2 from air at
| industrial scale_ -
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30712229 - March 2022 (192
| comments)
|
| _Launch HN: Living Carbon (YC W20) - Trees that capture and
| store more carbon_ -
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30672841 - March 2022 (256
| comments)
|
| _Launch HN: Micro Meat (YC S21) - Technology for scaling
| cultivated meat_ -
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30627418 - March 2022 (194
| comments)
|
| _Launch HN: Phase Biolabs (YC W22) - Converting CO2 to Carbon-
| Neutral Chemicals_ -
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30557288 - March 2022 (88
| comments)
|
| These all happen to be climate-related but I'm pretty sure
| that's just a coincidence. One thing's for sure, YC is just as
| interested in funding high-risk-high-potential-value startups
| as it ever was.
| ankit219 wrote:
| You may be right. I was drawing the conclusion from the stat
| about 55% prefunded startups, but that still leaves 45% w YC
| as first investor (45% of 414 is a sizeable 186). If you add
| 29% as only idea based, still leaves 66 at least which had
| product and YC as the first cheque. A couple of years ago
| that was close to the batch size. Probably in the absolute
| numbers, they are still funding those moonshots.
|
| Thanks for the list. Many seems very promising. So are some
| of the others like Andy which had a post yesterday.
| cinntaile wrote:
| Is there a Launch HN list button hidden somewhere? It would
| be handy to have one just like we have for Ask HN or Show HN.
|
| Edit: There is! https://news.ycombinator.com/lists
| dang wrote:
| Not really a button but yes, the list:
| https://news.ycombinator.com/launches.
| bko wrote:
| I was surprised by this:
|
| > 10% had more than $50k of monthly revenue when accepted
|
| If I had started a company that was bringing in 50k a month
| (600k a year), I would feel weird about being part of a group
| where 29% of the cohort is there on just an idea. Especially
| considering everyone gets the same deal. Surely 50k in monthly
| revenue is a better signal than someone that just has an idea
| and worked at some company before. I may be over stating its
| significance. Maybe those companies are movie pass business
| models, selling $10 bills for $5 so the revenue doesn't really
| mean anything
| lvl102 wrote:
| To be fair, it's ridiculously cheap to start something right
| now. Even 8-9 years ago, you only needed low six figures to
| jumpstart something. Now? I am pretty sure the biggest hurdle
| is opportunity cost for founders not the actual funding needs.
| This is referring to mostly SaaS of course.
| jedwhite wrote:
| We're in the current W22 batch with Andi. We raised a small
| amount of funding after getting accepted to YC but before the
| batch started. I would guess that is a non-trivial percent of
| the "raised money before YC".
|
| I think it's the other way around really. You're much more
| interesting to investors once you're in YC, not more
| interesting to YC once you have investors.
|
| We're not from Ivy League colleges (drop-outs). Never worked at
| FAANGs or unicorns. Not a dev tool. Definitely huge risk (new
| search engine taking on Google).
|
| I think YC cares about what they say they care about - making
| something people want. That's it. That's the secret. Having a
| small number (even 10s) of people who really love what you're
| making matters more than all the other signals you list.
| theptip wrote:
| Isn't this theory contradicted by the next bullet?
|
| > 29% of the batch were accepted with only an idea
|
| Perhaps the proportion that had already raised is because YC
| are writing more and bigger checks, which gets them access to
| "later-stage" (still early) companies.
| [deleted]
| gumby wrote:
| > At this point, it seems like YC is just optimizing on
| execution risk
|
| From YC's side the cash outlay is the same either way so why
| not put a lot of it into something lower risk?
|
| But what's more interesting to me is from the team's side:
| clearly they are spending a large amount of equity (<7%) in
| exchange for some networking and the opportunity to be on the
| stage on demo day. Seems very expensive, but if you have built
| a SaaS business away from the deep investor and customer pools,
| it could really be worth it.
| jasfi wrote:
| This stood out for me: "29% of the batch were accepted with only
| an idea". Kind of amazing!
|
| I'm seriously thinking of submitting my project:
| https://lxagi.com. I've written a lot of code, but I'm not quite
| sure of when/if to apply.
| dragosbulugean wrote:
| the deadline is gone, but I also applied after the deadline and
| got in.
|
| you should apply now!
| jasfi wrote:
| Thanks, I'll see if I can make it before the final deadline.
| I might be more organized by the next batch though.
| sixhobbits wrote:
| Just do it - it's a great exercise and as the stats show
| people usually take more than one shot to get in.
| jasfi wrote:
| I probably will. You're right, it might be worth it even
| if only to better my chances next time.
| georgesequeira wrote:
| it'd be interesting to know what kind of companies those are.
| Don't want to give people a false sense of hope with "Uber for
| x"
| beaconstudios wrote:
| could you explain what your project is? I didn't understand it
| from the splash page.
| jasfi wrote:
| I'm working on a better description. The end goal is human-
| level conversation and related use cases, but that is too far
| off. The 1st real use case is that you can give it sentences
| and it parses them to JSON that can be used to call APIs.
| Those API calls provide the answers.
| beaconstudios wrote:
| Hmm ok, so am I right in thinking that it would be used for
| natural language API integrations? Like a search-based
| interface or an Alexa Skills type thing? Interesting
| nonetheless - I'm unusually out of touch with the industry
| development of ML, despite it being extremely adjacent to
| my interests, so sometimes these ideas don't make immediate
| sense to me. Good luck in your endeavours, regardless!
| jasfi wrote:
| Yes, that's the idea.
| warent wrote:
| looks like a named entity recognition tool. Send some
| language and it parses it into actionable tokens
| shafyy wrote:
| Well, I guarantee you those idea-only founders either have some
| pedigree (Stanford, MIT, Facebook, etc.) or have started
| successful startups before.
| leetrout wrote:
| I bet you are right. Would love to see some kind of metric on
| this.
| donalhunt wrote:
| Read something recently that many serial entrepreneurs seek
| VC funding rather than fund the effort themselves (even when
| they have the cash to do so). Often the connections provided
| by a VC are just as important.
|
| Geoff from YC and Patrick from Stripe did a chat with an
| Irish audience late last week. One thing that resonated with
| me was the fact YC provided encouragement along the way when
| the Stripe founders were unsure the venture would work.
| mdorazio wrote:
| Has YCom published stats on % of _applicants_ coming from
| underrepresented groups? I 'm especially curious about the gender
| split given the 10% female founders number in this batch.
| jedberg wrote:
| In the past they have mentioned that the acceptance rate is
| pretty close to the application rate. That is why they focus a
| lot on recruiting underrepresented founders and getting them to
| apply.
| gnicholas wrote:
| Sincere question: Do people call ycombinator "YCom"? I've never
| heard this and have been living in SV since the mid-aughts.
| Mostly I hear "YC". Just did a quick google and I'm not seeing
| it there either.
| [deleted]
| simulate-me wrote:
| I'm sure many of these companies will be successful, but I'm
| underwhelmed by most companies on the list. The AI and biology-
| based companies seem the most interesting in that they're
| attempting to push the envelope forward. The rest seem to be some
| combination of:
|
| 1) Do X slightly better
|
| 2) Do X in new region Y
|
| 3) Do X using NFTs
|
| 4) Be a bank to those underserved by existing banks
|
| Obviously the point of these companies is to make money, not
| necessarily to push the technological boundary of human progress,
| but I miss being inspired by what YC was encouraging people to
| build.
| nostrebored wrote:
| I disagree here. I think this batch is actually extremely
| interesting for a few reasons.
|
| The B2B companies all seem to be providing non-incremental
| changes to industries.
|
| Seeing CX prioritized is something that makes me happy -- a
| large number of B2B companies have to build out
| undifferentiated CX tooling to help support large business
| teams that need to interact with their APIs.
|
| Cloud architecture management is also something that seems to
| have gotten some love. Existing tooling works on IAC to try to
| derive insights, but often these are artifacts created after a
| visual representation of the infrastructure. Skipping this hop
| and avoiding disconnects here is very interesting, and there
| are a lot of ways to extend the functionality of this tech.
|
| Further, there's some real-estate tech that has a chance to eat
| away at a large and unmodernized industry.
|
| Beyond B2B, expanding YC's footprint in Africa is something
| that has the potential to bring a lot of customer impact in an
| area that often functions differently than the rest of the
| world. Africa has been siloed off and developed tech in a
| radically different direction than the rest of the world. Just
| looking at the payments infrastructure in places like Nigeria,
| you can see why a barrage of companies would come out that seem
| similar but require completely different tech solutions. I'm
| excited to see how this moves forward, and happy that YC is
| going to help foster the tech ecosystem in places like Lagos.
|
| I do agree with you on Web3 investment though. I think it's
| mainly a waste.
| jsiaajdsdaa wrote:
| This is actually the main reason I haven't applied to YC. I can
| think of things that would be awesome if they were 10x better,
| but I feel they are either too ambitious (drone delivery),
| already being done (ai robot that packs boxes arbitrarily), or
| too difficult (general AI, jetpacks)
| joefigura wrote:
| YC has funded multiple companies drone delivery companies -
| Volansi, Pyka, Flirtey, etc., and they've also funded a
| jetpack company (Jetpack Aviation). Being too ambitious or
| too difficult is not an issue, and if you want to apply to YC
| you should
| jsiaajdsdaa wrote:
| Thanks so much for the reply, could you check out my
| message to the other user? Genuinely curious as I feel like
| I have good ideas, have delivered in the past, and can
| apply with working prototypes for my ideas.
|
| My main concerns are applying without solutions for
| legal/physical scalability.
| jedberg wrote:
| One of the things YC gets you is access to lawyers. And
| if their lawyers don't have the expertise you need, they
| can send you to one who does and you can use the money
| you get to pay said lawyers.
|
| The fact that you know you need lawyers you can't
| currently afford is a good start because it shows you're
| at least thinking about the problem.
| paulgb wrote:
| YC has funded a company building supersonic passenger jets
| (https://boomsupersonic.com/) and underwater mining robots
| (https://impossiblemining.com/), I don't think "too
| ambitious" is a problem for them if you can convince them
| that you're capable of delivering.
| jsiaajdsdaa wrote:
| Serious question, let's say that I have delivered or proven
| some prototype to users, but I am not already famous or
| rich or powerful.
|
| How would I convince YC that though I am technically gifted
| and people like my prototype, there is probably a founder
| out there elsewhere who has the ability to make the
| legal/manufacturing side of things work?
|
| Airbnb and Uber essentially disregarded local regulations
| and let things fall as they may. If you do that with the
| FCC or DOE I imagine things are a bit more serious?
|
| Most of the problems out there that need solving are not
| data ones anymore, they're physical/manufacturing related
| in my opinion.
| ahstilde wrote:
| FROM THE ARTICLE: > We strive to be a bridge for everyone
| - no matter who they are, where they live, or what
| demographic they belong to - to enter the startup world.
|
| That was the situation for me and many other I know. YC
| explicitly looks for overlooked founders and companies.
| They'll take risks other won't. They discount
| credentialism more than any other S-tier VC I know.
|
| FROM THE ABOVE: > let's say that I have delivered or
| proven some prototype to users, but I am not already
| famous or rich or powerful. How would I convince YC that
| though I am technically gifted and people like my
| prototype, there is probably a founder out there
| elsewhere who has the ability to make the
| legal/manufacturing side of things work?
|
| Keep demonstrating traction, and find that founder out
| there who can make it work.
|
| FROM THE ABOVE: > Airbnb and Uber essentially disregarded
| local regulations and let things fall as they may. If you
| do that with the FCC or DOE I imagine things are a bit
| more serious?
|
| That's after they had initial traction. YC accepted ABNB
| off of literal airbeds on people's floors.
| duped wrote:
| YC is one of the best ways to get funding and access to the
| highest tiers of investor and advisers. It's startup funding
| on easy mode, if you can get in. The rest of your batch
| doesn't really matter.
| hoofhearted wrote:
| Some stats that jumped out at me: - "we received 17,000
| applications from founders around the world and funded 414."
| That's a 2% acceptance rate for this batch. - "57% of the batch
| applied more than once."
| koolba wrote:
| > 26% of founders are underrepresented (which we define as Black,
| Latinx, or Women), and 36% of the companies have one or more
| underrepresented founder
|
| Does being in one of those groups give you an advantage when
| applying, a la affirmative action?
|
| Does anyone of Hispanic ancestry actually use the term "LatinX"?
| The Spanish language is explicitly gendered and there's no such
| thing.
| codegeek wrote:
| Asians: 18%. South Asians: 15%. A bit weird breakdown. Why not
| just say Asians are 33% ? Or does that not fit the narrative ?
| usaar333 wrote:
| That's a standard clustering within America. (The bigger
| problem is that they are applying US definitions/etc. to
| international companies)
| weeblewobble wrote:
| John Leguizamo used it at the Oscars the other night
| toomuchtodo wrote:
| The Oscars isn't a great cultural barometer.
|
| https://www.pewresearch.org/hispanic/2020/08/11/about-one-
| in...
|
| > However, for the population it is meant to describe, only
| 23% of U.S. adults who self-identify as Hispanic or Latino
| have heard of the term Latinx, and just 3% say they use it to
| describe themselves, according to a nationally
| representative, bilingual survey of U.S. Hispanic adults
| conducted in December 2019 by Pew Research Center.
| notsureaboutpg wrote:
| throwaway48516 wrote:
| [deleted]
| tannedNerd wrote:
| Ya it's pretty obvious whenever I see LatinX that they have
| zero Latino/Latina representation inside the company.
|
| I would be intrigued though has YC ever formally come out and
| said they are looking to increase diversity and thereby
| decrease the amount of Asian and White male founders they
| accept each batch?
|
| Also why does YC not report on LGBTQ stats for their founders
| then? Surely they are also underrepresented in the Startup
| world as well.
| daniel-cussen wrote:
| Yeah why not just say Latin? In Spanish only the very few
| most extreme people say words like "latinx" (but never
| "latinX") mainstream people say "latinos y latinas" or
| "latinas y latinos" or "latin@s." Some people still just say
| "latinos" always. But English is not a gendered language, so
| just drop the X. But then, if you do that, the game is over,
| you're not signaling how obedient you are to the machine,
| you're actually thinking for yourself. And you're not
| allowing it to tell you how to talk, which means you're not
| allowing it to tell you how to talk in your mind, ie think.
| Literal thought control. For every 10 times you use a word in
| your inner monologue, you'll use it in real life. But if you
| get fired from your sustenance of your life and dignity,
| literally no matter how much job security you had, you can't
| use that word in real life ever. So then you have to stop
| using that word in your mind. And that changes how you think,
| you start feeling pain when other people use that word, for
| when people who are entitled to say that word say it, or when
| they spell the letters out forcing you to create it in your
| head, pain pain pain.
|
| And I find it wrong that I can't remove slurs from my music.
| It's basic--if I can get cancelled for using a word, I can't
| sing it, I don't want to listen to absolutely any music which
| includes it. So for instance there's a song by an African
| musician, I think he's from West Africa, his name is Akon.
| Quite famous I believe. He created a song that was played
| frequently at dance halls and has a lot of musical merit. The
| song's name is "Sexy Bitch." I hate that word though, I can't
| stare at that word, it's so disgusting on so many different
| levels, for so many different people, in particular in this
| case because it's talking about women. And the chorus is
| like...I just can't write it. Instead, I found a sanitized
| version that is not disgusting and has all the same musical
| merit, called "Sexy Chick."
|
| Damn, she's a sexy chick, sexy chick, Damn, she's a sexy
| chick, damn girl!
|
| Damn, she's a sexy chick, sexy chick, Damn, she's a sexy
| chick, damn girl!
|
| But it's incredibly hard to find, only on iTunes, not on my
| Apple Music, not on my Youtube, super censored. Because Akon
| apparently has the right and obligation, because he's
| African, to be misogynistic, like that has more victim points
| than being a woman, and these media are so mysogynistic in
| actuality--regardless of their donations to nonprofits and
| shit--that they don't want people to have _even an
| alternative to listening to this man calling every woman on
| the dancefloor a bitch_. I have trouble figuring out to what
| degree his being African plays a role, I want to ignore it
| but the machine is pulling all the stops to make it blatant,
| but for sure it does, "Blurred Lines" was much milder and
| got into so much trouble. The song repeats the word "bitch"
| like thirty times, that word "bitch" is the payload of the
| beat, if you want to listen to the beat you are under strict
| orders from the machine to accept women being called bitches.
| It's disgusting.
|
| I emailed YCombinator about tokenism I think ten years ago,
| maybe 12, that they needed to throw the machine a bone in a
| couple of ways--this was before they ever talked about over-
| or under-representation, percentages of each type of founder,
| all of that--because the machine is like a bulldozer with a
| wrecking ball and you can't face it directly, only get it to
| hit at an angle. And if you do that, it'll cross by you,
| saying, "you best watch yourself."
| ad404b8a372f2b9 wrote:
| Also missing the disabled.
| tannedNerd wrote:
| 100% correct. I would love to see more detailed breakdowns
| of each founding team. % of elite vs non elite college,
| public vs private, how many founders are first gen
| immigrants, etc.
| usaar333 wrote:
| > Does being in one of those groups give you an advantage when
| applying, a la affirmative action?
|
| Probably not. What's really weird about it is that YC is
| international and they are applying US ethnic labels (and
| representation levels) to international companies. i.e. 54% of
| Latinx founded companies are in Latin America and 60% of Black-
| founded companies are in Africa. (per directory:
| https://www.ycombinator.com/companies?batch=w2020&batch=W22)
|
| Which means the underrepresented/overrepresented doesn't even
| make sense (except for US-facing political reasons). If you use
| the world population as your benchmark:
|
| * Latino founders are if anything slightly overrepresented (10%
| of world; 12% of founders)
|
| * South Asian founders should be considered underrepresented
| (22% of world; 15% of founders)
|
| * Assuming "Asian" means East or southeast Asia, such founders
| are also underrepresented (28% of world; 18% of founders)
|
| Alternatively, YC should do what universities do and only
| report ethnic data for American companies.
| vincentmarle wrote:
| It's a term that mostly white people (and John Leguizamo, for
| some reason) use.
|
| Same with folx.
| fernandotakai wrote:
| >Does anyone of Hispanic ancestry actually use the term
| "LatinX"? The Spanish language is explicitly gendered and
| there's no such thing.
|
| i'm latino and i (along with all my friends) absolutely hate
| the term latinx. it's american colonization.
|
| not only that but there's already a gender-neutral term for
| latinos in english: latin.
| orliesaurus wrote:
| Okay hear me out:
|
| Ycombinator was an unfair advantage back in the day 10ish years
| ago:
|
| - Incredible mentorship
|
| - Incredible network of angels / alumni
|
| - Incredible location to start a company - almost like a
| requirement
|
| Today:
|
| - Ok mentorship but most content can be found online
|
| - You literally can connect with anyone through LinkedIn and
| everyone's email/social is super simple to find - also people are
| way more eager to meet you than 5-10 years ago
|
| - Literally not a requirement anymore to work from SV to launch
| something successful!
|
| Is Ycombinator still an unfair advantage in 2022?
| clpm4j wrote:
| The pro's of YC are staggeringly overweight in comparison to
| the cons. You trade 7% of your mostly-worthless startup for
| $500k and the YC network? That's such an easy decision.
|
| You cannot literally connect with anyone through Linkedin or
| social media. It just doesn't work like that.
| batmansmk wrote:
| My company did YC in 2017. Raised $5M. Disconnected
| mentorship. Agreeable coaches with no industry insight.
|
| Since then, we folded, and started a new company. We didnt go
| for YC, but StartX and directly connect with funds such as
| First Round and others. We raised $12M, and not having YC in
| the cap table really helped our investors to dive in.
| yaseer wrote:
| Would you mind sharing which companies these were?
| orliesaurus wrote:
| What makes you say that you can connect to anyone on
| LinkedIn? You can purchase a premium LinkedIn account and
| craft a nice message and if you're actually a match for the
| expectation you can connect. Source: everyone I know receive
| messages from LinkedIn Premium users - they read at least the
| first sentence before discarding or accepting.
| mercutio2 wrote:
| Huh? All the good engineers I know send anything from
| LinkedIn straight to /dev/null, because of exactly the
| phenomenon you describe: anyone can pay Microsoft money to
| send them spam.
| orliesaurus wrote:
| not everyone's an engineer in the world - there's tons of
| sales and biz people that you can connect to ;)
| peanuty1 wrote:
| 7% seems like a great deal for some startups and a bad deal
| for others.
| agumonkey wrote:
| What would it take to rebalance the allocation ? more than 50% is
| for economic/finance sector. healthcare, climate is tiny. Is it a
| lack of ideas ? or problems too hard to solve ?
| umeshunni wrote:
| Healthcare and climate are not technology problems, but social
| and political problems. They're probably not suited for a tech
| accelerator.
| agumonkey wrote:
| I beg to differ partially. Having technological interest can
| also promote the topic in the eye of the public, which can
| influence political decisions. People vote for things they
| believe to be near-possible, not invisible.
| altharaz wrote:
| https://sievedata.com seems very promising, a search engine for
| videos, with specific tags, sounds like a very good idea.
|
| I'd like the same for all my photos and videos: that would be so
| much easier to find specific pictures by keywords
| leetrout wrote:
| Not really a new idea... a group called kPoint was doing
| something like this years ago but I am sure it is easier today.
|
| > kPoint scans every frame of every video so well that users
| can search through every spoken word or important text on
| screen to find precise points where a phrase was said or shown
|
| https://kpoint.com/blog/video-indexing-and-search-technology...
| obblekk wrote:
| 414 companies invested = ~25 companies per YC group partner
| (including visiting partners), assuming 40hrs/wk + no prior
| batches also competing for time.
|
| Seems like a phenomenal resource for those who are new to tech
| mindset/hyper growth/tech culture.
|
| That said, it seems largely not possible for a startup to get
| more than ~2 hours per partner per week. That's a lot from the
| perspective of an semi-experienced founder, but perhaps not a lot
| for someone with minimal experience, seeking more coaching.
|
| For other founders on HN, how much time do you take/get with your
| investors and advisors? Is their time undersupplied,
| oversupplied, or just right for you?
| Fede_V wrote:
| What a disappointment, so many NFT/crypto companies. Given
| current blockchain technology, this is something that straight up
| makes the world a worse place by making existing processes
| significantly more carbon intensive.
|
| I would consider working in crypto to be the equivalent of
| working for Juul or a tobacco company. Not quite as evil as
| working for a company that provides spyware that's used against
| human rights activists, but, the rung above that.
| jedberg wrote:
| That depends if they choose a proof-of-work or proof-of-stake
| blockchain. Proof-of-stake isn't all that energy intensive.
|
| And do you complain about the energy of credit cards vs cash?
| Technically cash is carbon negative since the cash itself is a
| carbon sink. So should we be pushing against credit cards
| because of all the servers it takes to process them and all the
| oil it takes to make the plastic?
|
| Or do the benefits perhaps outweigh the costs and provide other
| second order opportunities for energy savings?
| mlinsey wrote:
| doing just a quick search in the public directory, I found 24
| out of 394 companies are in crypto. That's a lot lower fraction
| than you'd expect given how much mindshare, hype, and attention
| crypto has now vs. other sectors.
|
| I am a crypto-skeptic, and consciously chose not to work on it
| myself, but I still wouldn't want any investor, especially one
| as early stage as YC, to categorically rule out a sector based
| on the impact of its _current_ technology, the state of the
| technology will be different when these companies have grown.
|
| Eg with respect to the carbon impact of crypto specifically,
| the current chains are very unscalable for the exact same
| reason that they consume lots of carbon; while the per-user
| stats look bad now, any world in which these companies are used
| at the scale of web 2.0 platforms is necessarily a world where
| the carbon footprint per user is many orders of magnitude
| lower.
| Fede_V wrote:
| I agree with your first point: 24 out of 394 is too many for
| my taste, but, given how hyped the sector is, it's not a huge
| amount.
|
| Per the second point, I actually completely disagree. I think
| there's huge social dynamics in play that make it harder to
| move away from proof of work because miners have massive
| amounts invested into mining equipment. We might see Ethereum
| move to PoS eventually (maybe) - but - that will be in spite
| of social dynamics and because some of the leaders are
| stubbornly trying to do the right thing.
| mlinsey wrote:
| I think in the scenario where miners block the move to PoS
| (or any other much-more-scalable technology) is a scenario
| where nobody ever actually uses crypto for anything, and
| almost all coins go to $0 after the speculative bubble
| pops. To be clear, I think that's certainly a possible
| world, maybe even the modal outcome.
|
| The alternative world, where we're using crypto to pay for
| everything, and we're no longer logging into twitter, but
| instead using our keys to log into a client for a globally
| distributed twitter where we own all our data on a
| blockchain - that's impossible without not just Eth2 but a
| several orders of magnitude of improvements beyond that.
|
| Basically, I think taking the current per-transaction
| carbon impacts, multiplying it by eg. Visa's transaction
| volume, and forecasting a world where crypto is burning
| 1,000X as much carbon as the whole transportation sector or
| whatever - is a fallacy. Crypto will either solve the
| scalability problem (and therefore consume a much more
| moderate amount of energy), or it won't be used at all.
| [deleted]
| eqmvii wrote:
| I feel the same way. A speaker at a conference recently
| referred to "Web3" as "controversial, but not going anywhere."
|
| I not only believe that's false, I'd like to actively
| contribute to falsifying it.
| nso wrote:
| What is the crypto killer? I still don't understand what the
| value proposition of crypto is (well at least one that can be
| said with a straight face or without magical thinking)
| yumraj wrote:
| > What is the crypto killer?
|
| Time.
| bradgessler wrote:
| This is like arguing circuit switching is more efficient than
| packet switching for voice. There's an account in the book, The
| Master Switch, where an AT&T exec shrugged off a demo of the
| internet in the 70's because packet switching was woefully
| inefficient. While true, it misses a much bigger picture that
| we now understand today.
|
| There's definitely lots of problems with NFT/crypto, but I'm
| pleased people are risking time and capital to explore if these
| ideas work. Hopefully the energy usage issues are addressed and
| the world emerges with an environmentally friendly blockchain
| that we can use for global consensus.
|
| I don't understand why people outright dismiss crypto/NFTs by
| comparing them to tobacco companies or outright banning it from
| conferences like Rails Conf. Yes, some crypto/NFT companies are
| scams, but so are many other non-crypto/NFT companies.
|
| What we should focus on are highlighting the crypto projects
| that are actually good so we can become smarter and more
| educated about the ways we might deploy this technology.
| beaconstudios wrote:
| Given we're heading into environmental crisis, I don't think
| it's morally defensible to promote a system which actively
| attempts to maximise energy consumed to the point of
| restarting coal power plants, in order to explore industries
| that have primarily been used for greater-fool and pump-and-
| dump wealth transfer. I haven't seen any examples where NFTs
| actually have use that isn't just "collectibles + massive
| energy waste", and the only uses I've seen for crypto outside
| scamming are avoiding legal barriers ie transferring money
| over borders, selling drugs, that type of thing.
|
| You'd need to put forward an argument for specific NFT or
| crypto tech that hinge on blockchains as a necessary
| component of the innovation, and I've literally never seen
| that. I've seen plenty of "thing X but on the blockchain",
| which is not innovation, it's branding.
|
| The fact of the matter, as far as I can see, is that NFTs and
| crypto are popular because they enable you to make tons of
| money grifting, without having to go through the
| inconvenience of providing any actually-useful innovation,
| while contributing to environmental destruction. It's like
| boiler-room penny stocks, if they were fuelled by coal-
| rolling.
| syntheweave wrote:
| There's quite a big elephant underneath this argument,
| which is the "zero utility in crypto" assumption. If
| utility exists then the question of energy use and
| externality is simply a matter of cost/benefit like
| everything else society does with resources.
|
| And then you go back to why the stuff was invented, and it
| was for exactly the thing that you're dismissing, which is
| to evade authorities and enhance privacy through
| cryptography. That is the utility Satoshi identified, and
| it drove initial adoption, and continues to be pursued
| through privacy coins. A zero utility stance amounts to
| "Satoshi had no justifications". The rest is negotiation of
| the price.
|
| Everything after that - copycat coins, distributed
| computation on Ethereum, NFTs and so on - is "what else can
| we do with this stuff", which is actually a much more
| challenging problem because it suggests no particular
| specification, hence the entire space is in the midst of a
| random walk in which features are developed with few
| concepts grounding our ability to determine whether they do
| the things we're imagining they do. The scams have a
| playground, but that's not actually different from
| capitalism in other times and places.
| beaconstudios wrote:
| I'm aware that there is utility in crypto in being
| ungovernable (though ideologically I only partially agree
| with that utility - I think tax evasion is immoral under
| the current system, for instance) but I'm saying the
| cost/benefit weighs massively in the cost side: not only
| the positive feedback loop of energy consumption, but the
| fraud, the wasting of skilled engineers' time building
| ever more elaborate scams, the empowerment of ancap types
| like Buterin, the enabling of actual immoral crime like
| ransome ward, just so so many negative utilities.
| Proponents don't even invest what I consider the actual
| upsides like remittance or harm reduction in buying drugs
| - they invest in get rich quick schemes. That should tell
| you where their priorities lie.
| e28eta wrote:
| > There's quite a big elephant underneath this argument,
| which is the "zero utility in crypto" assumption. If
| utility exists then the question of energy use and
| externality is simply a matter of cost/benefit like
| everything else society does with resources. And then you
| go back to why the stuff was invented, and it was for
| exactly the thing that you're dismissing, which is to
| evade authorities and enhance privacy through
| cryptography.
|
| Passing laws and then prosecuting offenders is a major
| way that society codifies what costs are acceptable and
| what's unacceptable.
|
| If you believe that offering an bypass around that
| control has utility (corrupt regimes, whatever), I don't
| think it's fair to handwave the really sticky part: how
| does society add controls so that we don't destroy the
| planet through runaway energy consumption, or end up with
| the smartest, most ruthless, and least ethical folks
| controlling all the resources.
| [deleted]
| throwaway1777 wrote:
| Fintech is in a crazy boom these days.
| [deleted]
| throwaway05112 wrote:
| artembugara wrote:
| > 10% had more than $50k of monthly revenue when accepted
|
| Wow!
| the_common_man wrote:
| that's amazing. why would one want to sell off 7% of the
| company at this point to YC? 50k will handsomely support a good
| sized team
| mdorazio wrote:
| Revenue is not profit. Especially early on, you're probably
| burning most or all of that just to make the money in the
| first place.
| ultimoo wrote:
| To be connected with people and resources for reaching $50M
| Kye wrote:
| Observations:
|
| "Plaid for..."[0] is a new one to me, but six companies have it
| in their one-line pitch.
|
| [0] The line, not Plaid.
|
| This seems neat:
| https://www.ycombinator.com/companies/impossible-mining
|
| "Underwater robotic vehicles that collect battery metals
| responsibly"
| ianbutler wrote:
| I'd love to get insight into which of the batch were the 29% that
| applied with just an idea and were accepted. I think it'd be
| interesting to see where they are super bullish versus maybe
| where they need to see some proving out or how those with just an
| idea presented themselves.
|
| I've been in the interview now 3-4 times and it's always fun (in
| the sense you will absolutely find out where you have weak
| points), but it's an absolute blitz that's over before you know
| it and you have to be absolutely on point. The amount of
| adrenaline you can work up for a 10minute conversation is
| surprisingly high.
|
| My point, is that I imagine those 29% have both really great
| ideas and are also incredibly sharp people.
| ilrwbwrkhv wrote:
| Best of luck to everyone!
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