[HN Gopher] YC: Requests for Startups
___________________________________________________________________
YC: Requests for Startups
Author : sarimkhalid
Score : 266 points
Date : 2024-02-14 16:31 UTC (6 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.ycombinator.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.ycombinator.com)
| paganel wrote:
| > BRING MANUFACTURING BACK TO AMERICA
|
| 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)
|
| > NEW DEFENSE TECHNOLOGY
|
| 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.
|
| 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.
| diggan wrote:
| > That explains the admin on this forum throwing a "you're a
| nationalist!" at me recently
|
| Are you referring to this?
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39315543 If so, it seems
| wildly unrelated to "BRING MANUFACTURING BACK TO AMERICA".
| goles wrote:
| Interesting, I have never seen this chinamod list before and
| it's undocumented[0][1][?].
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/chinamod
|
| Are there more?
|
| [0]https://github.com/minimaxir/hacker-news-undocumented
|
| [1]https://news.ycombinator.com/lists
|
| [?]https://www.google.com/search?q=site%3Anews.ycombinator.co
| m+...
| dang wrote:
| I put lists like that together sometimes to answer specific
| user questions--primarily when I can't use an HN Search
| link because there's no search query that's precise enough.
|
| That one stuck around because the perception that it
| corrects (of HN moderation being against $COUNTRY, where
| $COUNTRY = China in this case) shows up semi-regularly--as
| does the opposite perception, of course. These things
| always come in opposing pairs.
|
| As a side note, it's interesting to see how different users
| react to reading such a set of comments, i.e. comments that
| contradict their assumptions about how HN is moderated. In
| some cases the reaction is something like, "Wow, I had no
| idea - thanks for the information" and the person
| presumably goes on to adjust their priors. In other cases
| the reaction is a complex explanation of how none of that
| matters and the original perception remains intact, even
| though it's inaccurate.
| goles wrote:
| Ah that makes sense, as "see: 'by:dang [$topic]'" is a
| pretty frequent sight, thanks for the explaination.
|
| >It's interesting to see how different users react to
| reading such a set of comments...
|
| I've noticed this myself and I've always been surprised
| at the wide variety of users that fall into either of
| these buckets. You sort of expect this from new(er)
| accounts. But some of the arguments from created:
| ~2000's, karma: 20,000+ accounts in detached threads are
| wild.
|
| I suspect this comes from a lot of moderation actually
| being quite transparent, but not obvious. If one has any
| interest they can actually go learn a lot w.r.t.
| moderation. But zero information is forced unless one
| goes looking or eventually runs afoul.
|
| In the lack of a story, it's easy to invent a lot of
| assumptions about what is done and why. People inevitably
| see the invented assumptions of others and repeat them.
|
| Or perhaps there are some topics where its so close to
| home that any slight, real or perceived, makes it
| impossible to be reasoned with.
| paganel wrote:
| Yes, and yes, economic autarky (which is what this "let's
| bring industry back to America" thing actually is) is usually
| associated with nationalism and other such stuff (I
| personally call it Mussolinian, but someone may come and
| mention List, who was a 19th century German, so to each his
| own)
| bigbillheck wrote:
| > I personally call it Mussolinian
|
| Named after somebody better known for other ideas?
| dang wrote:
| I hadn't any idea that YC was going to say this when I replied
| to your comments the other day. Moderating HN doesn't leave any
| time to be plugged in on YC's internal plans.
|
| People often reach for an exotic explanation in their own case,
| but anyone who's familiar with HN's rules can see how your
| comments have been breaking them. It's just that simple.
|
| We don't care about your, or any other commenter's
| "geopolitics". It's all endlessly more tedious and obvious than
| that.
| duxup wrote:
| >Bring manufacturing back to America
|
| That one is interesting in that I wouldn't naturally think of
| manufacturing as a common start up idea.
| hef19898 wrote:
| Manufacturing is capital intensive to begin with. An dgiven how
| little the average HN crowd, assuming the average HN applicant
| is somehwat similar, knows about manufacturing, well, the
| answer to that can inly be AI? Right?
| duxup wrote:
| Yeah the AI line in there is interesting, it feels more than
| a little tacked on.
|
| I can't help but imagine some startup with limited
| manufacturing knowledge ultimately offering what is at best
| some incremental improvement in some process that isn't
| enough to support the start up.
|
| Or at least that's what I've seen from start ups entering
| areas that I've had experience in.
| hef19898 wrote:
| They really talked about ML-automated robotics in that
| blog... I swear, I dodn't read it before commenting.
|
| This line
|
| >> Companies like SpaceX and Tesla have trained an entire
| generation of engineers in how to build an American company
| that makes physical products but operates like a startup.
|
| is sending chills down my back so. After all, Tesla was
| almost bankcrupted by their drive to automate everything.
| And Tesla's robot is a guy in a spandex costume.
|
| After that, I refused to see what they have to say about
| their goal to de-thron SAP, aka their call for new ERP
| systems (nice touch to include the full name in the link
| and not kust the accronym, I am sure people able to
| theoretically build a new ERP from scratch appreciate the
| clarification...).
|
| Edit: Ok, I did click on the ERP link. No idea how they
| came to that conclusion here
|
| This type of software is so valuable and important that we
| can imagine that there is the opportunity for dozens of new
| massively successful vendors.
|
| considering they wrote the first sentence if it... At least
| they don't mention AI, LLM or ML...
| mjhay wrote:
| Whatever you say about the rest of that, dethroning SAP
| would be a noble goal.
| hef19898 wrote:
| I know that sentiment. Usually comes from people who
| either never worlkd with something else or only know SAP
| as some kind of hour booking and expense tool.
|
| If that is what you know about SAP and ERP systems, sure,
| you can come up with something like YC Call for Start-Up
| section on ERP systems.
| pyb wrote:
| It's very wide, most US HW startups could probably apply under
| this RFS
| rgrieselhuber wrote:
| 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.
| atlasunshrugged wrote:
| I think this was actually an idea that Palmer Luckey was
| exploring before Anduril took off. I also agree that there
| should be something done in the space but have no clear idea on
| a venture scale biz that doesn't end up being exploitative.
|
| https://twitter.com/PalmerLuckey/status/1530604281732116481?...
| LunaSea wrote:
| If you follow Palmer Luckey's business plan, wouldn't you
| need a huge initial investment to stay afloat during the
| first years before getting paid?
|
| (Not sure how long you would need to wait before getting
| paid?)
| duxup wrote:
| I wonder if this is a case where you could really facilitate a
| better outcome when government policy is not in your control?
|
| You can't make prisoner's lives better / post prison lives
| better IF the voters and politicians don't wish to / pay you to
| do so...
| toomuchtodo wrote:
| https://www.ameelio.org/ sort of followed this route with
| prison communications. Non profit startup, but needed policy as
| rocket fuel to nuke entrenched for profit incumbents. Prison
| reform feels much more weighted towards policy work, but
| perhaps I'm missing a path.
|
| https://hn.algolia.com/?q=ameelio
|
| https://old.reddit.com/r/IAmA/comments/hy70st/i_am_zo_orchin...
|
| https://www.npr.org/2023/01/01/1146370950/prison-phone-call-...
|
| > When the law goes into effect next month, Massachusetts will
| join Connecticut, California, Minnesota and Colorado in
| eliminating prisoner phone call fees.
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38454743 (citations)
|
| Commissary Club (formerly 70 Million Jobs) tried on the post
| incarceration jobs topic, but did not obtain traction (casualty
| of the pandemic).
|
| https://www.ycombinator.com/companies/commissary-club
|
| (some solutions simply cannot succeed when profit is a
| requirement; they require systems you throw money in and
| outcomes come out instead of profit)
| freedomben wrote:
| CTO of Ameelio here. Yes we are still working on it! You are
| right that policy is highly important. One of the biggest
| challenges we have faced with getting our video call system
| adopted, is the kickback system. Basically, for-profit
| incumbents charge _outrageous_ rates to incarcerated people
| and /or their family members, and then "kick back" some
| amount to the DoJ. In some cases, this is an important part
| of their budget, so even if they _want_ to switch to a non-
| profit provider like us (who doesn 't charge families or
| incarcerated people at all), they can't without inducing a
| budget crisis. That's a pretty tought sell, and the only way
| to fix that is with policy, which fortunately some states are
| doing.
|
| That said, there's still plenty that can be done without
| policy work, but it's a hard slog and requires a lot of legal
| work. Reviewing RFPs, submitting RFPs, integrating with the
| existing systems, implementing regulatory requirements, all
| while trying to keep the codebase and tech stack manageable
| with a small team and when contract periods can be multiple
| years long.
|
| It's going to take some time, but we're still going and still
| growing.
| yashap wrote:
| > A way to end cancer
|
| What they're proposing here seems so doable. Certainly not EASY,
| but POSSIBLE. Companies tackling this problem could legitimately
| change the world.
| hef19898 wrote:
| They do already as we speak.
| monero-xmr wrote:
| 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.
| dpflan wrote:
| Do you have some ideas for this request? What's a stablecoin
| development that's needed?
| monero-xmr wrote:
| With USDC and local fiat-crypto exchanges available in nearly
| every country, it is now possible to hire a truly global
| workforce and pay them with a crypto-payment vendor. If some
| company systematically went country by country, learned the
| local HR laws, partnered with the most trusted exchange, and
| then handled all accounting and taxes, a truly global HR and
| payment system could be built to make onboarding and paying
| everyone 10x simpler.
|
| Even better is the employees could keep most of their money
| in USDC and only convert to fiat when they need to pay bills.
| Now they have a dollar bank account and avoid local
| inflation.
| troupo wrote:
| So, you want a centralised trusted (trusted by whom?)
| entity to go in, do all that stuff and handle it in a
| centralised fashion, and work with centralised trusted (by
| whom?) entities to provide payment to people around the
| world.
|
| Definitely needs crypto. What a novel idea.
| monero-xmr wrote:
| Your general attitude is exactly the know-nothing, anti-
| crypto sentiment I was advocating against. I really don't
| want to get into a debate, the point of my business idea
| above was to solve a pain point around paying a global
| work force considering the costs of global wire transfers
| vs. instant USDC settlement.
| troupo wrote:
| Your response is exactly the trouble with all the crypto-
| proponents.
|
| As soon as their next idea is described in proper terms,
| they immediately devolve into insults, "you know nothing"
| and other "oh you're just a blind hater".
|
| > the point of my business idea above was to solve a pain
| point around paying a global work force considering the
| costs of global wire transfers
|
| How much do you think it will cost to "systematically go
| country by country, learned the local HR laws, partner
| with the most trusted exchange, and then handle all
| accounting and taxes"?
| ryandamm wrote:
| Even more to the point: what does crypto add in this
| scenario? Would the company be just as effective doing
| all that regulatory work, then handling settlement in
| local currency? (Or just using USD as the "stablecoin"?)
|
| The best business ideas I've heard for crypto inevitably
| don't need crypto.
| monero-xmr wrote:
| Countries want US dollars. They want dollars to use to
| buy goods, which are usually priced in USD, and for debt
| interest payments.
|
| Countries sell services (tourism) and goods (products and
| commodities) to earn dollars. However another major
| source is by creating their own local currency (i.e.
| Brazilian Reals), inflating it (5 to 10% common in
| Brazil), and banning citizens from holding foreign
| currency (i.e. citizens cannot hold USD). So if you want
| to pay someone in Brazil from the US, you send them USD,
| which is then stolen by the government and converted into
| shittier local currency (Reals).
|
| A better option, as employees I have in Brazil will
| attest, is you pay them in stablecoins (i.e. USDT or
| USDC) which they then convert at their own leisure to
| Reals when they need to pay bills. This allows them to
| earn interest on the stablecoins _and_ protects them from
| the shitty local fiat currency.
|
| This theft of wealth from citizens via the local shitty
| fiat currency is a global phenomena. See Argentina,
| Lebanon, Venezuela, Turkey, and on and on. This is a
| major driver of global stablecoin demand, because
| everyone wants USD, _especially_ retail, but until crypto
| the ability to receive and store USD was very limited by
| governments.
| crummy wrote:
| Could employers just pay USD to foreign workers who have
| something like a Wise account (i.e. to keep it in USD and
| convert it to their local currency at will)?
| monero-xmr wrote:
| The US is blessed with stable laws, individualism as an
| ethos, and a culture that asks for forgiveness over
| asking for permission. Corruption is less overt here.
|
| In less developed countries, it's the opposite. Wise and
| other centralized money transmission platforms are ripe
| targets to apply government pressure, with capital
| limits, currency conversion games, freezing accounts, and
| so on.
|
| Cryptocurrency inverts the whole process. Having a crypto
| wallet is like having an offshore bank account, or
| perhaps a vault in your house. You can also send money
| peer-to-peer over the internet very quickly. It's just
| like cash, except you can make purchases (even huge
| purchases) without needing the danger of physically
| holding a lot of money.
|
| Of course there are many downsides. You can be hacked,
| you can forget your password / seed phrase, you can send
| money to the wrong place, the whole thing is cumbersome.
| These downsides are being worked on in various ways, but
| there are some permanent downsides to holding bearer
| instruments that fiat accounts held by regulated
| financial institutions don't have.
|
| The downsides of countries like Venezuela, Lebanon, and
| Argentina for trying to build businesses and accumulate
| savings are larger than the downsides of cryptocurrency.
| Entrepreneurs and normal, everyday citizens are embracing
| crypto from the bottom-up because governments obviously
| hate the freedom crypto provides their citizens. It makes
| collecting taxes and doing the fiat-inflation theft game
| harder. It requires citizens to self-report rather than
| automatic-deduction, which reduces government revenue.
|
| Argentina is a de facto USD-based economy. All property
| purchases are conducted with United States $100 bills,
| with entire companies whose job is to safely transport a
| life savings' worth of cash to the real estate closing,
| where the cash is then scrupulously assessed for
| counterfeiting. In an economy like this, you can imagine
| how stablecoins can be useful, despite the cumbersome and
| risky nature. It's still 10 to 100x safer and better than
| suitcases of cash.
|
| > _In Argentina, most transactions are conducted using
| cash, primarily in the form of $100 US bills. This may
| seem somewhat traditional, but it 's the prevailing
| practice in this country._
|
| > _Particularly when purchasing property, you typically
| need to make your payment in US dollars because property
| prices are consistently quoted in this currency._
|
| > _You can opt to bring cash or utilize a financial
| service to obtain the required US dollars in cash,
| although this may involve a fee._
|
| > _So, if you 're planning a purchase, be prepared to
| carry a substantial amount of US dollar bills into the
| country, possibly up to $500,000. However, keep in mind
| that this process isn't straightforward, and you will
| likely incur a commission fee._
|
| https://thelatinvestor.com/blogs/news/buying-process-
| propert...
| troupo wrote:
| > Having a crypto wallet is like having an offshore bank
| account
|
| > It makes collecting taxes ... harder.
|
| How does that mesh with "If some company systematically
| went country by country, learned the local HR laws, ...
| and then handled all accounting and taxes"?
| troupo wrote:
| So you want to pay in dollars, but _at the same time_
| "figure out local laws and taxes" even though _at the
| same time_ local laws and taxes don 't allow payment in
| dollars...
| dpflan wrote:
| What does this part mean? "Now they have a dollar bank
| account and avoid local inflation." Because they have USDC
| as their payment currency?
| monero-xmr wrote:
| You can see my other comment
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39372942
| hef19898 wrote:
| Crypto exchanges are not work around for lical tax laws and
| visa requirements. It is true so, crypto solves that
| _problem_ , the same way it solves embargoes and money
| laundering _problems_.
| frfl wrote:
| A lot, or at least some, of the "hate" comes from the
| speculative, exploitative and get-rich-quick schemes, rather
| than the underlying technology behind it or any advancements.
| If you were able to separate the two, the socioeconomic and the
| technological aspects, I don't think the typical HN negative
| attitude would be as negative.
|
| As a concrete example, if someone posts an article about Merkle
| tree, it would get maybe 10-50 votes and 5 comments, and
| probably not much hate if any. Yet (according to wikipedia, I'm
| not into cryptocurrencies) it's a part of the underlying
| technology of "the Bitcoin and Ethereum peer-to-peer networks"
| troupo wrote:
| > The unwarranted hate on HN
|
| It's only "unwarranted" if you're willing to be blind to the
| entire history of crypto.
|
| > The crypto economy advances year after year,
|
| Yes, the speculation and scams in crypto grow year after year.
|
| > but you would never know it perusing HN.
|
| People don't only peruse HN. We've yet to see that amazing
| growing economy grow beyond speculative trading and scams [1]
|
| [1] Yes, there's a small part of crypto that helps people send
| money to sanctioned countries
| jsutton wrote:
| We get it, you don't like crypto. You would be better off
| leaving the snark and sarcasm at home if you want to get your
| points across without sounding bitter. Your last line
| completely contradicts the previous point you were trying to
| make-- it's clear to anyone that's paying attention that
| crypto economy has objectively grown beyond speculative
| trading and scams.
| troupo wrote:
| ad hominem, ad hominem, ad hominem, "it's clear to anyone".
|
| nope. it's not clear. and crypto-proponents who can't even
| show this beyond kindergarten-level name calling don't help
| atlasunshrugged wrote:
| 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.
| natpalmer1776 wrote:
| If I'm not mistaken the 'monetization model' (for founders /
| investors) in defense related investment looks significantly
| different due to the blurring of the line between public and
| private sector funding.
| htrp wrote:
| Lockheed/Boeing buys you and applies cost plus pricing.
|
| I assume that's how Anduril is going to end up.
| fakedang wrote:
| Palantir started with as much "seed capital" as OpenAI did,
| strong founder reps in tech - the one thing National Intel
| lacked back then, good contacts in the intelligence community
| and defense sector, and a practically untamed space back then.
| Same for Anduril. I don't see how YC's model is applicable to
| any of these spaces.
| oflannabhra wrote:
| Palmer Luckey and Anduril have about a 6 year head start.
|
| I agree that superiority is one of the best deterrents.
| snowmaker wrote:
| That's true. But I don't think revenue multiple is the right
| metric to look at.
|
| If you just look in terms of aggregate market cap, defense
| companies are some of the larger companies in the world - i.e.,
| Lockheed Martin is valued over $100B. That's a good sign that
| it's possible to build a big company in the space, which is all
| you need.
| hef19898 wrote:
| Every single defence company today is the result of decades
| of mergers and decades of Cold War peak defence budgets. Not
| even SoftBanknhas that amount of dough to repeat that.
|
| Lockheed Martin used to be Lockheed _and_ Martin, MDD used to
| be McDonnel _and_ Douglas, Northrop Gruman, well, you get it.
| Those companies were built, the were merged. And they are the
| first on the big defence budgets, and honestly also the only
| ones being able to deliver modern defence and weapon systems
| (regardless of delays and cost over runs).
| dragonwriter wrote:
| > Lockheed Martin used to be Lockheed and Martin
|
| Lockheed Martin was formed by the merger of Lockheed and
| Martin Marietta and Martin Marietta was formed by the
| merger of Martin and American-Marietta, and American-
| Marietta was formed by the merger of American Asphalt Paint
| Company and Marietta Paint and Color Company.
| hef19898 wrote:
| Thanks! Going down the rabbit hole of defence mergers is
| always fun!
| sailfast wrote:
| I couldn't tell if this was because of the stable revenue
| stream or because they care about changing things. Not sure
| Palantir is the best example here as they probably need a
| competitor already. Palantir was also funded by the
| intelligence community to solve a problem for them...
| gnicholas wrote:
| This list variously refers to AI, LLMs, and models. Any idea why
| it would use different terms where it does, and what each means?
| islewis wrote:
| I doubt there's much thought behind it, and just the fact that
| each "Request" is written by a different person.
| plaidfuji wrote:
| It's used mostly correctly in each case, and they have
| different meanings.
|
| AI is a marketing catch-all that encompasses technologies of a
| certain level of "how did they do that" automation that are
| generally understood to leverage machine learning models under
| the hood (but not always).
|
| LLMs are one class of ML models that operate in a text-in-text-
| out fashion.
|
| "Models" are more of a statistical/mathematical term that
| generally mean "anything that can make a prediction" - it's
| broader than just ML (eg climate models that are first-
| principles-based, not learned from data).
| byyoung3 wrote:
| models != startup
| imjonse wrote:
| how about models + a tailwind SaaS boilerplate? /s
| danielmarkbruce wrote:
| Valuable ones do.
| malermeister wrote:
| Some cool ideas here, but Garry Tan really can't be leading this
| organization after his death threats at elected officials.
| pyb wrote:
| If picking investors is a bit like a marriage, it's a bit
| scary. Who'd want to commit to having Garry in their cap table
| for the next 10 years? I say this as a potential applicant.
| monkin wrote:
| Everyone who values what Garry can bring to the table, so
| probably 99% of applicants. ;-)
| duxup wrote:
| I don't entirely disagree generally, but I suspect the answer
| is "people who want money" and that might be enough for many
| of them to bypass any potential concerns.
| 5cott0 wrote:
| "die slow" was just a request for more startup ideas to disrupt
| medicine
| google234123 wrote:
| If you believe that these elected officials have facilitated
| the deaths of 100s of people and the suffering of many more
| then... (btw I think they pretty much have fueled the drug and
| lawlessness epidemic in SF)
| malermeister wrote:
| Ironically, people like Garry have _actually_ fueled said
| epidemic, by contributing to ever-rising inequality, driving
| people to the streets, where they turn to crime and drugs.
| fakedang wrote:
| 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.
|
| 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.
| troupo wrote:
| > 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?
|
| 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?
| dang wrote:
| YC is about making something users want. That's the trailhead
| for all paths to profitability. So there's no conflict here.
|
| If you haven't made anything users want, then you might need to
| change your idea, and that's what that sentence is referring
| to.
| troupo wrote:
| > YC is about making something users want.
|
| Okay, let's assume that is true
|
| > That's the trailhead for all paths to profitability.
|
| You can open a list of YC's companies, and then find
| profitable ones. An eye opener.
|
| For those who are profitable _now_ , you can also look at how
| long they have existed, how long they have been profitable,
| and how long it will take them to break even considering
| those losses.
| scythe wrote:
| >New defense technology
|
| 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.
|
| 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.
|
| 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?
|
| It's extremely disappointing to see this.
| pc86 wrote:
| Countries need to defend themselves, and sometimes defend their
| allies, and not having had to defend yourself in the recent
| past does not mean you won't need to defend yourself in the
| near future. Having a robust, capable network of defensive
| technologies requires a lot of investment and a lot of people,
| and decades to build. You can't spin up a national defense
| overnight. The difference between defensive technology and
| offensive technology is very, very blurry even among people
| extremely familiar with the topic, which 99% of us here are
| not.
|
| Pretending any of these objective truths are wrong is folly and
| ignores a dozen millennia of human history.
|
| There will always be individuals/organizations/countries that
| don't the "the West" as an ally. Some subset of that will be
| outwardly hostile to Western ideology, and some subset of that
| will be willing and able to use violence as a means to their
| end. The fact that some Western countries have impressive
| militaries doesn't somehow mean they should stop investing in
| that technology.
| nonethewiser wrote:
| > If you want to build machines that kill people, you should at
| least be willing to say it clearly.
|
| Well maybe that's not at all what they're saying.
|
| Perhaps you could share what you consider the least extreme
| version of "building machines that kill people." Building
| missiles - OK yeah obviously. Improving satellites which are
| used for information gathering which could be used for missions
| where people are killed? Does that fall within "building
| machines that kill people?" What is the mildest example of
| something that constitutes "building machines that kill
| people?"
| google234123 wrote:
| It's funny how morally bankrupt you are. It's wrong to spend on
| defense but you want us to smile and embrace autocracy? If
| India assassinates our citizens you want us to smile and hug
| them?
| smashah wrote:
| People making returns for YC are now directly funding future
| startups which will be used to facilitate genocides.
|
| Sad day for YC.
| brettv2 wrote:
| > NEW ENTERPRISE RESOURCE PLANNING SOFTWARE
|
| 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.
|
| 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.
|
| 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.
| 5cott0 wrote:
| ERP market is way too complex and oversaturated for pretty much
| every vertical imaginable
| ibash wrote:
| I've met a few people who've been on the buyer side of an erp
| migration. It's a multi million dollar affair that takes years.
|
| Two approaches I can think of:
|
| 1. Target mid market or smaller and grow with customers (will
| be slow)
|
| 2. Take a front-door-wrapper approach
| samsolomon wrote:
| Or 3. Target a small slice of ERP/CRM tooling and gradually
| evolve into something more fully-featured.
| SteveNuts wrote:
| The problem is ERP needs to be _incredibly_ tightly
| integrated into the whole business from end-to-end.
|
| You can't only offer raw materials tracking, but not
| accounting and shipping. There's just not a lot of value to
| the business unless you have everything coupled.
|
| The MVP for an ERP is essentially, a fully featured and
| battle-tested system which is very expensive and time
| consuming to build before it's profitable.
| hobs wrote:
| Most companies that I know that did it right forked
| something that was already mostly working, built it in
| house for a client and then spun it off, or yeah, have
| billions of dollars and still make a fairly half assed
| solution.
| eitally wrote:
| That's strictly true for standard definitions of ERP, but
| it's a rare enterprise that doesn't already have adjacent
| software they've licensed to specifically support parts
| of their business. This could be freight & logistics, or
| warehouse management/inventory, or QA/Test, or RMA, or
| whatever. Convincing someone to move away from Oracle or
| SAP is a nonstarter for a startup. It worked several
| years ago for Netsuite, which advertised itself as the
| first "cloud native ERP" and was widely lauded for being
| so much more easily customizable than Oracle (so Oracle
| bought them in 2016).
|
| I don't think starting a new ERP company from scratch
| makes sense for anyone. The best you would likely do is
| to become either a minor player (just look at the array
| of CRMs that aren't Salesforce), tailored to a very
| specific market niche, or an "ERP adjacent" platform of
| some kind. That last bit is the obvious play. The bread &
| butter of Enterprise Applications IT departments around
| the world is to build custom stuff that inherits data
| from ERPs or feeds data into ERPs and similar mission
| critical business platforms. Speaking as a guy who ran
| one of these departments in an F250 for about ten years,
| most of what they build is pretty crappy.
| dragonwriter wrote:
| > The problem is ERP needs to be incredibly tightly
| integrated into the whole business from end-to-end.
|
| So you target firms that are not yet at the scale where
| they likely have or need ERP with something that does
| something they do need that would be integrated into an
| ERP when they get to that scale and build out from there.
|
| No one is buying an ERP from a firm that doesn't either
| already have a deep relationship with the buyer _or_ a
| track record in the ERP space _or_ a track record in an
| ERP-adjacent space, and more than one of those is
| desirable, so be in the position that when you start
| trying to sell an ERP you have at least the last plus a
| stable of firms for which you also have the first.
| CMCDragonkai wrote:
| The MVP for ERP is literally excel.
| marcosdumay wrote:
| Notice that excel is a huge product.
| hef19898 wrote:
| The days for this to work where back when SAP was young and
| ERPs the latest dosruptive tech. In order to repeat that,
| one has to wait for a new technology to replace ERP _as a
| whole_ , developing a new ERP simply doesn't cut it.
| fakedang wrote:
| ERP is a tough space to compete in, as you're fighting against
| SAP, Oracle, Microsoft, etc. I would say that ERP, CRM and
| Enterprise payments solutions are the few spaces that firms
| should not compete in - in a few years, these companies will be
| akin to COBOL for airlines.
| SteveNuts wrote:
| Step one is to make sure it's auditable.
|
| Every auditor on the planet is intimately familiar with how
| Oracle EBS and SAP do certain things.
|
| If you don't have that trust built up, a customer simply won't
| want to take the risk and additional headache and overhead
| passing an audit will take.
| briandear wrote:
| Sounds like there is the opportunity. An ERP that can
| eliminate the need for auditors. Then it won't matter what
| the auditors think. Auditing isn't some black magic. It's a
| set of rules. Rules a machine can follow.
| hef19898 wrote:
| A machine controlled by the audited company. Audits are
| there to minimize the risk of companies cooking the books.
|
| You never went through an audit, did you?
| sam0x17 wrote:
| another key thing is you need SOC 2 or ISO right out of the
| gate. We actually had to do that at Arist when they were seed
| stage because all the customers are literally FANG and fortune
| 500s which require such certifications to even do business with
| a vendor
| kfk wrote:
| Not a direct answer, but I am targeting data marts from ERPs
| and other Enterprise applications like CRMs. I think data marts
| (data warehouses) are very valuable but they are too expensive
| and hard to build, so an AI that could generate the sql for the
| marts directly from the apps could be very valuable. What do
| you think?
| hef19898 wrote:
| You already cannot map data automatically from one SAP instance
| to another, so forget auto migration. What usually happebs is,
| to keep the legacy system around for auditing purposes, and the
| live business happens in the new one. With cut-off dates per
| function and or department. With manually developed interfaces,
| and all the crap that comes with those, during the migartion
| period.
|
| An nothing of this has anything to do with SAP, and everything
| with ERPs and the messy reality of businesses.
| laser wrote:
| Why is it not entering the realm of possibility for the
| migration system to function not at an API layer but at the
| levels of pixels and OCR and RPA to click through every
| possible interface within the ERP to export and structure the
| legacy data to complete a total migration? Like humans
| copying over the data manually?
| hef19898 wrote:
| Because the migration has to be auditable. And the data
| fields between the systems / databases mapped against
| business processes, on both systems. _If_ you find a
| solution to automate that, cudos...
| arach wrote:
| would it be fair to suggest an automated migration
| solution (therefore less manual) might be more auditable
| than human driven?
|
| You'd probably start with a human in the loop solution
| but mapping should be a solvable problem
| hef19898 wrote:
| No, from my experience it wouldn't be fair to say that.
|
| There is a reason why migration projects are yearlong,
| multi million projects. Go through one, ideally multiple,
| of those first before looking at automating any of that.
| Added benefit, jobs at those projects pay incredibly well
| for the functional consultants involved. And when, when
| not if, automation doesn't work out, you still don't have
| to worry about a job ever again.
| arach wrote:
| it's complicated because it's complicated and the pay is
| good sounds like good white collar jobs about to get
| automated away
| hef19898 wrote:
| Serious question, what is your experience with ERP
| systems so far?
| noutella wrote:
| Https://pigment.com is an impressive example of a startup
| managing to address this market successfully.
| hef19898 wrote:
| That's not ERP so.
| sesm wrote:
| Start with a niche market and grow from there. For example, ERP
| for tech startups, so YC can recommend you to their companies.
| mamcx wrote:
| > Very curious if anyone knows how to pull this off.
|
| I work in this space (small/mid-size).
|
| The good news is that there are several "obvious" ways to pull
| this off because an ERP is the culmination of _everything_ a
| company needs and does. So almost anything you can imagine on
| the software is part of it.
|
| The bad news, and the reason everyone wants a solution, is that
| is truly a big space, and then you need E.V.E.R.Y.T.H.I.N.G.
|
| ---
|
| My take is to start from the bottom, and build a much better
| version of Access/FoxPro (https://tablam.org).
|
| Any medium/big ERP end being a specialized computing platform
| that _needs_ :
|
| - A programming language
|
| - A database engine
|
| - An orchestration engine
|
| - ELT engine
|
| - Auth
|
| - UI/Report builders
|
| And to be clear: NONE of the "programming language", "database
| engine", etc are a good fit today.
|
| NONE.
|
| This is the big thing, This is the reason (from a tech POW
| only) that most attempts fail.
|
| This is the secret of why Cobol rule(d): Is all of this! but is
| too old! (also, this is why SQL still is best: Is _almost_
| this).
|
| ---
|
| So, to pull this off, you need a team that knows what is
| "missing" from our current tools, makes a well-integrated
| package, and adds a "user-friendly" interface in a way that is
| palatable for the kind of user that uses excel (powerfully).
|
| Is not _that_ impossible. FoxPro was the best example of this
| kind of integrated solution.
|
| P.D: This is my life's dream, to make this truth!
| gscott wrote:
| I spent 8 years buidling and running a crm system as a solo
| project. (https://web.archive.org/web/20080706045541/http://o
| fficezill...). I agree without a programming language and
| database for users to build their own stuff in like
| Salesforce does any groupware/crm is doomed.
|
| But I think of the YC requirement more like build a Zapier
| and make your crm all an API. Use some sort of AI or business
| logic for users to glue it together.
|
| But at the end of the day you still would need to build out
| an internal programming language as well because it still
| would not be enough without it.
| RowanH wrote:
| The problems with ERP is (1) in order to be a big player you
| have to cater for so many use cases it starts becoming a
| glorified development tool without any room for providing
| actual ROI to the vertical that wants to buy it. (2) it's very,
| very easy to fall into the trap of saying "well, process x is
| really no different in industry y, we can adapt the ERP
| system". In reality there's so many nuances that the platform
| becomes compromise.
|
| Vertical specific software provides so much more value as you
| can build things unencumbered by the engine/data structures/way
| things work.
|
| I've found our niche - ERP's would be hopelessly expensive so
| save for top tier OE companies no one uses it. In weeks we can
| develop and roll out features & functionality that our clients
| just lap up that you would never in a million years build into
| an ERP platform, but is intrinsic to the delivery of our
| clients products.
|
| It was inconceivable to me 2 years ago, but now I've had very
| real discussions with some companies where they're looking at
| our software going "wow... you're going to give mid tier
| players better functionality that we could only dream of from
| our ERP systems.."
|
| Basically ERP platforms are "jack of all trades, master of
| none".
|
| In my former life we did vertical specific software for the
| window and door industry. Every time we heard from a prospect
| "oh we're looking at __some ERP platform__ to do configuration
| of W&D", we'd immediately list dozens of reasons why they would
| fail, and fail hard.. countless untold money to consulting
| teams has been burned learning those lessons.
| hawk_ wrote:
| > In weeks we can develop and roll out features &
| functionality that our clients just lap up that you would
| never in a million years build into an ERP platform
|
| Interesting. Just to make sure I understood this correctly,
| are you taking of a purpose built app/software for each such
| 'request' as opposed to this being some 'module'/'add-on' in
| an ERP suite?
| distantaidenn wrote:
| And we'll still see the next batch of YC companies being 90% SaaS
| and/or devtools (but this time with AI)!
| riemannzeta wrote:
| Anybody interested in talking to a potential customer for:
|
| * Developer tools inspired by existing internal tools
|
| * LLMs for manual back office processes in legacy enterprises
|
| 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.
|
| 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.
| onepaulmbw wrote:
| Hi, I'm interested in learning more, let's chat -
| onepaulmbw@gmail.com
| sethkim wrote:
| Hey - can you shoot an email to seth@skysight.cloud? Curious
| what you've seen.
| gavinhoward wrote:
| I am interested too! https://yzena.com/contact/
| deoxykev wrote:
| Hi there, I would be interested in a chat about those back-
| office patterns and use cases. Could you send an email to
| a2V2aW4gQCBkZW94eSAuIG5ldA==
| elpalek wrote:
| Would love to talk about the back-office processes. Let's
| connect via sam@instance.co.jp
| arach wrote:
| interested - @arach in twitter or arach@tchoupani.com
| jbverschoor wrote:
| Small comment about the "Stable Coins":
|
| > $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.
|
| 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.
|
| 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.
| brandnewlow wrote:
| Thanks for the note. Did not know about SDR.
| mxwsn wrote:
| Can SDR really be traded on demand by civilians with a
| smartphone or computer at any time of day anywhere in the world
| with internet? It doesn't seem so from a quick Google search,
| but I don't know. If not, it seems pretty clearly quite
| different from stablecoins operating on blockchains.
| hef19898 wrote:
| One sure can cash in on crypto, even today! Or so I am told
| in various YouTube get rich quick adds. And since YC is
| following the strategy of selling shovels during a gold rush,
| them promoting stablecoims makes perfect sense!
| jbverschoor wrote:
| You can't buy them as a normal person afaik. I learned about
| them during some boating / radio exams. They're (also) used
| to pay for satellite calls at sea, which I thought was
| interesting.
|
| A stablecoin (or any 'coin' for that matter) does not need a
| blockchain to fulfill its purpose.
|
| The interesting parts for me are:
|
| - It was created 2 years before the dollar officially lost
| the gold standard
|
| - It's a product of the IMF
|
| - It is seen as a reserve currency
|
| - It's 'stable' the sense that it's a basket of currencies
|
| - I don't think I've ever heard anybody talk about this
| during any blockchain / crypto / stablecoin event.
|
| I didn't look into how "stable" the coin actually has been
| over time. But I think it's good to look at the policies and
| thoughts from IMF's point of few as well as how countries
| deal with it. They have smart people there, so there's
| probably something we can learn from them.
| namdnay wrote:
| I can't help wonder what advantage a blockchain brings to this.
| At the end of the day if you're takings deposits and issuing
| claims on those deposits you're a bank. You can wave your hands
| all you want, regulators are going to catch up with you
| ericpauley wrote:
| Further, I don't know that I'd want to use a finance product
| from a backer that mixed up $17b and _$17T_.
| brandnewlow wrote:
| Fixed. Thanks!
| vishnumohandas wrote:
| Related: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39369766
| dang wrote:
| Merged hither. Thanks!
| ChicagoBoy11 wrote:
| 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).
|
| 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.
|
| I'm curious what YCs thinking is, and if perhaps they just feel
| no one has earnestly taken it on yet?
| sroussey wrote:
| Augmedix was built off Google Glass, and is a public company.
| Not a unicorn though.
| siyinghz wrote:
| Hi there, I wrote this RFP. We like to back strong technical
| founders, and some may be interested in working in AR/VR like I
| did years ago. You are right that the software is lacking which
| is more of an opportunity. Wrt with the market, yes, it is
| still very nascent, so founders working on this space have to
| be be very excited and inherently believe in it in the long
| run.
| hazeii wrote:
| Technical founder in the VR/AR space here. Not in a rush so
| have discounted YC in the past, still may be worth a short
| chat. Use the "Apply" link on the RFS page?
| brandensilva wrote:
| I think the larger dev ecosystem has created a bit of backlash
| against the big players for some time and aren't quick to adopt
| the new tech they are dishing out. I would guess taking a 30%
| cut, lawsuits, and unfair terms has left a sour taste in
| everyone's mouth.
|
| And it wasn't until competition stepped up with an indie dev,
| aka a YouTube VR app called Juno made for the Vision Pro, that
| even Google decided to jump into developing YouTube for the
| Vision Pro.
|
| So now we are back at the chicken and the egg problem and few
| big devs want to support the giants. It'll happen probably
| eventually when monetization becomes a reality for devs
| embracing the tech but I don't see it happening any time soon.
| divbzero wrote:
| > _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 wonder how many YC startups joined due to a past RFS and went
| on to be successful.
|
| 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.
| gavmor wrote:
| Seems perfectly fitting. These ideas give a good team
| "permission" to believe in themselves. People who think they
| need "the right idea" might be stuck in the Alignment Trap,
| from which _any_ execution engine is the exit.
| hef19898 wrote:
| Lookong at some of the stuff on the YC list, well, ignorance
| is bliss I guess. But whatever helps you to get running and
| successfully pivot to something actually realistic.
| throwaway4good wrote:
| New defense technology
|
| Bring manufacturing back to America
|
| New space companies
|
| Careful not shooting yourself in the foot there ...
| throwaway4good wrote:
| YC has a solid brand that enables it to get capital and talent
| from all over the world - venturing into areas that are deeply
| divisive for a hot dollar may just cut that off.
| gavinhoward wrote:
| 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.
|
| 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.
| Bagged2347 wrote:
| I'll bite, I'm interested in the OSS dev tools field and I
| agree with your stance on investment money tending to corrupt
| good products. It's a big trade off. What are you working on?
| Do you have a website to share? Is it just you right now or do
| you have partners or employees?
| gavinhoward wrote:
| I am surprised at the interest, thank you!
|
| One note: technically my software isn't quite Open Source;
| it's source available. [0]
|
| I will have my first release in less than two months,
| hopefully. It will include a scripting language and a build
| system.
|
| If the language gets interest, I'll expand it and build the
| standard library.
|
| If the build system gets interest, I will expand it. The end
| goal is Nix for mere mortals.
|
| If neither gets interest, I will have to move to my next
| idea: VCS with project management and that handles large,
| binary files.
|
| Beyond that, we'll see.
|
| I have a business website, but not yet for those projects. I
| will at release, including tutorials.
|
| You can read an old commit of design docs at [1], [2], and
| [3].
|
| It's just me; I want to run my business like Hwaci, the
| SQLite guys. That also reduces overhead and will let me
| provide excellent support [4] for paying clients.
|
| [0]: https://gavinhoward.com/2023/12/is-source-available-
| really-t...
|
| [1]:
| https://git.yzena.com/Yzena/Yc/src/branch/master/docs/yao
|
| [2]:
| https://git.yzena.com/Yzena/Yc/src/branch/master/docs/rig
|
| [3]:
| https://git.yzena.com/Yzena/Yc/src/branch/master/docs/yar
|
| [4]: https://github.com/gavinhoward/bc/issues/66
| ushakov wrote:
| Why would anyone pay for what you're building? SQLite is
| not a business model anyone in the world could meaningfully
| replicate, don't hope for it.
| gavinhoward wrote:
| You may be right.
|
| However, there are rumblings that standards and liability
| will be imposed on the industry.
|
| In that case, I would be well-positioned as someone who
| could accept that liability for a price. Your run-of-the-
| mill build system created by volunteers? Not so much.
| fakedang wrote:
| I don't know, I would argue that YC might be the best place for
| Open Source and Dev Tools, because you start along with a large
| cohort of former and current YC startups who will be willing to
| try out your product. Plus the YC partners actually have
| experience in working with successful companies in this space,
| so that's actually equity that they would deserve.
|
| That being said, dev tools is one of the sectors they have
| stopped funding, seemingly.
| gavinhoward wrote:
| I actually agree with you that YC is a good value for their
| founders. That network and experience are worth their weight
| in gold.
|
| I am just different; I don't want gold. I want:
|
| * Sufficient money for my needs and no more.
|
| * To change the industry towards professional standards. [1]
| [2]
|
| [1]: https://gavinhoward.com/2023/11/how-to-fund-foss-save-
| it-fro...
|
| [2]: https://gavinhoward.com/2022/10/we-must-professionalize-
| prog...
| candiddevmike wrote:
| For good reason: most of the dev tools companies have been
| commercial duds. Lots of traction/GitHub stars maybe, but
| none of those amounted to real sales.
| eschneider wrote:
| There's often good money to be made in dev tools, but it's
| not always VC-level money.
| n2d4 wrote:
| I was in one of the recent batches and they definitely didn't
| stop funding devtools. In fact, it felt like we were
| encouraged to pivot into the devtools space by some of the
| group partners.
| hipadev23 wrote:
| > Because of that stake, they want an "exit" in some form
|
| Every single entity who invests in your company wants an exit.
| gavinhoward wrote:
| You are absolutely right.
|
| I am bootstrapping. I own 100% of the company.
| herpdyderp wrote:
| Morally I agree with you.
|
| My wallet unfortunately does not.
| gavinhoward wrote:
| And I don't blame you!
|
| Bootstrapping is hard, and I know that I am lucky to be
| able to...thus far.
|
| If the world would still be net better off with the VC-
| backed software, and it wouldn't get made any other way,
| I don't think it would be immoral to take it, so long as
| effort is made to follow the harder path.
| sesm wrote:
| This depends on type of stock, old-fashioned stock had
| dividends, so investors were interested in profit rather than
| liquidity event.
| gavmor wrote:
| You don't think you're cutting off your nose to spite your
| face? Maybe all those user-hostile features are a small price
| to pay for the resources to ship the "vital few" that are
| positively game-changing for your customers. For me, it's an
| open question.
| gavinhoward wrote:
| You have a point. May I give my experience?
|
| I have spent years building my stack. This stack gives me
| extreme velocity.
|
| For example, I built my own localization. I query the OS for
| the locale, but beyond that, everything is mine. This allows
| me to make more assumptions and move faster.
|
| In addition, this allows me to cull tech debt aggressively.
| [1] After years of this, when other codebases are molasses,
| mine is clean and easy to extend.
|
| In other words, I did the hard work upfront, _before_ getting
| clients. I hope this will give me the ability to add the
| "vital few" with few resources.
|
| [1]: https://gavinhoward.com/2023/12/code-is-not-technical-
| debt/
| amadeuspagel wrote:
| I've been thinking about whether investors should be consumer
| brands, to develop a reputation accross different companies, to
| encourage the companies they invest in to put ethics above
| profit to maintain that reputation.
| n2d4 wrote:
| I'll just put my two cents as a YC alum here -- I never felt
| pressured to "do an exit", and YC is probably one of the least
| pushing investors in that field by a margin.
|
| Though, a lot of advice given to YC companies is on how to
| build big companies that scale (unicorn+), so if you don't plan
| on doing that, you may not get very much out of the program.
| gavinhoward wrote:
| That is good to know.
|
| I do admit that I don't want a unicorn either, so YC wouldn't
| be a good fit.
| roflyear wrote:
| Yeah. YC acts like they are doing you a favor? Come on. They
| basically give these companies nothing in exchange for a huge
| stake.
| dang wrote:
| YC's idea is to optimize for helping founders. That means
| supporting what the founders want If they don't want to exit,
| YC's not going to pressure them.
|
| This works out well because it's the global optimum. YC has
| much more success optimizing for helping founders than it would
| by trying to squeeze individual lemons.
| gavinhoward wrote:
| I hope that is true, and a sibling comment to yours suggests
| it is.
|
| That said, that sibling comnent suggests that YC is for
| potential unicorns, and I don't want that either. So YC is
| not for me.
|
| Though I will say nothing wrong with unicorns per se.
| zug_zug wrote:
| 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.
|
| 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.
| dang wrote:
| I don't know how other investors operate but if YC sees a good
| founder working on something they don't care about, just
| because they think investors want them to work on it, they'd
| almost certainly tell them to switch to something they do care
| about.
|
| pg's most frequent advice to founders about ideas is to ask
| themselves what they themselves wish would exist, then make
| that--i.e. solve a problem you yourself have. Another thing he
| and Jessica say a lot is that you need to be passionate about
| what you're working on in order to make it through the arduous
| haul of a startup.
|
| That's even more true of the 'moonshot' startups, since they're
| harder and take longer. If you look at the hardest startups YC
| has invested in, you won't find many founders who aren't
| personally obsessed with what they're working on, and have been
| for many years. That's one of the things YC would be looking
| for before funding somebody to work on such things.
| duped wrote:
| VC is for moonshots. Bootstrapping and debt are for everything
| else.
| realty_geek wrote:
| 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.
| otteromkram wrote:
| > AI to build enterprise software
|
| One idea is getting rid of backroom office workers, the other is
| to replace developers. Plenty of underlying sadism here.
|
| Who will peruse Hacker News if no one is a software engineer?
| notpachet wrote:
| The OpenAI web scraper.
| amadeuspagel wrote:
| Intellectually curious people.
| itsdavesanders wrote:
| 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.
| renewiltord wrote:
| Well, the point isn't to stop the social and political
| division. The point is stop the geopolitical precariousness.
|
| > _My paramount object in this struggle is to save the Union,
| and is not either to save or to destroy slavery. If I could
| save the Union without freeing any slave I would do it, and if
| I could save it by freeing all the slaves I would do it; and if
| I could save it by freeing some and leaving others alone, I
| would also do that._
| mamidon wrote:
| I would suggest that our geopolitical precariousness comes
| from our social divisions. I doubt Russia, China, or anyone
| else will ever be able to invade.
|
| But if the losers of globalism keep getting purposefully
| shortchanged I can more easily foresee them deciding to
| change the system by force.
|
| I don't think that's a terribly likely outcome, but much more
| likely than Red Dawn.
| 23B1 wrote:
| Our social divisions means they don't have to invade in
| order to unseat the U.S. as a global superpower.
| prisenco wrote:
| There are two factors to consider though.
|
| On the one hand, you're correct that it does nothing for the
| American worker to bring manufacturing back if it means huge
| buildings with skeleton crews and machines that effectively run
| themselves. I don't particularly have a solution for this.
| Americans have gotten used to the price of goods being
| artificially low because of inexpensive labor in impoverished
| countries. Unless we want to take a manufacturing approach akin
| to Germany or the Nordic countries, focusing on high quality
| precision built or luxury items, we simply can't produce goods
| at commodity prices while both paying people enough to live
| well on _and_ producing the kind of profit that is required by
| investors. So that 's where YC sees machines as solving that
| conflict, at no benefit to working people.
|
| That said, there is the advantage that we have seen how fragile
| the global JIT supply chain is to disruptions. Either
| political, environmental or just plain Acts of God like COVID.
| Having goods produced much closer to where they're consumed is
| something I think every country needs to invest in. Especially
| for goods that aren't just nice-to-haves but necessary for
| basic functioning of society. Things like construction and
| repair materials, medicines, medical devices, etc. I support
| building up a greater local resilience over global dependence,
| especially what with climate change on the horizon.
|
| I wish we could do this in a way that meant good blue collar
| jobs with strong benefits and union wages. But you can't ever
| expect a investors YC to take that path.
| bradgessler wrote:
| > On the one hand, you're correct that it does nothing for
| the American worker to bring manufacturing back if it means
| huge buildings with skeleton crews and machines that
| effectively run themselves.
|
| This seems analogous to the transition from bespoke
| manufacturing of goods to mass production.
|
| I think what we need is leadership that can get people
| excited, in good faith, about a future where small groups of
| people can produce goods for orders of magnitude less
| capital, effort, etc. with robotics, ML, and other tech.
|
| Today a popular dystopian narrative of tech is that it's
| being deployed by the elite to enrich themselves and build
| moats around their fiefdoms. Feudalism doesn't get
| pluralities excited. How can that mainstream narrative be
| changed in a manner that makes people clearly understand how
| they can be a beneficiary instead of an exploit?
| KittenInABox wrote:
| > Feudalism doesn't get pluralities excited, so how does
| that mainstream narrative change in a manner that feels
| like everybody is part of the journey instead of an
| exploit?
|
| The problem is not the need for a _narrative_ change. The
| need is _actual change_.
| bradgessler wrote:
| "Actual change" implies that all tech is complicit in
| feudalism, which isn't categorically true. That doesn't
| matter though because enough tech companies have engaged
| in activities that lead to the narratives we regularly
| see today.
|
| Yes, there is "actual change" that's needed by a lot of
| actors in tech, but that alone won't be enough. Ideally
| we see both "actual change" and "narrative change" happen
| in tandem that get people excited about the future.
| snapcaster wrote:
| Is the narrative incorrect though? I feel like the
| underlying situation is described pretty well by that
| narrative in most cases. Inequality has increased pretty
| massively since tech has taken over the economy
|
| Maybe take a crack at it, what is incorrect with the
| "feudalism" narrative? what is the better way of framing it
| that you're implying exists?
| bradgessler wrote:
| It's both correct and incorrect at the same time and both
| "sides" are "right".
|
| Let's look at "Inequality has increased pretty
| massively". One anecdote paints a picture of billionaires
| getting richer and wages of the working class stagnating.
| Another narrative paints the opposite picture that tech
| has brought billions of people out of extreme poverty
| over the past few decades. Both are true and can be
| supported by data.
|
| I haven't quite put it into words yet, but I think the
| key to a narrative that gets people excited about the
| future is one that makes it very concrete how people will
| benefit.
|
| I do regularly see gaps that I find unsatisfying, which I
| think is a better place for me to start so I'll take a
| crack at that:x
|
| Often I see tech people saying things like, "in the
| future we'll be doing amazing things that we can't even
| imagine yet". This scares the hell out of people who
| don't understand tech. We need more people to understand
| tech, but I'm not sure how. Education seems like a
| logical place to start, which gets into very complicated
| socioeconomic factors.
|
| Another thing I've seen lately is e/acc disparaging
| opponents as "deccels". Regardless of that being true or
| not, it's not going to get people excited about the
| future and instead builds up a group of antagonists. That
| said, I'm not sure if e/acc is trying to be a diplomatic
| or political movement, but I think improving the
| messaging here would be helpful.
|
| I think about this a lot and hope to one day put into
| words a more satisfying answer to this problem.
| snapcaster wrote:
| I see what you mean, I will say that in people's lived
| day to day experience and happiness relative wealth
| matters a lot. I'm not sure it's fair to say both are
| "right" in the sense of you're just talking about
| different groups of people.
|
| If people are more wealthy on some kind of absolute scale
| but they can no longer have the financial security to
| compete and secure a mate they're probably not going to
| be happy about it regardless of what underlying material
| net increases have been.
|
| For example, I think if you're a white man in US
| (probably true for other groups just don't want to speak
| on things I don't have much experience with) and you
| aren't into education or computers you're _correct_ to be
| anti-tech. All it will mean is continuing degradation in
| your quality of life and feelings of self worth
| animal_spirits wrote:
| I think this is an interesting take and something I've been
| relatively close to personally. I have a family member who
| owns one of those 100k Brother CNC machines, a robotic arm
| and some vice clamps and is starting a small manufacturing
| business with it out of his garage. While this isn't
| something that an average American can do, it can allow
| distribution of manufacturing to places that don't need a
| 500 acre lot, and with more small time manufacturing
| operations popping up competing with each other, can bring
| down the price of creating purely made-in-America products.
| hef19898 wrote:
| Mass manufacturing is cheap because of economiea of
| scale, that means large volumes. The best a small shop
| can achieve, and that can be highly profitable if done
| right, is small batches, prototyping or serving as a sub-
| contractor for the big ones.
|
| None of which actually drives final product prices dibe,
| and is already done extensively.
| dukeyukey wrote:
| > it does nothing for the American worker to bring
| manufacturing back if it means huge buildings with skeleton
| crews and machines that effectively run themselves
|
| I don't think that right. It still means goods are being
| produced in America, which means:
|
| 1. Greater security of production against geopolitical
| threats, and
|
| 2. More goods being produced overall, meaning cheaper goods.
|
| Even without significant employment, those are good things!
| prisenco wrote:
| > _Greater security of production against geopolitical
| threats_
|
| I address this in the second paragraph.
|
| > _More goods being produced overall, meaning cheaper
| goods._
|
| I'm not convinced cheaper, more abundant goods are the top
| problem to solve right now. Especially as wants get
| cheaper, needs are getting much more expensive. And low and
| stagnant wages at the bottom means survival becomes
| increasingly difficult, despite cheaper candy and toys.
| beambot wrote:
| Manufacturing today (even overseas) is very different than what
| it was in the great off-shoring. The status quo has changed &
| won't be coming back -- automation is now the norm. But still,
| the multiplier effect for manufacturing is massive: For every
| $1 of economic output, it generates somewhere between $2-$3 of
| GDP -- and that is heavily centered in the community housing
| the factory. It's much better for a distributed society than
| many other sectors that tend to exfiltrate GDP.
| breather wrote:
| I'm going to guess that whatever is able to heal social and
| political (ie economic) divide won't come from capital lol--
| maybe the next depression might put the work in.
| nonethewiser wrote:
| > And then suggest the answer to that is robotics and ML, which
| does nothing but exacerbate the social and political divisions
|
| Maybe it does those things. But clearly it doesnt do "nothing
| but" those things. It brings manufacturing back which is the
| entire point. I really think you're ignoring the whole point to
| go off on a highly partisan political tangent.
| earthwalker99 wrote:
| > _It brings manufacturing back_
|
| It is completely unsurprising to me that those making this
| nonsense claim never accept the burden of proof. If they did,
| it would only further reveal that they are pushing total
| bullshit.
| nonethewiser wrote:
| I don't understand what you are trying to say but "bringing
| manufacturing back" is the starting premise. He already
| begets bringing it back.
|
| Its not that automation necessarily brings back
| manufacturing, its that if it does its not only going to
| increase social and political division.
| pjmorris wrote:
| > It brings manufacturing back which is the entire point.
|
| If the point is to bring back manufacturing salaries in the
| quantity and amount previously available, it's not the entire
| point.
| quadcore wrote:
| _APPLYING MACHINE LEARNING TO ROBOTICS_
|
| Exactly what I thought would be absolutely terrific: a robot
| commanded by voice that poses floor tiles. That's v1. V2 builds a
| house.
|
| I can't think of any "toy" as exciting as this atm. Plus you pose
| the _first tile_ of this and you 're a trillionaire.
| hef19898 wrote:
| Tesla's robot shoupd be able to do just that already! Well,
| depebding on who's wearing the costume that is...
| 93po wrote:
| thank god someone mentioned elon's companies, it had been
| about 5 seconds and i was starting to worry it wasn't cool to
| blindly hate him anymore
| hef19898 wrote:
| Come on, the spandex robot presentation was so cringe it
| was almost hilarious. Even the dancing was bad.
| manuelabeledo wrote:
| "Eliminating middlemen from healthcare" is probably the most
| ambitious one.
| beambot wrote:
| Indeed. Many efforts that start with the goal of eliminating
| middlemen inevitably devolve into more middlemen. It's like the
| xkcd trope about standards: "Situation: There are 14 competing
| standards. Rediculous! We need to extablish one universal
| standard! Situation: There are now 15 competing standards."
|
| https://xkcd.com/927/
| hypothesis wrote:
| That section reads like we are going to replace one middleman
| with a more "efficient" one, not eliminating one altogether.
|
| On the other hand, this is listed below "cure for cancer", so
| maybe it's an ambitious one...
| teaearlgraycold wrote:
| If you do this by building a business you will end up the new
| middlemen, financially motivated to keep the system from
| receiving the complete overhaul it needs.
| codegeek wrote:
| "ELIMINATING MIDDLEMEN IN HEALTHCARE"
|
| 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.
|
| 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".
|
| 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.
|
| 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.
|
| 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.
| KittenInABox wrote:
| This is almost certainly not a healthcare issue, but a
| political/lobbying issue. Solutions will happen in the
| political/lobbying space. We will need to fix shit like:
|
| * very fast, arbitrary disapprovals of healthcare-- requiring 6
| weeks of physical therapy before ordering a test of what is
| almost certainly a torn ligament or other thing is stupid and
| directly harms patient outcomes;
|
| * enforcement of mental healthcare equality-- hospitals should
| have equal beds, equal availability, equal pay for workers, and
| insurance companies should also be paying equally for mental
| and body health;
|
| * forcing the hands of drug price fixers-- that's right, it's
| not just insurance, or pharmaceuticals, it's a shitty middleman
| between them all that rolls up and sets prices on both sides,
| things like e.g. medicare negotiating drug prices directly will
| disrupt these fuckos
|
| * DOCTOR OWNED HOSPITALS MUST COME BACK-- no more vulture
| finance that _literally made this illegal_
|
| * hospital geographic monopolies must be eliminated-- that's
| right, hospitals can _ban competition_! No more of this!
|
| * SAFE STAFFING RATIOS
|
| * releasing the budget on residency-- that's right, the
| government sets how much money they are willing to put towards
| new doctors!
|
| * jail time for negligent insurance decisions-- we know that
| insurance companies will slow-walk bureaucracy lifesaving
| healthcare to desperately ill, disabled people in the hopes
| they will die before the approval goes through
| codegeek wrote:
| I agree that it is more of a political issue at this point
| because the middlemen are way too powerful and would fight
| tooth and nail to keep raking in the moolah.
| KittenInABox wrote:
| Yes, I think some kind of technology that explicitly
| targets/disrupts the way lobbying works would be huge. I
| just don't think this is healthcare-specific unfortunately.
| atlasunshrugged wrote:
| Let me pitch an idea that I've long been noodling on that I
| think gen AI finally enables -- automated healthcare patient
| billing support for individuals. In essence, when you get that
| bill in the mail, you can fight with the hospital to decrease
| it, fight with your insurer to cover more of it, or not pay it
| and fight with a debt collector down the line. Maybe there's an
| alternative world where an AI agent does this for you, helping
| you negotiate down your medical bills and in return taking some
| percentage cut of the savings? There have been businesses like
| this before but hit some issues with 1) cost of employing
| humans to fight these bills, 2) customer acquisitions costs, 3)
| heavy churn/non-recurring customer base which goes along with 2
| miki123211 wrote:
| This is called a robo lawyer, there was an YC startup (whose
| name I don't remember any more) who tried this and basically
| had to shut down for obvious reasons.
|
| Companies don't want poor people to have easy access to this
| stuff.
| lunarboy wrote:
| Fully agree with the experience, but I don't understand this
| call to action from a logical point. If you build something to
| make this better for patients, then... you are the middleman.
| Sure you might start off with morally good ambitions, but your
| company has to turn profit to keep running, I feel like you end
| up in the classic "grow big enough to see yourself become the
| villain" situation.
|
| The fundamental problem is that the facilitator cannot be a
| for-profit entity, which is why universal healthcare in other
| countries are run by the government.
| codegeek wrote:
| SO I am not totally against Universal healthcare idea Heck,
| anytihng will be worth tyring compared to what we do today.
| But US is a very large country and we already have Medicare
| program which is full or fraud and abuse and pork. I am not
| one of those "GOvt is bad in everything" but I am suspicious
| of Govt. being able to run most things efficiently.
|
| I personally think if you calculate the cost of healthcare
| paid by an individual/family to Insurance companies and take
| most of that way by getting rid of insurance in EVERYTHING,
| even paying out of pocket for most visits will be cheaper
| overall. Keep Insurance only for catastrophic stuff like a
| major illness, accident, surgery, cancer etc.
|
| A good compromise/balance would be "get rid of insurance
| premiums/deductibles/copays for general stuff" and let people
| pay out of pocket. Govt can subsidize those who cannot afford
| even the lower out of pocket costs (may be baswed on income
| etc).
| natdempk wrote:
| I'm also interested in this one, though I lack specific
| experience in the healthcare industry to understand the
| problems.
|
| Does anyone have good resources to understanding the bloat of
| the industry as well as the regulatory constraints? I realize
| that the complexity here is almost infinite, but I do think you
| can potentially find inroads and compete along those.
|
| I also don't think being a more efficient "middleman" is a bad
| thing. There are always going to be providers of services that
| are incentivized by making money. The key in my mind is to keep
| it in a respectable/realistic place for customers, as well as
| eliminate toil/confusion. It feels like you could get both
| outcomes and also align for better patient care/experience. For
| example everyone loves Costco, yet they still are a "middleman"
| between you and the goods you want.
| micromacrofoot wrote:
| "Eliminating middlemen in healthcare"
|
| 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"
|
| "Uber for healthcare" now pivoting to "OpenAI for healthcare"
| pastacacioepepe wrote:
| Healthcare has been "solved" already in many countries, it's
| just the USA that can't deal with it.
|
| You don't need "disruption" or a technological revolution to
| fix healthcare, you just need socialism. Just look at what Cuba
| is doing for once and learn something.
| webel0 wrote:
| (Tangentially related to, "A WAY TO END CANCER")
|
| 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).
|
| 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."
|
| Would be interested if someone could elaborate on this line of
| thinking.
| nonethewiser wrote:
| Can you elaborate? Im not following but it sounds interesting.
| What problem did you see and what alternative did you propose?
| I take it that the doctor was performing an inefficient search.
| OJFord wrote:
| I've had similar conversations (another one is classifying ECGs
| as normal or whatever variety of abnormal rhythm, for example)
| with my wife, who's a doctor, and it's always some combination
| of 'yeah, that kinda does happen' (just more manually/lower
| tech, or human-driven, etc. than we're imagining) and 'we don't
| want that' like you say.
|
| What they _do_ want afaict is more fundamental, should-be-so-
| much-easier stuff like case management software that doesn 't
| suck, and like, a chair to sit on while using that computer.
| learn_more wrote:
| I think he was describing the fact that they already operate
| with decision framework that they already understand. Implicit
| in the results received from a particular test is the fact that
| there was a particular observation made that suggested they get
| such a test.
|
| If they get results from a test, but without the compelling
| observation, they're then operating outside their well
| established statistical framework, and they can't confidently
| evaluate the meaningfulness of the test results.
|
| To me, this doesn't mean the extra information is bad, or
| unhelpful, it's just they are not yet properly calibrated to
| use it properly.
|
| I've heard this sentiment from medical professionals before and
| this was my conclusion.
| webel0 wrote:
| That makes sense. Explainability would be a big
| issue/requirement with any attempted automated decision
| framework. I don't know if I would want my doctor to just
| order up tests based on the output of some app without
| understanding why they're ordering them up.
| psuedo_uuh wrote:
| YC wants a more direct hand in genocides I guess. Shouldn't be
| surprised
| eltondegeneres wrote:
| Jared Friedman and Gustaf Alstromer 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."
|
| > 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.
|
| Slaughterhouse Five by Kurt Vonnegut (p. 19)
| nonethewiser wrote:
| In your opinion, should we not have any defense technology?
| mandmandam wrote:
| There's probably some middle ground between _no defense tech
| whatsoever_ , and _trillion dollar illegal wars and
| genocides_.
|
| Every American - and the rest of the world too - is paying
| that very real debt. We're all paying the opportunity cost
| too, and the societal cost. It will be paid for generations,
| and many of the true costs are incalculable.
|
| Some very few people are making a tonne of money, and here,
| YC is saying they want a piece of that. I feel like they're
| not getting dragged enough for it tbh.
|
| Right this moment the US is being investigated by the world's
| highest court for complicity in genocide. And YC is openly
| asking to invest in companies that _directly_ enable and
| support such action.
| nonethewiser wrote:
| > There's probably some middle ground between no defense
| tech whatsoever, and trillion dollar illegal wars and
| genocides.
|
| There is obviously middle ground. Which is why
| categorically condemning defense spending is indefensible.
|
| What are you referring to as genocide?
| mandmandam wrote:
| > Which is why categorically condemning defense spending
| is indefensible.
|
| That doesn't actually follow.
|
| > What are you referring to as genocide?
|
| Take your pick.
| nonethewiser wrote:
| >> Which is why categorically condemning defense spending
| is indefensible.
|
| >That doesn't actually follow.
|
| It does. If some defense is OK, then some defense
| spending is OK. In order to categorically reject defense
| spending as the original commenter did, then you must
| categorically reject defense.
|
| > Take your pick.
|
| Of what?
| mightyham wrote:
| This sort of blanket condemnation of war is ridiculous.
| Statecraft, even in the modern day, revolves around what each
| country's power projection capabilities are. To say that nobody
| should participate in building defense technologies is to say
| that we should cede a significant amount of leverage when it
| comes to international diplomacy.
| mtraven wrote:
| I don't like working on killing machines either. But we
| shouldn't forget that the internet and basically all of
| computation originated out of defense research. That might be
| good or bad, but arguably the field was more innovative when
| that was the funding source than it is today.
|
| > "All of modern high tech has the US Department of Defense to
| thank at its core, because this is where the money came from to
| be able to develop a lot of what is driving the technology that
| we're using today," said Leslie Berlin, historian for the
| Silicon Valley Archives at Stanford University.
| https://archive.ph/PY5sT
| mannyv wrote:
| You can believe in a world without conflict if you want. It'll
| serve you well right up until the time you get put up against
| the wall and killed by someone who doesn't share your beliefs.
| crowcroft wrote:
| > I have told my sons that they are not under any circumstances
| to take part in massacres
|
| I do believe the majority of humans involved with massacres are
| not doing so by choice.
| davidmurphy wrote:
| Glad to see YC supporting US-based manufacturing. Kudos
| johnea wrote:
| 20 categories of innovative startups, primarily centered around
| the technological breakthrough of putting the letters A and I
| next to each other...
| advael wrote:
| 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
|
| 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
| BadHumans wrote:
| Tesla has done fantastic R&D and marketing for EVs but you're
| right that their cars themselves has always defective rolling
| off the lot. I know a good number of people who have had or
| currently have a Tesla and every single one had to take it in
| after buying it to get something fixed.
| bko wrote:
| What scandals (honest question)? Is it more than comparable
| companies?
|
| I think a big problem is that modern American firms outsource
| practically all required expertise to suppliers so they are
| left with no core competency apart from marketing, lobbying and
| financial engineering. Its my impression that Tesla does more
| stuff themselves so they were quicker to innovate and
| experiment. But not sure if that's just their marketing and
| cult that leads me to believe this. But I do know that electric
| cars were long thought impractical and dead, and their sudden
| rise in popularity coincided with Tesla creating a good
| electric car
| advael wrote:
| Off the top of my head, there was a story on here about cars
| crashing due to axles failing months after they rolled off
| the lot, and a more recent story about the bodies of
| cybertrucks rusting from small amounts of rain exposure
|
| This is just on the physical components side. Tesla is also
| continuously dealing with scandals about data provenance,
| transparency, the false promises and dangerous consequences
| of its pushes toward autonomous driving, and of course the
| same nickel-and-dime nonsense other tech companies do like
| trying to charge subscriptions for every little feature,
| gradually rolling out user-hostile behavior in a proprietary
| software ecosystem, litigation threats toward victims of
| accidents who seek any remedy or even accountability for
| harms caused by many of these issues, etc.
|
| It serves as a better exemplar of how much hype and marketing
| to attract investment drive the success of an American
| company in the current environment than of how onshore
| manufacturing could work
|
| EDIT: Also, comparable in what sense?
| hash872 wrote:
| >given that it's been the subject of numerous scandals
| regarding quality control of the physical components
| manufactured there
|
| They're very young as far as automotive manufacturers go, and
| this is a pretty normal part of the 'figuring out how to build
| a car' learning cycle. South Korean car companies had dismal
| quality issues decades after they were founded, and now they're
| much better. Manufacturing complex goods at scale is just
| really really hard and takes a ton of process knowledge and
| human capital. Tesla it at a normal part of the automotive
| manufacturing lifecycle
| ChrisArchitect wrote:
| [dupe]
|
| Announcement post: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39369766
| networked wrote:
| I would still like to see RFS 5 "Development on Handhelds"
| (https://web.archive.org/web/20140428231118/http://ycombinato...)
| fulfilled. I asked sama about it in 2015:
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10361215. The state of the
| art has advanced since. Termux (https://termux.dev/en/) on
| Android is a viable development environment. With a Debian PRoot
| (https://wiki.termux.com/wiki/PRoot), 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 _!_
| (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Snap!_(programming_language)) but
| built for multitouch devices.
| bagels wrote:
| Something like copilot can really help with bridging the gap
| created by not having a full size keyboard.
| fuzzfactor wrote:
| I'm loving my rechargeable bluetooth keyboard & mouse which
| are really made to compensate for limitations of
| touchscreens.
|
| The keyboard I have is about the size of an ipad itself so
| there is no numeric keypad, and it's about as heavy as a
| tablet too since this one has a slanted slot in the back to
| slip the tablet or phone into, portrait or landscape, at a
| good angle for use so the combination acts not much
| differently than a laptop.
|
| If it wasn't so heavily weighted it would topple over
| backward when you left the tablet in the slot. There are
| other bluetooth ones that are lightweight which should be
| just as useful if you have a different way to support the
| device.
|
| Sometimes a hardware solution is ideal, other times software,
| most of the time with digital devices it's good to consider
| both and have lots of options which parts of the heavy
| lifting are where.
| pests wrote:
| I love the MX Keys Mini [0]
|
| Solid construction and a sleek feel. Pretty small form
| factor. But I love the multi-device support. Simple
| shortcut (Fn+F1, F2, or F3) to switch between devices.
|
| Pair to my laptop, phone, and watch and use it for all my
| types everywhere.
|
| [0] https://www.logitech.com/en-us/products/keyboards/mx-
| keys-mi...
| jagged-chisel wrote:
| > RFS 5 "Development on Handhelds"
|
| I have ideas that I would love to explore given funding.
| bruceb wrote:
| Eliminating middlemen in healthcare
|
| 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.
|
| Didn't Amazon try this and is now shutting down part of its
| healthcare (pill selling) play?
| hef19898 wrote:
| Health Care is one field where nobody can seriously compete
| with state or state navked players, aka public health care or
| single payer.
|
| _Especially_ not VC backed start-ups...
| lukew3 wrote:
| What's the reason for this? Is this because of extensive
| regulation due to insurer/hospital lobbying and patient
| safety laws?
| hef19898 wrote:
| Patient and health care regulation, for good reasons, but
| basically the number of shoulders to spread individual
| risks across (aka insurance). The latter is much easier
| when backed, directly or indirectly, by nation state
| households and budgets. Nothing beats the ability of
| controlling your own currency.
| nradov wrote:
| There is plenty of space for VC backed start-ups to compete
| in healthcare. It would be foolish to go head-to-head with a
| company like HCA or UnitedHealth Group. But there is a lot of
| opportunity to sell them better software which improves the
| experience for everyone in the system. Or build better
| medical devices or improve efficiency in the drug development
| process or a zillion other niche areas.
| skrbjc wrote:
| Someone needs to tackle Epic in the EMR space and overthrow
| their closed system.
| nradov wrote:
| Y Combinator has already funded several Epic competitors
| in the EHR space including DrChrono, Medplum, and Akute
| Health. Always room for more. The requirements for an EHR
| that can work in any provider organization are so
| overwhelming that no startup could directly compete
| against Epic. But a startup could initially target a
| particular medical specialty or facility type that Epic
| doesn't support very well, then expand out from there.
|
| https://www.ycombinator.com/companies/industry/healthcare
| -it
|
| Epic is no longer a closed system. They now support a
| wide range of open standard APIs.
|
| https://open.epic.com/
| theGnuMe wrote:
| There needs to be anti-trust action taken against Epic.
| tootie wrote:
| Amazon partnered with Berkshire Hathaway and JP Morgan on
| that project. They had a built-in base of employees larger
| than the population of Wyoming. Still failed.
| turnsout wrote:
| They didn't go big enough: they should have become a
| payer/insurer. If they started with their ~1M US employees and
| then applied the flywheel to HC insurance, they could have
| essentially created a single-payer system by default.
|
| Slightly scary to think about Amazon having a near monopoly on
| healthcare, but ask yourself whether our current reality is
| better or worse...
| nradov wrote:
| Amazon is already an insurer, and has been for years. They
| are self-insured for the health plans they offer to
| employees, and only rely on third-party payers for network
| management and claims administration. They could take that
| part in house but it's a low-margin business where they would
| have no particular advantage.
| turnsout wrote:
| You mean they provide self-funded insurance, or are
| literally underwriting plans? It's quite common for
| companies to be self-funded/"self-insured," but rely on a
| large payer like Aetna to do all the work.
|
| If they cut out the middleman, they could negotiate
| directly with providers and Pharma, lowering the "fully
| loaded" cost of their payroll. It would be a massive
| savings.
|
| Once they did it for 1M people, the hard work would be
| over, and they could sell Amazon plans to the public.
| makestuff wrote:
| They use Premea Blue cross for administration of the
| plan.
|
| They created a joint venture with JP Morgan and Berkshire
| Hathaway several years ago called Havaen to try and fix
| insurance; however, it was shut down.
| https://hbr.org/2021/01/why-haven-healthcare-failed
| nradov wrote:
| There's no real underwriting per se. My understanding is
| that Amazon just pays claims as those come in. They rely
| on large payers to do all the network and formulary
| management including negotiating rates with providers.
| There's no reason to expect that Amazon could negotiate
| lower rates than Aetna, which already covers 22M lives.
|
| In order to achieve any real savings, Amazon would have
| to build up a captive provider organization with
| practitioners as direct employees. Which all of the large
| payers are also increasingly doing. Basically the
| industry is consolidating and converging on the Kaiser
| Permanente business model. Eventually most US residents
| will obtain healthcare from a handful of huge nationwide
| "payvider" organizations.
| matt3210 wrote:
| I should have gotten into AI
| SoftTalker wrote:
| What's stopping you?
| arjunaanand wrote:
| Just plain marketing. In reality they will invest in incremental
| startups of serial entrepreneurs or well known people in silicon
| valley.
|
| They became traditional corporate long ago. Shows in their recent
| portfolio.
| ianbutler wrote:
| Seeing as I just recently talked to two young students who got
| in and also know someone from my college days who was accepted
| for the W24 batch this doesn't seem very correct to me.
|
| Notably neither of those two groups of people are SV based,
| both NYC affiliated.
| SirLJ wrote:
| Yep, already got rejected couple of times, even before the AI
| boom, with my company which clearly falls under "Using Machine
| Learning to simulate the physical world" and "Explainable A.I."
| and have the potential to fall under most of the rest...
| Difwif wrote:
| A lot of YC's material about their selection process centers
| around the founders instead of the idea. They openly admit
| that they choose a team and expect you to pivot a few times.
|
| Obviously I don't know anything about you or your ideas and I
| don't mean to offend but I've typically assumed that a YC
| rejection means they disqualified the candidate for one
| reason or another.
|
| Do they give feedback in their rejection? I'm considering
| applying.
| sudosteph wrote:
| They give zero feedback, so there are way better places to
| apply if that's all you're looking for.
|
| The truth is the applicants have to have a story that
| resonates with whoever reviews your submission. Sometimes
| people jive over a shared problem space, sometimes they
| just like people who remind them of themselves or who come
| from "trust networks" they respect. The latter cases are
| where the bias keeps seeping in.
|
| And just because they don't pick you for an interview
| doesn't mean you were disqualified forever. A lot of people
| reapply and have success. There are just so few slots
| compared to applicants that most don't hear anything.
| SirLJ wrote:
| No individual feedback, I am not offended at all as this is
| 2 way street, why would I accept money from someone who
| does not believe in me :-)
| Animats wrote:
| Most of those take a lot more time and money than YC usually
| offers.
|
| 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.
|
| "Explainable AI" is really important.
|
| "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.
|
| "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.
|
| "Bring manufacturing back to America". Is it possible to build a
| cell phone in the US?
|
| "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.
| echelon wrote:
| > Maybe the people behind the stablecoin have an explosive
| collar welded around their neck. If the price drops, it
| detonates. That might work.
|
| I hate crypto, but I _love_ this idea. We should apply this to
| a lot of systems.
|
| Make stakeholders of _anything_ accountable. 100% skin in the
| game.
| Animats wrote:
| China sometimes does that. Zheng_Xiaoyu, the head of China's
| equivalent of the Food and Drug Administration, was caught
| taking bribes to allow tainted drugs to be sold. He was
| executed in 2007. [1]
|
| [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zheng_Xiaoyu
| pests wrote:
| Wow and only 40 days from sentencing to execution
| majormajor wrote:
| This is a Chesterton's fence situation - we already know the
| problems of HEAVY, punitive liability and accountability for
| everything.
|
| But I do think we're leaning way too far towards the no-
| accountability side currently, and need to shift a bit
| further the other way.
|
| (But I don't expect THAT to come out of a VC industry where
| so many prominent people and parters have track records that
| generally include a lot of "founded unprofitable company but
| kept it alive long enough to have a good exit" stories...
| This world lives on the perception of success, not on long-
| term responsibility.)
| matkoniecz wrote:
| Strongly deregulate nuclear power - on condition that CEO of
| company operating, designer, manufacturer CEO live with
| families within 15km of power plant.
|
| (unlikely to work for several reasons, may be stupid idea but
| looks like something that could work in not-so-different
| world)
| burkaman wrote:
| > Is it possible to build a cell phone in the US?
|
| Definitely possible, this one is mostly US-built:
| https://puri.sm/products/librem-5-usa/
| skrbjc wrote:
| "Bring manufacturing back to America". Is it possible to build
| a cell phone in the US?
|
| I think we should start more basic and work our way up. For
| example, there isn't a real reason we can't produce all of our
| domestic iron and steel needs in the USA, but we end up
| importing a lot right now. Same with aluminum, etc. But this
| isn't something YC is really going to help with unless they are
| funding manufacturing and industrial tech that makes it
| easier/cheaper to set-up and run these types of facilities.
| ipaddr wrote:
| Cost. I don't think America should focus on mining raw
| materials that can be sent elsewhere so cellphones can be
| made which America will import back at high costs.
| Animats wrote:
| The US currently imports only 17% of its steel, mostly from
| Canada and Mexico. The US also exports steel, but imports are
| about 4x exports. So the US steel industry is doing OK.
|
| 60% of US steel consumption is now from recycled steel. Nucor
| became the largest US steel manufacturer by making that work.
| bozhark wrote:
| US Steel is now Japanese, btw
| lkbm wrote:
| Depending on the specific concern, I assume what mostly
| matters is where the facilities are, not who owns the
| company. (At least so long as it's an ally.)
| reaperman wrote:
| It takes (up to) 456.23% import tariffs[0] to achieve that
| 17%.
|
| So you pay china $1 million for some amount of steel (via
| vietnam) and then pay the us gov $4.56 million for a total
| cost of $5.56 million.
|
| It's amazing that so many steel companies are still
| underperforming in the USA seemingly in spite the intense
| protectionism.
|
| 0: https://www.latimes.com/business/la-fi-us-vietnam-steel-
| trad....
| jaredmclaughlin wrote:
| We import a lot but we make a lot. I made a living
| supervising the manufacturing of the rolls used to roll steel
| in mill. We weren't exporting even the majority of the
| product.
| dilyevsky wrote:
| The is no practical reason why javelin costs the $$$ it costs
| post r&d which was completed in the early 1990s. The matrix and
| most other electronics in it are extremely basic and could be
| obtained off the shelve already like 20 years ago. The concept
| is already outdated anyway - just use a cheap drone
| hef19898 wrote:
| Some of zhe reason why a javelin costs what it costs:
|
| - small production runs
|
| - obsolete components
|
| - obsolete production technology
|
| - certification requirements
|
| - continued support and design changes to account for the
| above
|
| - the mandatory defence surcharge
|
| From top of my head.
| jchonphoenix wrote:
| I think this is why we're seeing that the type of founders YC
| usually funds in these industries aren't going through YC and
| choosing alternative methods of getting started.
| jaredmclaughlin wrote:
| What part of a cell phone do you think we can't make?
| groby_b wrote:
| Do we have the aluminum milling capacity at scale?
|
| Can we manufacture touch screens at scale?
|
| Can we manufacture Li-ion batteries at scale? (Tesla and
| Panasonic might be able to, with large new investments, but I
| don't think there's anybody ready to go)
|
| Do we have 3nm fab capacity? (TSMC is planning to build one,
| but AFAIK not yet)
|
| Do we have the ability to manufacture various sensors at
| scale? (Some likely yes - ambient light, inertial - some no)
|
| What about image sensors? (Maybe, Omnivision is probably the
| best candidate, but I don't think they can currently do 48MP.
| ON Semiconductor is also a good chunk away from that, AFAIK)
|
| I think that's a sufficient number of parts to claim we
| currently can't make cell phones, as long as you define cell
| phone as "current gen cell phone". We could probably retool
| relatively quickly back to at least cell phones, but even
| that is AFAIK not a current capacity.
|
| Can we _theoretically_ do all that? Sure. But we can't right
| now, or within short time frames, and we can't without
| significant investment.
| quartesixte wrote:
| That aluminum milling scaling problem itself is like, an
| entire category of hard.
|
| CNC machines are hard to scale anything more than linearly.
| We need to train up hundreds of thousands to become CNC
| machinists. An entire support industry for machine
| maintenance, tooling manufacturing (an even harder
| problem), consumable commodities needs to be similarly
| scaled in parallel.
| hobofan wrote:
| > We need to train up hundreds of thousands to become CNC
| machinists
|
| What? Are you suggesting that aluminium phone cases
| nowadays are created by an army of trained CNC
| machinists? And not programmed once by a (few) dozen
| engineers per model of the handful of existing phone
| models and then executed by highly automated factories
| and an army of "low-skilled" workers.
| MangoCoffee wrote:
| Low cost swarm of drones for new defense technology.
|
| We have seen consumer grade DJI drone use in Ukraine-Russia war
| by both sides.
|
| AI to control a swarm of cheap drones to survey and kill?
| fuzzfactor wrote:
| Some of these are not like the others.
|
| 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.
|
| If I was going to split the combined vision into _only two_
| categories it would be like this: - 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
|
| and then the less moonshotty efforts: - 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
|
| 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.
|
| 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.
|
| "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.
|
| 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.
| 8en wrote:
| 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.
| ahstilde wrote:
| Maybe it's more difficult to make a "request for startup"
| because it's more difficult to see what's "broken" in the
| consumer space?
| alanlammiman wrote:
| I was going to say... All so serious and grownup and
| utilitarian. Whatever happened to 'the next big thing will
| start as a toy'?
| davemo wrote:
| 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.
|
| Here's the pitch and some details, in case anyone else is
| interested in the idea:
|
| > Supportal uses AI to generate internal tooling for startups
| that enables founders to scale customer-support without having to
| rely on engineering resources.
|
| > 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.
|
| > Supportal offers founders a fully-featured self or cloud-hosted
| web UI.
|
| Retool (https://retool.com), Zapier (https://zapier.com),
| Airtable (https://www.airtable.com), Superblocks
| (https://www.superblocks.com), and Google AppSheet
| (https://about.appsheet.com) 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.
|
| 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.
|
| 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.
|
| 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.
|
| 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.
|
| 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.
|
| 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.
| pbiggar wrote:
| 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
| tomashertus wrote:
| 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.
| marcosdumay wrote:
| You can't buy (or sell) cybersecurity. It's a property of
| things, not a thing in itself.
|
| The same will certainly apply to the intra-head security you
| want against fake content and propaganda.
| tomashertus wrote:
| I apologize, but I don't understand your point. Could you
| please explain to me what you mean by that or how the fact
| that you "can't buy cybersecurity" contradicts what I wrote?
|
| The cyber security market was valued at USD 153.65 billion in
| 2022 and is projected to grow from USD 172.32 billion in 2023
| to USD 424.97 billion in 2030, so apparently people are
| buying cybersecurity solutions.
| marcosdumay wrote:
| Almost the entirety of that market does not actually
| improve the security of anything.
|
| The rest looks much more like services than products.
| tomashertus wrote:
| I understand and agree with your point that you can't
| just "buy" cybersecurity by throwing money at the
| problem. It's more like building a well-defended castle,
| where multiple elements work together to create true
| security. Cybersecurity is a company-wide process that
| needs to be powered by specialized tools.
|
| The fact that one of the fastest-growing markets is
| omitted by YC is shocking to me. The opportunity to build
| $1B companies, which seems to be one of YC's acceptance
| criteria, is enormous.
|
| I don't know how far or close you are to the security
| field, but I do share your sentiment that many tools and
| so-called security solutions are useless and don't solve
| the problem. So it's now even more necessary to go and
| build new solutions. The problem persists and grows.
| acrodrig wrote:
| Education related efforts are missing from your list and it's one
| that stands to benefit the most from the current AI gold rush.
| samstave wrote:
| @Dang, and @SAMA
|
| --
|
| 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...
|
| Palantir muc, inqtel much, every fn defense thing
|
| Your list is literally CONfinment.
|
| 2. AI for defense == We can profit here.
|
| 5. Are you fn daft: East India Company, do you speak it? Show me
| how many hands you have. " _The UK became the world 's richest
| country in the 19th century by being the workshop of the world._
| Death, murder conquer brought this, not some hipster Build a
| Startup They Said.. meme claim"
|
| 10. Enterspiese resource mgmt ; so HR on AI jax? FUCK that.
|
| 15. DC much?
|
| 19. Ive built more hospitals than you can shake a stick at. This
| is a nuanced comment:
|
| 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)
|
| Your RFS is written by grifter VCs who have no soul.
|
| Prove me wrong.
|
| 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...
|
| These requests are NOT to inspire you - they are to feed their
| input....
|
| When we heard AI was dangerous... think of a single one of the
| RFSs that do not include @sama.
|
| -----
|
| @Dang, and @SAMA
|
| --
|
| 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.
|
| ---
|
| Where _EXACTLY_ do _YOU_ think we should be plannig for and that
| includes
|
| SERIOUSLY
|
| What are HN's motives.
|
| ------
|
| Seriously
| xdeshati wrote:
| Regard Explainable AI ,I'm building a prompt sharing platform
| https://www.thepromptsquare.com.
|
| The idea is to provide a square where users can discover ,share,
| collaborate discuss on various chatGPT prompts and their
| corresponding outputs .
| briandear wrote:
| Stablecoin is a solution in search of a problem.
| meow_mix wrote:
| I'd be curious about YC's thoughts on founders breaking into
| manufacturing/robotics from a normal SWE background
| silentsea90 wrote:
| I imagine you need someone who's technical in the
| hardware/robotics space. There's also the route of doing a
| masters perhaps, or working at a robotics startup before you
| start your own company. I am curious about YC's thoughts here
| as well as someone who's enthusiastic about this space. I feel
| this is the next trillion dollar industry.
| shrimpx wrote:
| 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":
|
| 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.
|
| 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.
| leetrout wrote:
| Spot on. Add in an ivy league or similar pedigree as social
| proof for a better chance.
| kilroy123 wrote:
| From what I've heard, you also need to build up a lot of hype
| about yourself.
| plondon514 wrote:
| I don't think this is true at all. I did YC and neither I nor
| my cofounders had any hype surrounding us or our idea. Unless
| if by hype you mean a handful of paying users then sure, that
| won't hurt :)
| rogerkirkness wrote:
| Not true for me. No social media other than HN and got in
| first try.
| stn8188 wrote:
| I think this is an excellent point. That being said, there are
| some warm fuzzies that come by seeing my grad school research
| topic listed here as well (the ML for physics simulations
| topic). Just some validation that the area I'm spending time in
| could not only help my specific niche, but be broadly
| attractive to VC funding to help grow it. Not that I'm anywhere
| near being ready to build anything (or near graduation, for
| that matter) but the conversation about it being a possibility
| came up recently and maybe sometime in the far future it could
| be a reality.
| arach wrote:
| these are great. if anyone is interested in or already exploring
| the enterprise + AI opportunities shared, message me
|
| alternatively find me on the founder matching platform:
| https://www.startupschool.org/cofounder-matching/candidate/t...
|
| 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
| smashah wrote:
| 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?
|
| 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.
| cwiz wrote:
| I felt so inclined toward startups in my 20, now in mid 30 I'll
| just start a GitHub repo if theres interest
| politician wrote:
| 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?
| lifeisstillgood wrote:
| I think there is a germ of an idea in
|
| - antithesis - topless computing - programmable company
|
| I was surprised to see ERP as a real option - interesting
| happytiger wrote:
| I spent a great while inside of medical during the pandemic and
| it was... interesting.
|
| 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.
|
| 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.
|
| 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.
|
| 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.
|
| 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.
|
| And there is also a ton of interesting businesses in generics.
|
| 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.
| hibikir wrote:
| In many parts of the US, you can only construct a hospital if
| the other hospitals in the area agree that yes, the area could
| use another hospital. Imagine how easy it would be to get them
| to agree to let you open your hospital if they know you are a
| huge company trying to undercut them in price, through any
| technological or organizational edge.
|
| Basically every healthcare reform would be positive, either
| towards single payer or towards markets, as the current
| equilibrium is just optimizing extraction. See how the ACA,
| which was attempting to let insurers force prices of medical
| services down, led to hospitals buying out massive amounts of
| private practices, as it's easy to bully 5 doctors, but not a
| hospital system that is at the same time negotiating for a lot
| of primary care, specialists, and ar least a third of hospital
| capacity in the city.
| happytiger wrote:
| This is precisely it. This is how you end up with this
| colossally large ecosystem where things like surgery centers
| proliferate -- with every specialist operating as an outside
| extension or even an inside extension and costs skyrocket for
| customers because you just have some many people involved in
| the chain of care. To boot, a lot of these networks operate
| their partner organizations through backend ownership groups.
|
| Obamacare tried to fix this by making the entire chain of
| care responsible for patient satisfaction and outcome and
| making rate payment contingent, but it really ended up
| consolidating so much of the industry into integrated and
| profit maximized network-of-relationships so that the
| downside can be managed (and the backend financing
| consolidated similarly, though in many different ways). All
| of them, to your point, really optimized for extraction.
|
| I spent some time looking into generic drugs and compounding
| operations as well and we really don't have many left in the
| West. It's concerning. No money left for the basics and the
| system isn't very robustly built for basic operations (read
| the boring, lower paying part of medicine that keeps us all
| alive every day).
| CalChris wrote:
| ELIMINATING MIDDLEMEN IN HEALTHCARE
|
| 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." -- _The
| New New Thing_ , Michael Lewis.
|
| 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. 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.
| shmageggy wrote:
| > _We have a fair chance of avoiding catastrophic climate change
| if startups offer commercial solutions to decarbonize society or
| remove carbon from the atmosphere._
|
| 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)
| FloorEgg wrote:
| What point are you trying to make exactly?
| nojvek wrote:
| I believe startups can still make it if they can crack making
| solar + battery cheaper than $0.15/kwh, or bio fuels cheaper
| than gasoline.
|
| The sun is free 1.3kw / meter energy for ~5 hours in the sun
| belt states.
| spike-s wrote:
| While I agree the phrasing could be better from YC, there is
| also truth to that statement. A lot of solutions to decarbonize
| have fallen flat on their faces to become a commercially viable
| solution. Ideas and new technology are needed as companies
| everywhere have shown they will not take the necessary action
| if it impacts the bottom line.
| kirse wrote:
| _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._
|
| 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.
|
| 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 ideas for a small YC check, I'd advise against it.
| eastbound wrote:
| Not to underestimate the power of evil, but ideas are cheap and
| execution matters. One never reproduces an idea as-is, if only
| because your service should be multitenant. On the other hand,
| going to BigCo's legal department to beg for a spin off of an
| activity you've seen, is as risky as the next 10 stages of your
| startup.
|
| Especially since the first stage of your startup is to test the
| waters with an MVP, which leads to a quasi-immediate pivot from
| the initial idea. Example:
|
| > web application which would combine a project manager,
| contact manager, and to-do list
|
| became Blogger and was sold to Google in 2003 (by Jack Dorsey).
| mondrian wrote:
| I don't think the emphasis is on "ripping off one of their
| ideas". Usually there's no big idea in any one of these
| internal tools. They're like, user onboarding tools, monitoring
| tools. But you can extrapolate them into a big idea by making a
| _platform_ , like a user onboarding platform or monitoring
| platform, or a generic platform for building internal tools
| with built-in integrations, team/authentication management,
| etc.
| dluan wrote:
| "dont be evil"
| austin-cheney wrote:
| 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.
|
| 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 _write in it_
| 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.
|
| 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.
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