Lightcone: Consumer is back, What’s getting funded now, The vibes immaculate

Chapters (Powered by ChapterMe) - 00:00 - Coming Up: YC Batch Energy, Platform Shift, Growth 00:36 - Intro: YC Winter 2024 batch big trends 01:51 - AI companies in the batch 02:11 - Replicate Story 02:40 - Consumer ideas return in batch 03:21 - Pivoting into consumer ideas 04:46 - Boring B2B SaaS vs Consumer apps 06:45 - Developer tools trend 08:34 - DevTools business model 09:48 - Open source parallel to Consumer social 11:23 - Supabase Hacker News story and 73 companies use it 13:08 - Open Source Dev Tools 13:37 - Most technical batch ever and why? 14:39 - Example: Flexport 16:41 - Tech platform shift and tech enabled 17:53 - What really matters: Gross Margin 18:51 - YC companies that has gone public 20:31 - What has YC funded less of? 21:11 - Fintech 22:18 - International companies and Companies In Bay Area 23:46 - Marketplace and Crypto 26:50 - Example: MIT crypto story 30:40 - Median age of the YC batch 31:56 - AI companies: Product Day 33:24 - BookFace launch: Live Demo 36:15 - Retail AI 37:09 - ARR of the batch 38:49 - In-person investor reception 39:38 - Octolane AI: Salesforce rebuild 40:33 - What's in store for the next batch? Most pivots 41:42 - Summary: We are just getting started

I pay my internet bill to watch this! ❤

YC and the tech startup community is what I wish I am in the US, you guys have such a good environment for entrepreneurs to thrive to test ideas, and spoiled with investors.

We submitted this round and after watching the part about building Salesforce competitors, it made me feel even more confident since we're building a "Marketo competitor - the Superhuman for email marketing" 🙂thanks

From 4:43 to 5:03, everything holds true (at least for me). As a young founder (22 years old), I can honestly say that B2B doesn't excite me. Let's put money aside for a moment; I see money more as a reward for achievements. The primary reason I don't enjoy B2B is that only a few people around us benefit (obviously, the people mentioned here are highly profitable to us). On the other hand, with consumer ideas (no offense, definitely not those mentioned at 3:37), many people benefit from what I do (like my neighbor walking down the street, my barber, my doctor, and anyone else not in the tech job, etc.), and that brings me a sense of self-satisfaction. Of course, I wouldn't claim to make the world a better place for free; I'll definitely charge for my services (but I'm not greedy). Anyway, I'm eagerly waiting for my application to be selected. 😊

Such good viewing. Great format. Great discussion. Great delivery.

Loved the energy!! Thanks for doing this.

Love this format - great to see YC behind the scenes

It’s always nice listening to all of you talking. This was super insightful. Thanks for sharing 😊

Love the energy, see you in SF one day!

It's about finding the intersection where your expertise meets unique customer needs that aren't widely addressed yet.

I've applied for the first time, getting started for the interview

see you this summer!

Great and a super insightful podcast. Loved all the deep diving all 4 of you went for. Gave some amazing perspectives. Just a couple of points, if I may. Companies building for local markets have the potential to go global as well. The only question is are we willing to bet on them while they work for the domestic market and test hypothesis? Second, AI is exciting yes and we are in this huge movement and moment of AI however the best founders also work in existing markets and boring problems and try to innovate an old model that is rugged and not working. May not look all shiny from the outside but definitely a lot to offer from the inside. Just 2 bits, thanks for reading my comment 😃

watching this got me so hyped. s24 lets gooooo!!

Hey @ycombinator do you fund solo technical founders in 2024 bcz at least mvp can be easily built alone. And Co-Founder matching interface is quite frustrating we should be having profile cards in grids so we can roll through quickly and pick the ones who match.

Your excitement around this era of companies is contagious. Let's go. Let's build cool stuff people want.

Thank you for the insightful discussion and for sharing all of this with us. @ycombinator I am curious, what percentage of startups in the cohort were focused on robotics or hardware?

was so cozy to hear all the trends and shifts in YC batches, thanks ☺️👍🏻

Interesting trends thanks 🌹