When the family-based social network FamilyLeaf first made its debut as part of the Y Combinator Spring 2012 class, the startup set itself up as a kind of anti-Facebook: a place where relatives could come together in a private network built with family networking in mind without some of the trappings like advertising and the wider sharing with your network of friends (and, as we’ve… → Read More
While there is a long list of startups that are using modern technology to improve healthcare and education — to make us healthier and more effective teachers and learners — many are still shying away from some of the most challenging technical problems. Not that this comes as a surprise, as both industries suffer from some intractable legacy infrastructure. Modernizing the infrastructures… → Read More
Y Combinator company ZenPayroll launched its cloud-based payroll service today with $6.1 million in seed funding from Google Ventures and investments from the CEOs at Yammer, Box, Yelp and Dropbox. → Read More
Leaky, a Y Combinator-incubated startup that helps customers compare the price they’d pay with car insurance companies, is expanding to full nationwide coverage today.
The startup first launched more than a year ago, but the site quickly attracted attention (as well as cease-and-desist letters) from insurance companies, so it was taken down and reemerged in March with a new approach. → Read More
It’s that time of the year again. Lucky applicants who got selected for an interview with three Y Combinator partners will pitch their startup starting tomorrow. Founders will have exactly 10 minutes, so they shouldn’t waste time with small talk. It might be a good idea to learn everything about the partners beforehand, and especially what they look like. A page made by designers Jeremy Le Van and… → Read More
Y Combinator startup Chartio has come out of its quiet mode with its service for connecting databases to create charts and graphs without ever needing to upload data. → Read More
Profig, the Y Combinator-backed virtual phone system startup that launched out of the accelerator program’s summer class this August, has shut its doors after fewer than three months on the market. Its homepage is now a (pretty) 404 page and there is no way to sign up for the service anymore. → Read More
There’s a lot of opportunity — and big problems to solve — in the current educational landscape. But it’s not an easy road, and, for entrepreneurs and early-stage businesses in need of mentoring, seed capital, and business development guidance as they tackle those problems, the options are limited.
That’s why, after encouragement from Y Combinator founder Paul Graham, former Yahoo and Google… → Read More
Adora Cheung, co-founder and CEO of Pathjoy, said her goal is to make maid service “ubiquitous” — a basic service for a broad audience, rather than a luxury for the rich.
To make that happen, Cheung and her brother/co-founder Albert are offering four main twists on the traditional cleaning service model. First, she said Pathjoy is more affordable, charging only $20 an hour, compared to the… → Read More
We’ve already seen that the new Facebook Exchange for retargeted ads is delivering impressive results for advertisers. Now a startup called Perfect Audience aims to make those campaigns accessible to a broad range of startups, small ad agencies, and other advertisers.
Co-founder and President Brad Flora says the current batch of ad companies offering access to Facebook Exchange are serving… → Read More
Facebook has just closed a deal to hire Dwight Crow and Christopher Berner, the two founders and only teammates of the Y Combinator used car price comparison site Carsabi. The founders are now looking to sell the site so it can live on even though Facebook won’t be needing it.
Facebook tells me there wasn’t something specific that attracted it to the co-founders other than that “they’re… → Read More
Thanks to the HomeAways and Airbnbs of the world, more and more people are looking to rent their apartments and homes. There are currently some six million active vacation rentals in the U.S. and Europe, and this number is growing. However, the problem is that the vast majority of vacation rental owners aren’t taking advantage of the available technology to market, manage or share their… → Read More
There are a lot of dating sites out there and the world doesn’t really need another one. That’s why the young, New York-based startup, Grouper, calls itself an “online social club” even though its members go on “Groupers” (i.e. dates) and sometimes even end up in relationships. In fact, founder and CEO Michael Waxman met his current girlfriend on a Grouper. Instead, the site doesn’t promise to… → Read More
ReelSurfer, which graduated from Y Combinator’s most recent batch of startups, is a “tl;dr” for video. In other words, ReelSurfer was borne out of the frustration of trying to find quotes and scenes from their favorite movies on YouTube. Usually, these searches are fruitless. If you’re lucky enough to find a video that contains the quote or clip you’re looking for, you then have to download the… → Read More
75 startups pitched their hearts out today at Y Combinator’s 15th Demo Day. We saw surefire small businesses to risky big bets but after collecting opinions from their YCS12 classmates and top VCs, these are TechCrunch’s top 10 picks. → Read More
Tell me if this sounds familiar: you’re checking out what’s new on the Wall Street Journal’s website, only to be stymied by a message saying the content you want to see is only available to paying subscribers. It seems like everyone has an opinion on paywalls, and even though there’s evidence that paywalls aren’t as bad as people think, not everyone has taken kindly to the concept.
Well… → Read More
Editor’s note: Apoorva Mehta is the founder of YC-backed Instacart, a startup that’s taking on 1-hour grocery delivery. He previously worked on supply chain infrastructure at Amazon.com.
Getting into Y-Combinator is hard enough; but getting in two months late and as a single founder is almost impossible. This is how I hacked my way in.
It was June, and I decided to apply to Y-Combinator. → Read More
In early 2011, Y Combinator-backed AnyLeaf opened its grocery deal aggregation service to to citizens of the San Francisco Bay Area. Our own Leena Rao (and TC alumnus Greg Kumparak) thought rather highly of it, but it’s been over a year since then and the team behind it has had a change of heart.
Today, the company formerly known as AnyLeaf will be officially relaunching with a new name and a… → Read More
MobileWorks launched last summer with a simple, yet big mission: Build a viable alternative for Amazon Mechanical Turk and in so doing create a motivated, happy and accurate virtual workforce. To be the anti-Turk, the startup set out with a novel approach (and a social mission) — to pay workers fair wages and create a collaborative online work environment in which microwork would become less… → Read More
You know what’s not fun? Ordering takeout from your favorite restaurant over the phone — actually planning ahead instead of just showing up — only to wait in line like a schlub once you get there to pick up your order and pay. If you’re anything like me, this has happened enough times that you’ve thought about starting a Facebook support group, or at least made a strongly-worded mental note of… → Read More
Mobile games have grown to the point where players can dive into an immersive world or rack up high scores in just a few minutes from any platform. But trying to share those standout moments with others can be problematic.
Big numbers, virtual badges, and achievements all lack a sense of context, and a way for other people to know exactly how good you are. After all, what good is nabbing a high… → Read More
Social media sites like Facebook have become a central part of the lives of many families, letting them keep tabs on each other’s lives through pictures. But they’re not for everyone. My mom and dad, who live in the U.S., have no interest in joining Facebook. They are okay with email, and my dad will even video Skype if his wife, my stepmom (a computer scientist, as it happens), sorts it out for… → Read More
Y Combinator Summer 2012 graduate Data Nitro (formerly known as IronSpread) has a simple proposition: it enables you to to use the popular programming language Python in Microsoft Excel. The plugin is free for individual non-commercial and enterprises will pay for the privilege. So far it’s only available for the Excel 2007 and 2010 for Windows. The company has no plans to support OSX. → Read More
Noodle Labs, the mobile development startup that’s part of Y Combinator’s summer batch, launches today with its newest product: An iPhone and web app called Everyday.me. Co-founders Yu-Kuan Lin (a former Googler who worked on Maps, specifically for China), Weiting Liu (already a YC alum) and Yu-Te Lin (a former engineering lead at Wyse) describe their new app as “Evernote for your life.”
In… → Read More
You know that frustrating feeling when you order clothes online and they fit really poorly, like the target demographic is some weird mix of Kim Kardashian and Yao Ming?
Vastrm, a Y Combinator summer 2012 company founded by Jonathan Tang, hopes to give you the perfect, customized fit, starting with polo shirts. → Read More
Many businesses begin with a simple, and then nagging, frustration. For Christian Yang and Neil Joglekar, it began with Entourage. Well, after Entourage. In college, as big fans of the show, they found themselves continually searching for clips of their favorite one-liners or the best scenes so that they could share them with friends. Naturally, after numerous fruitless searches, they quickly grew… → Read More
MakeGamesWithUs is a new iOS game publishing company with a twist: its focus is on helping high school and college students to build games. MakeGamesWithUs us will take the kids’ creations, provide professional graphics and art and publish them in the App Store. The kids will own the code, and the company will own the graphics and take a cut of the sales. The company already has a few games built… → Read More
When it comes to being the Mall of the Internet, no one really does it better than Amazon. Yet, to truly best its offline competitors and put the icing on the cake in terms of user experience, Amazon has been pushing hard to offer same-day delivery for all items purchased within its virtual walls. However, Amazon CFO Tom Szkutak said last week during the company’s second quarter earnings call that… → Read More
FundersClub is going to change how companies get funded. Today it launches a website designed to let anyone with as little as $1000 make equity investments in startups and earn money if they succeed.
For now you have to be an accredited investor with a net worth over $1 million or yearly earnings over $200,000 to use FundersClub. But an industry source familiar with the Y Combinator startup… → Read More
Austin, TX
Seattle, WA
San Diego, CA
Menlo Park, CA
Boston, MA
Disrupt Europe: Berlin Hackathon
Berlin, Germany
