Editor's Note: This summer's Y Combinator (United States famous startup incubator, hereinafter referred to as YC) has begun, on the first day of the show (Demo Day 1), various start-up companies have brought us many creative ideas , Agricultural drones, automatic security and the next generation of aunt towels and other products on the exhibition stand.
In recent years, YC has gradually begun to focus on the international market, and their efforts have shown results. This year's show, 30% of new startups are from outside the United States. Of course, these companies are mixed, some of them are only copying the business models of some new start-up companies in the United States, and some are dedicated to solving some old problems with new methods.
Most start-up companies on the first day of the show focused on consumers, development tools, security, hardware, markets, and non-profits. On the second day, the wind direction will shift to companies, B2B, biotechnology, education technology and financial technology.
For the first day of exhibiting companies, investors expressed mixed feelings. They think that only a handful of companies can make a big difference, but Lu Yao knows that it may be that some products will bear fruit after several years.
Lei Fengnet editors have reorganized according to the above categories and reviewed the 44 new start-up companies that shined on the first day of the show. This is the first part of the paper, focusing on the introduction of the largest proportion of consumer startups.
Consumer class
People living in the world are of course indispensable. For all aspects of life, the flash of technology companies can undoubtedly bring us great convenience. Lei Feng Network (search "Lei Feng Net" public concern) will be consumer consumer startup company is divided into five categories to introduce:
clothes
Looklive - buy and buy through photos
Amy is a woman's nature, men are the same, the size of the current men's fashion market has reached 400 billion US dollars a year, men are more than women "bag." However, unlike women, men love new clothes but do not like shopping. LookLive's technology consists in scanning pictures of models or celebrities and tagging the clothes on them so that you can buy similar-looking but less expensive stars.
Right now, LookLive is working with many content producers such as Heart's Complex and Esquire Magazine. LookLive will sell the clothing of these magazines, and they will charge a fee of 10%-30% for non-shareholders. LookLike's co-founder has founded KarmaLoop, a clothing retailer, and his new project is now growing at a 25% monthly rate.
Flex - The next generation of aunt towel
Women's liberation has been for so many years, and the aunt's towel/sliver (born 80 years ago) failed to keep up with the times. Startup Flex can't stand it anymore. They have created a next-generation mom towel and are ready to stir the entire market with a new subscription business model. It is reported that the company has successfully sold 70,000 US dollars of products and passed FDA certification and patents. Through the next-generation Mom and Dad towel, Flex hopes that women can forget the existence of their aunts so that they can enjoy life better.
The traditional tampon is inconvenient to use and sometimes causes infection, while the Flex product can be used continuously for 12 hours. Comfort and health are their first pursuit. Women who participate in the order ($20/month) will receive their diaper towel every month, and Flex is committed to placing 70% of the profit on the product.
Squire - Barber Shop Online Booking
The times are improving, but the hairdressing salons are somewhat stagnant. They are still using telephones, paper and pens, or outdated salon software to process the bookings. On the Squire platform, customers can make a haircut appointment on the mobile terminal for just $1. The founder of the platform once operated a hairdressing salon. In the process, he discovered the real needs of customers. When Squire opened the shop online, they successfully retained the original customer, which was Squire's first paid user. Each barber salon on Squire earns $1,000 a month, while there are more than 300,000 hair salons in the United States. Squire may have come up with a new path while other startups are still heading for elections.
food
Haywheel - Advanced Handicraft Market
For top restaurants, stable, superb ingredients supply the basis for their dominance. Haywheel is an online shopping mall that offers artisan food. It helps those top restaurants to easily buy the best lobster or stuffed dumplings. There are already more than 300 restaurants using this service, including some Michelin-starred restaurants. Haywheel will draw a 10% commission on the total food transaction. This service was formally launched last week. Next they will enter the special food shop market with a scale of 5 billion US dollars.
Multiply Labs - Customized Pills
It is a drug three-point poison. In addition to being poisoned by side effects, "medicinal bottles" have to remember when to eat, how much to eat each time, and sometimes the number of times a day is even more than the number of meals. Multiply Labs uses 3D printing to order private nutritional pills for you. This means that you can order pharmaceutical pills according to your needs, and you can also control when the drugs take effect, such as releasing caffeine at a specific time to make you more energetic. Multiply Labs uses 3D printed custom pills to control the effective time of drugs compared to traditional pharmaceutical manufacturers mass-producing drugs.
live
Techmate - Your Technology Services Department
IoT devices can indeed improve work efficiency, but installation and maintenance and debugging have become very difficult. Techmate hopes to bring more sustainable and stable technical support to consumers' smart homes. The data shows that in the next five years, the number of connected devices on the Internet of Things will increase by five times, and consumers will have more smart light bulbs to manage. The company’s current monthly income has reached 30,000 U.S. dollars, and since its establishment, it has maintained a growth rate of 25% per week.
Burrow - buy a sofa under a single phone
I do not know whether or not the engineers sleep is generally bad, in recent years Silicon Valley is very concerned about the mattress industry. However, similar sofa industry has been left aside, but the market size of this bulky furniture is as much as 23 billion US dollars. Burrow simplifies the purchase process of the sofa (which can be shipped within a week) and makes the assembly of the sofa simple enough to require no additional tools. In the pre-sale phase, Burrow has already received $150,000 in revenue, and they have a 40% gross profit for each sofa sold for $850.
Miso - Online Home Economics
Miso is Korea's online housekeeping company. Due to the dense population of Seoul, Miso has begun to make profits, and next month they are preparing to enter the other two cities. In the United States, it is difficult for domestic companies to recruit cleaners, but in South Korea it is a decent job. The salaries of cleaners are 60% higher than those of other industries. Right now, Miso gets a 13% increase every week, sending 600 cleaners every week. At the same time, the needs of customers are also expanding. The housekeeping industry is an industry where capital is heavily bet. In the United States, it is undoubtedly a failure, while in Korea it presents another scene.
Starcity - San Francisco Comfortable Public Housing
San Francisco is experiencing an unprecedented housing crisis. Many shy people cannot find shelter. Starcity’s goal is to build a comfortable public housing on millions of feet of unused land in San Francisco. Each room is a one-room, one-bedroom unit that sells for half the price of San Francisco.
Suiteness - Hotel Suite Booking Platform
On the popular Expedia or Priceline, you can't find a good room in a luxury hotel, but if you have such needs, you can look at Suiteness. It provides a platform to showcase suites that users can book on demand. The average booking price is 2194 US dollars, the cost per client is 138 US dollars, Suiteness can be divided into 315 US dollars. This means that Suiteness will be able to win back the cost when the customer first makes a reservation.
Suiteness has now partnered with top-class hotels in 3000 suites in Wynn, Venetian and Cosmopolitan. The next stage goal is to increase the number of suites to 300,000, covering 100 cities. Most guests who did not like the hotel in the past chose Airbnb, and Suiteness now provides a more comfortable place to stay.
Mosaic - Smart Home Installation Expert Â
Choosing a complete set of IoT devices is not an easy task, but compared to the installation, it is completely pediatric. Mosaic can guide you to purchase, and technical personnel provide installation services and manage smart home subscription software. The company can make huge profits through installation and software management. At the same time, Mosaic can also sell fully equipped apartments. With the rise of the Internet of Things, many companies have introduced a variety of devices, and Mosaic is the gospel for smart home users.
Row
Airfordable - travel can also be paid in installments
A trip that is said to go is a dream of many people, but in the face of the emaciated wallet, most people still choose to endure. However, Airfordable vowed to change the status quo, they want to provide those who have limited savings, credit cards can be limited amount of people to provide installment services to help them realize their dreams as soon as possible.
If you want to escape from your current life, simply upload one of your ticket itineraries, and then you will be able to generate a three-month bill that will be paid every two weeks. As long as this bill is in order, you can get your ticket. Miraculously, Airfordable, which specializes in loans to poor people, not only did not lose money, but also realized early profits. Its sales reached US$500,000 and its monthly growth rate was as high as 53%. In the future, they will also enter the hotel industry, contracting your travels. Right now, the company has worked with insurance companies to eliminate default risk.
JustRide - Round Indian Dream of the Car
Due to the low level of development, only 6% of the population of India owns automobiles. As the economy grows stronger, the demand of the Indian middle class for automobiles will increase. JustRide is a P2P car rental company that cuts car rental costs by 25% and provides owners with an additional $500 per month (general income in India is about $500). Through its own IoT device, JustRide can monitor the registrant's driving data very well, and road killers will be blacklisted. Right now, JustRide has achieved the goal of 7,000 monthly orders in three cities, but their ultimate goal is India's $ 18.5 billion huge car rental market. Essentially, JustRide is a replica of Getaway, a US car rental application, but the huge market of more than 1 billion people is JustRide's super-capital.
GoGoGrandparent - exclusive car service for grandparents
Free travel is also one of the rights of the elderly. However, due to the fact that they can't play smart phones, they can't hold on to Uber apps. GoGoGrandparent is aiming at this market. They provide telephone calling service for the elderly. Due to the low level of development of this market segment, GoGoGrandparent is expanding at a rate of 12% per week, and 21% of first-time users have become repeat customers. In the next step, they may also continue to make a fuss about the elderly market and provide them with the purchase and delivery of goods and drugs. Although older people are slowly becoming familiar with smartphones, the GoGoGrandparent business model is still a viable transitional presence in the near future.
Yoshi - Membership Refueling Service
When it comes to fueling cars, people will think of private cars for the first time, but the real big players in this market are buses and municipal vehicles. Yoshi aimed at this market gap and paid 24 dollars per month for membership fees to get 24 cents/gallon of gasoline. Yoshi quickly seized this part of the car refueling market in this way. However, the company also hopes to maintain a good relationship with owners of private cars. By providing additional services, such as selling engine cleaners, changing tires, changing wipers, or providing car wash services to open up a larger market, profits will be increased to 40% or even 50%. Right now, the company has reached an agreement with Firestone and plans to open a pilot project with Detroit automakers within a month.
Fabric - Searchable Memory Palace
The time is to kill pigs and knives, and people's memory will gradually fade as the ages grow old. Many companies in the industry, such as Google Calio, have invested millions of dollars to combat the memory degradation problem. However, drug solutions are time-consuming and laborious, so engineers who are responsible for the development of Facebook's timeline begin to use their rich experience to solve problems. Fabric will grab your past experience, interact with others, and automatically generate your own log of your location. You can search for it to retrieve your memory. Currently Fabric has become the most popular application in the app store, acquiring more than 1.5 million real-time check-ins.
Simbi - the exchange market
For most people, time is always more than the pocket money. Simbi provides users with an exchange platform where you can use a yoga class to exchange dogs, or use a dance class to exchange houses for cleaning. Simbi can now achieve a 95% monthly growth, with $100,000 worth of skills swaps each month. It is estimated that if Simbi can guarantee the simplicity and security of the swap, the market for skill swaps can reach $14 billion.
SimpleCitizen - Immigration Accelerator
Each year, more than 13 million immigrants arrive in the United States who want to realize the American dream. It takes several weeks to several months to complete the formalities such as the green card. SimpleCitizen aims to shorten the immigration formalities. With only $249 per user, the entire immigration process cycle can be reduced to only a few hours. The company has received $40,000 in revenue over the past 30 days, helping immigrant individuals and immigrant families in 90 countries solve immigration formalities. Its next goal is to simplify the procedures for applying for visas.
entertainment
Joy, the master of wedding planning
For young men and women, marriage is a top priority in life. Therefore, how to create a forcing wedding is the most “sweet burden†for new people. Joy is spotting this market vacancy. They have created a tool that can help new people to solve all the trivia of engagement and honeymoon. In the past few months, Joy's marriage application has ushered in its own ups and downs, and about 150 new couples have chosen their services. As Joy continues to grow, they will become the new force in the $14 billion marriage market in the future. Joy's goal is to break the original monopoly of the industry and provide new people with double-price wedding planning services.
Coub - Only Gives You 10 Seconds
According to statistics, 60% of video viewers will not switch to the first 10 seconds of the video. The Coub's goal is to attract viewers through this 10-second short video loop. They attach great importance to creative intuition, and the number of loop video productions on Coub's broadcast platform is four times faster every month. Users can find the highlights of videos in You Tube, Facebook and Uploadhero, clip them into 10 seconds of style short films, and share the music on the social network. This Gif-style video captures 800 million page views per month, which also makes Coub's current traffic crazy.
Lollicam - Selfie Video App for Asian Markets
A year ago, Lollicam was the first to launch in Korea and received 5 million installations on its listing. Similar to Snapchat, Lollicam allows users to create short clips using 500 sticker libraries. With Snapchat's low penetration in Asia (1%), the company believes it can dominate the Asian market. To speed up the pace of development, the company’s team is working with big companies such as Disney, Pixar, and Samsung. For example, a campaign to promote "Crazy Animal City" produced 1 million topic-related selfie videos.
OMG Digital - African Buzzfeed
African media companies are usually conservative. They are difficult to keep up with the speed of the mobile era, and they cannot meet the needs of young people. Therefore, OMG Digital chose to create mobile priority content, which has now grown to a monthly growth rate of 6 million users. Each user spends an average of 14 minutes per day on this, and it only launched for half a year. Ninety percent of its subscribers stay on the mobile side, and the start-up company is signing advertising deals with Guinness and Africa Telecom. By replicating Buzzfeed's business model in a specific market, OMG Digital can provide some new humans in Africa with tailored readings.
The Athletic - Paid Sports News Â
In-depth reporting is a favorite among some hardcore fans of the athletes, but such reports are rarely seen in the general media, so The Athletic sees itself as the ultimate goal of sports media. They hire top writers like ESPN, put the finished product on a well-designed web page and do not accept advertising, and the subscription fee is $7 a month. In Chicago, The Athletic has 2,000 subscribers, an increase of 18% per week. The Athletic recovered its costs within two months. The team has been successful in launching an endurance sports program - the Strava ride, which is now aiming to promote The Athletic in more than 200 cities.
For more project introduction of YC project, please look forward to the next set of introduction.