Y Combinator got so big, it had to split its Demo Day in two. During
today’s second wave we saw a variety of promising biotech, marketplace,
enterprise, and financial tech startups. Yesterday we chronicled 50 consumer, B2B, developer, and hardware companies.With bigger and bigger batches, the on-stage pitches are getting more bombastic as YC’s startups compete for attention. Yet this batch seemed like one of the strongest in years. After some batches around 2013 that included startups that felt more like niche features, YC is now backing big dreams for the future of medicine, money, and even marijuana.
Standard Cyborg’s co-founder demos his company while wearing one of its 3D-Printed prosthetic legs.
Here’s a quick look at all 50 of the startups that presented on the record. Click through the linked descriptions to read TechCrunch’s full writeups on the companies.
Campus Job – Helps college students find part-time jobs and internships.
Students fill out a profile, see jobs they’re qualified for, and can
quickly apply. 1300 companies are already paying Campus Job to connect
them to its 100,000 students across 2200 colleges.
Seed – An online bank for small businesses.
Seed uses your data to pre-qualify you for loans rather than make you
hunt for them. It has a revenue share in place with a banking partner
that handles the traditional stuff. It recently released its banking API
and will launch its software client soon.
NextTravel – Zenefits for travel.
75% of corporate travel is still inefficiently booked by humans because
companies want control over spending and policies. NextTravel
eliminates this with a self-serve front-end for employees to book
travel, and a backend open to managers who can track spending and
prevent abuse.
TheMidGame
– Helping brands advertise through social media influencers. TheMidGame
works with brands to find them social media stars that are relevant to
their customers. Influencers connect all their social accounts to a
dashboard, receive source materials from which to create content, post
stories that naturally pimp the brand, and are measured by the sales
they generate. TheMidGame pays the influencers and keeps a cut.
eBrandValue
– Real-Time Nielsen Ratings For Brands. eBrandValue measures success of
brand marketing and can predict sales by analyzing social signals from
customers on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, and other channels. For
example, it was able to track liquor brand Diageo’s sales with 70%
accuracy a month before the company got those sales figures by looking
at what people were saying about its beverages.
Standard Cyborg – 3D-Printed Prosthetics.
Medical prosthetics like false legs are expensive since they’re
hand-made. Standard Cyborg’s founder paid $23,000 for his prosthetic leg
and it can’t go in water. But Standard Cyborg can 3D print water-proof
prosthetic legs that are sold for just $800. Next, it wants to build a
much wider range of prosethetics.
Standard Cyborg’s waterproof prosthetic leg
Rescue Forensics – Digitally Combatting The Child Sex Trade.
Law enforcement doesn’t have the expertise or technology to track
online listings of child sex slaves. Rescue Forensics helps index these
criminal listings to aid authorities with tracking victims so they can
be rescued, and gathering evidence for presecuting crooks. Its customers
already include the FBI, Department Of Homeland Security, DOJ, and
LAPD. Next, the startup wants to fight drug trafficking and terrorism
recruitment.
Lumi – Put Your Logo On Anything.
Lumi’s website lets you drag-and-drop your logo onto any type of
product, from t-shirts and consumer products, to vehicles and walls.
With 70% margins, it’s already profitable, and the startup cites how
predecessors in branded merchandise like Zazzle and Teespring were
underestimated at first. Everyone is starting their own business, and
everyone needs help getting their brand out their.
Lumi helps you brand anything
Underground Cellar – Buy On-Demand Wine And Get Free Upgrades.
Wine makers don’t want to offer discounts because it teaches buyers
they’re worth less. Underground Cellar helps them boost sales by
offering free upgrades like bigger bottles, rarer vintages, or
autographed packaging. This hooks conumers, leading Underground Cellar
to have already racked up $1.2 million in revenue. Eventually, it wants
to dig into other luxury verticals.
Transcriptic – AWS For Biology.
Founder Max Hodak hopes to enable anyone with a laptop to run a drug
lab usingis a cloud-based biotech lab that tests experimental drugs
using automated robots. There are nearly 30 employees now, doubling in
the last year. It pulled in over $100,000 in sales 2014, allowing the
company to raise $8.5 million in Series A funding and move into a new
space in January.
Atomwise – Software For Drug Discovery.
Atomwise predicts potential drug cures with the use of supercomputers,
artificial intelligence and a specialized algorithm that runs through
millions of molecular structures, potentially reducing the cost and time
involved in making new drug discoveries. Most drug research takes
months or years and millions of dollars. Atomwise utilizes AI and
machine learning to enable research that costs thousands of dollars and
takes just days.
Four months ago it launched a search to find existing medicines to
fight Ebola. Two of the drugs predicted by Atomwise could potentially be
used to cure Ebola. According to the startup they cost less than $1000
and 1 week to find.
Spark Gift -Stock Gift Giving. People
have been gifting U.S. savings bonds for years. However, savings bonds
rates are now low and regulation makes them difficult to give. Spark
Gift employs a technology called fractional shares. People can give a
fraction of Google stock, for instance, for $20. It hopes to create new
investors through education and familiarization with the stock market.
Gradberry – Curating Technical Talent.
It’s hard for an HR manager without technical knowledge to find the
right software engineer for the job. Gradberry is a software engineer
recommendation platform that helps the hiring manager asses engineering
skills. Engineers sign up and create a profile on the platform with
links to their Github projects. Employers looking for a particular skill
set can scour the platform for the specific engineering skills they
need. What sets them apart from other resume platforms is it uses a
machine learning system that searches the web for experienced engineers
and grades their code quality so that HR reps can have a better
understanding of how good the code is. Gradberry already has 65
companies using the platform and is at a 45% interview growth rate. It
estimates an annual revenue of $1.6 million.
Industrial Microbes – Make Chemicals Using Natural Gas.
Non-fuel chemicals such as sugar are often used as the raw material to
convert chemicals, but the cost is high. Industrial Microbes uses the
much cheaper natural gas to convert substances. By lowering the cost, it
could be used to make biodegradable plastics and other materials.
Techlist – AngelList For Asia. Unlike
Silicon Valley, Asia is fragmented and traditional press isn’t doing a
good job of covering the tech startups in Asia. Techlist connects
startups to investors [Disclosure: Techlist is a potential competitor to
TechCrunch and CrunchBase]. The Techlist blog attracts nearly 2 million
readers with a $3 million run rate. All startups are covered in English
so investors can read about them on a global level. According to
Techlist, there are over 800 investors that visit the site.
Meadow – Medical Cannabis Delivery.
In simple terms, you push a button and get marijuana. Meadow is
experiencing 20% weekly growth with a 56% monthly retention rate. Like
many of the on-demand medical marijuana delivery apps available, Meadow
does not own or touch the marijuana. It builds the software for
delivery, point of sale, and inventory management for dispensaries. This
is a $2.7 billion market. It is poised to grow to over $11 billion by
2019. “Who knew marijuana would be so profitable,” co-founder David Hua
told the packed YC Demo Day audience.
ReSchedule –
Rescheduling for residency programs. Rescheduling is one of the largest
logistics pain points in hospitals and residency programs.
Reschedule provides an end-to-end work flow to manage graduate medical
education scheduling. Hospital staff usually takes hours to work
schedules around. The team has developed an algorithm that can make a
schedule in seconds.
Diassess –
Rapid DNA test. is creating rapid, disposable DNA testing. In less than
20 minutes, for under $10 and in 3 simple steps you can find out the
results for STD’s, the flu or HIV from urine or saliva. The device comes
with a bar code that can be scanned into an app on a smartphone for the
results of the test. Results are then delivered instantly. The process
was tested recently at the Children’s Hospital of Oakland and achieved 100% accuracy. Organizations like DARPA have supported Diasses. It is real-time detection and diagnoses in the palm of your hand.
Razorpay - Stripe for India.
Right now businesses in India need to go through a lot of paperwork to
take payments. Regulation also makes it very complicated. The payments
system lags behind the U.S. by 20 years. Razorpay helps businesses by
providing a standardized payments gateway into this $54 billion market.
It is on track to becoming the largest online payments market and
Razorpay is the only startup doing anything to on-board merchants in the
country. Razorpay purports to have 400 merchants using the service
currently.
Direct Match – NASDAQ For Bonds.
Banks make $100 billion every year for bond trading, but the
transaction is made through an intermediary that takes a cut. Unlike the
stock market, the bond market doesn’t have a centralized system where
traders can plainly see the fees involved in the trade. Direct Match
eliminates the middle man. There are already 25 institutions using the
technology.
BuildScience – Smart Building Software.
Nest helps regulate homes in the same way that BuildScience regulates
heating and lighting for office buildings using a real-time software
platform. The target market is building managers and owners of office
buildings. BuildScience charges by the square foot and already manages 1
million square feet of office space with a plan to double that by
summer. It is already tracking 6,000 data points with a savings
of $500,000 per year.
ShiftLabs – Low-Cost Medical Devices.
Most expensive medical devices are only available to hospitals with
funding to buy them. ShiftLabs builds cheaper devices designed for the
nurses and medical practitioners who will use them, starting with
infusion pumps. Most medical pumps cost in the $10,000 range. DripAssist
is the $300 equivalent infusion pump. It has filed an FDA application
and is shipping now. It has already had $1 million orders and $10
million in pilot programs.
Valor Water Analytics – Water Utility Analytics.
We are saving more water now than ever thanks to water conservation
efforts, but utilities are now losing revenue because of it. Valor Water
Analytics helps utilities save lost revenue. Utilities don’t know which
customers are wasting water or saving. Valor helps utilities assess who
is using water efficiently and who isn’t. It has already helped the
state of North Carolina save over $10 million in revenue. It has booked
half a million in recurring revenue and is selling to some of the
largest water utilities in the world.
Instavest – Collaborative Investing.
People want to learn how to invest from the world’s best investors and
Instavest helps investors share their how they do it. It does this by
letting anyone follow a trade and share purchases in the stock market.
It launched two weeks ago with 175 investors with $1.2 million under
management with the aim to be the discount brokerage “killer.” The
growth strategy includes attracting active investors on sites like
SeekingAlpha. Every investor brings in another 3 investors, according to
the company.
Open Listings – Self-Service Real Estate.
Over 67% of homes are sold to repeat buyers who are already familiar
with the process. The Open Listings platform eliminates the need for the
real estate agent by providing the paperwork and giving the buyer the
3% fee they’d normally give to a real estate agent.
CloudMedx –
Palantir For Healthcare. Collects patient data from different hospital
sources in real-time to generate meaningful insights for better patient
care. It aims to identify gaps in care with at risk patients to provide
early detection using collaborative data. It has signed 15 organization
giving them an annual revenue of $1.5 million.
BankJoy – Mobile Banking For Credit Unions.
There are 6,000 credit unions in the U.S. They offer lower interest
rates on loans and are community supported. However, they don’t always
have the kinds of resources banks do to build mobile apps. For $1 per
user per month, BankJoy provides credit unions with mobile services.
Currently, BankJoy has 250,00 users and an $4.5 million annual revenue
runrate.
Transitmix – Software To Run Cities.
Major cities still use paper to route bus systems. Transitmix provides
city planners with software that helps route the transportation system.
It has signed contracts with 20 major cities in the U.S. and Canada. The
software works with any city in the world by using demographic data and
cost analysis to help cities make better decisions. It has a 60 day
sales cycle with a $1 million run rate. The company says it has a $4
billion opportunity to build the software to run cities.
Zenflow – Medical
Device For Enlarged Prostate. Many men will suffer from an enlarged
prostate at some point in their life. Zenflow Spring is a device that
props open the prostate and helps to relieve urine flow problems. This
is a $5 billion opportunity in the U.S. and a $40 billion global
opportunity. Thanks to a team that understands the FDA approval process
and has a track record of other proven medical devices, its Spring
device will be commercial by 2016.
Final – Secure Credit Card.
A stolen card number can be used everywhere until it is shut down.
Final aims to solve this problem by providing a credit card that has
a unique number for every merchant. It works with an EMV based credit
card that creates multiple numbers. The startup has already raised $1
million and says it has 37,000 potential customers signed up on the wait
list. Applications will be open in a month.
Lully – Device To Fix Sleep.
Six million children wake up in the middle of the night. Lully provides
an under the mattress device to get kids to sleep through the night
using buzzing and other tested techniques. It has handled over 8,000
nights of testing for night terrors to get the technology right and has
sold out of 100 beta units, with 25% of sales coming from word-of-mouth.
The device costs $169 and aims to help the whole family rest better at
night.
Spire – Wearable Breathing Tracker.
Respiration fluctuations are a key signal of health problems, but
they’re tough to monitor. Spire has developed a low-cost, accurate
respiration sensor, and the infrastructure to turn data into health
recommendations. It wants to give early warnings about big health
problems and build its sensors into everyday objects and clothing. For
now, its wearable can let you know if you’re stressed or have been
sitting too long.
AnalyticsMD – Air Traffic Control For Healthcare. Inefficiencies in how hospitals manage resources lead to huge wastes of money. An
empty operating room costs $5000 per hour, despite a long-waiting list
of people needing surgery. AnalyticsMD uses machine learning to monitor,
predict, and optimize how hospitals work.
Smarking – Enterprise SaaS For Parking.
Companies in the parking market price their services and staff purely
based on intuition, leaving money on the market. Smarking’s system lets
them accurately track supply and demand so parking lots can optimize
their businesses and boost revenue. While it might seem boring, parking
is a massive market with no modern analytics infrastructure.
20n – Producing Valuable Chemicals From Genetically Modified Organisms.
Pharmaceutical companies spend huge sums producing specialty chemicals.
20^n uses software to predict what genes can be used to genetically
modify organisms so they naturally produce these valuable chemicals.
It’s already invented a way to produce acetaminophen, the active
ingredient in Tylenol. It’s also figured out a way to decrease one
valuable chemicals price by 2 million times. 20^n now has over $1.7
million in contracts from DARPA and a massive cosmetics company, and is
eyeing a wide array of chemicals for production.
GrubMarket – Online Farmer’s Market.
GrubMarket provides on an online marketplace where consumers can buy
food straight from farmers. GrubMarket then picks up the food and
delivers it. By cutting out the wholesalers, distributors, and grocers,
GrubMarket can take a big margin while making food cheaper and paying
farmers more.
CribSpot – College Rental Marketplace.
It’s tough for students to manage the college housing rental process,
as listings are fragmented across sites, and rentals require paper
leases and handwritten checks. CribSpot aggregates the best college
rentals, and lets students pay for them directly through the site. By
charging a small fee to help students find and book rentals (something
landlords sometimes do already), CribSpot plans to grab a chunk of the
$25 billion US student housing rental market.
KickPay – A Marketplace For Buying And Selling Invoices.
It takes the average invoice 48 days to get paid, depriving businesses
of the cash they need to operate. KickPay lets individual investors buy
up these invoices at a slight discount, getting businesses capital
instantly. Investors see liquidity within two months and can make a
double-digit percentage return. The market for KickPay is already huge,
with $300 billion in invoices bought each year through a terrible
interface full of contracts and paperwork.
Notable Labs – Personalized Cancer Treatment.
Drug combinations have been very successful in fighting disease, but
there are too many possible combinations to test on any single patient.
Notable Labs instead takes a sample of a patient’s tumor to their lab,
runs drug combination experiments to find out what works, and gives a
report back to the patient’s doctor. This exposes it to no FDA risk, and
cuts out big pharma companies that sell patented drugs.
Pretty Instant
– On-Demand Event Photography. Pretty Instant can get you an event
photographer in under 24 hours. Its technology can identify who is in a
photo and send it to them so they share it, getting both the client and
Pretty Instant more impressions that turn into inbound sales leads.
VetPronto – On-demand Veterinarian House Calls.
Pets and their owners hate going to the vet’s office. But VetPronto can
make getting healthcare for pets both easier and cheaper by bringing
the veterinarian to the sick pet’s home. This eliminates overhead and
scheduling costs, while letting your furry best friend stay put.
Akido Labs – A Standard API For Healthcare.
Akido Labs wants to unlock health care data the way Clever unlocked
educational data. It sells to hospital vendors that normally have to
create endless custom integrations for each hospital’s backwards system.
Akido sits between the two, standardizing the data coming out of the
hospitals so its easy to build on for the vendors. Akido’s technology
could make building medical software cheaper and easier, creating a
platform that brings better health to everyone.
DroneBase
– On-Demand Drone Services. Customers push a button, and DroneBase
dispatches a local drone pilot with their own drone to come capture
imagery, video, maps, and analysis for any project, like construction or
infrastructure management. This lets big commercial clients avoid
buying drones, employing pilots, or paying suppliers. DroneBase’s
service can significantly undercut satellites, planes, and helicopters,
while getting companies better data faster.
MashGin –
Self-Checkout Via Machine Vision. MashGin’s brick-and-mortar checkout
kiosk uses cameras to machine vision scan objects and instantly ring
them up. You just put your items, like and apple or a can of soda, into
the kiosk that looks like a MakerBot box with no maker inside. It
recognizes what they look like without user input or bar codes, and you
can swipe your card to pay and leave. MashGin’s two-person team from
Facebook and Bell Labs could change any business that relies on human
vision. And it’s just received a letter of intent for $50 million a
month of services from a major retailer.
Labdoor
– Quality-Tested Online Marketplace For Supplements. The FDA doesn’t
test supplements, and Labdoor says 79% of supplements fail quality
control. Labdoor does its own testing so it can tell you what’s actually
in Centrum or Muscle Milk even if the labels are wrong. The startup
believes that user reviews aren’t enough to convince people what health
products to buy, so it wants to be the quality control for everything
important.
Labdoor’s supplement marketplace
Bonfire – Full-Service Request For Proposal Management – $3 trillion is spent each year through the
Request For Proposal (RFP) system. When a business needs to buy
something that costs over $50,000 they get RFP bids from potential
supplies, and have to decide which to go with. That clumsy comparison
process can take months. Bonfire manages all the RFPs for a business,
determining which offer is best, and informing the buyer. Bonfire is
currently selling its service for $5,000 a year to large companies and
governments, but envisions an even bigger business in intelligence about
what buyers and suppliers should do based on the data it gleams.
EquipmentShare – Airbnb for Construction Equipment.
Trillions of dollars of construction equipment sits idle all the time.
75% at any given time. EquipmentShare lets contractors rent out their
idle equipment, and the startup keeps 20%. It can undercut traditional
equipment renters by 30% where contractors spend an average of $900,000 a
year. EquipmentShare could make it more affordable for smaller
independent contractors to buy or rent the equipment they need, and help
them create sustainable side businesses renting their cherry-pickers
and cement-mixers.