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Conference Presentation, Product Demonstration

Work at a Startup Expo 2019

Y CombinatorRyan Choi, Geoff Ralston, Vijay, Tanay, Anjana Rajan, Jonathan, Greg, Julia, Daniele, Mike, David, Ning, Paul, Samir Maghani, Tarek, Lior, Chris Nguyen, Erica, Wei, Lyle Avery, Gregory Coburger, Adam McKenzie, Jacob, Parker Conrad, Ilya, Lester, Josh, Jordan, Marc Friedman, Hugh, Ethan, Hanan, Reese
Watch on YouTube →

Event Overview & Speaker Context

  • Event Scope: Y Combinator hosted a hiring expo featuring 40 startups that have completed the accelerator and raised external funding.
  • Format: A rapid-fire "demo day" style pitch session with 2-minute pitches divided into two halves, separated by a short intermission.
  • Engagement Mechanism: Attendees utilize a web-based directory (accessible via email link or QR code) to "like" companies, which notifies founders and allows users to bookmark profiles for in-person follow-up.
  • Recruitment Goal: The event aims to connect engineers with YC startups to build products, leveraging the startups' "amazing missions" and high-impact environments.

Opening Remarks: Career Philosophy (Ryan Grimester & Jeff Ralston)

  • Startup vs. Corporate Trajectory: Speakers argued that startups offer superior career growth, autonomy, and impact compared to established corporations ("the man"), where roles often suffer from minimal impact and high degrees of separation from the customer.
  • Future Outlook: The pace of technological change is accelerating, with AI expected to integrate deeply into coding workflows (e.g., AI pair programming, auto-fixing bugs) within the next 30 years.
  • The "Sunday" Rule: A hiring heuristic attributed to Patrick Collison: candidates should assess how happy they would feel walking into the office on a Sunday to work with the specific team; this indicates long-term cultural fit.
  • YC Ecosystem Stats: Since 2005, Y Combinator has funded over 2,000 companies, creating a network of 4,000+ alumni founders with a combined valuation exceeding $150 billion.
  • Job Creation: The top 100 YC-funded companies alone have created nearly 30,000 jobs, with many more jobs generated by the broader alumni network.

Key Startup Pitches: Facts, Metrics, and Tech Stacks

  • Airex Health:
    • Mission: Remote monitoring for chronic lung disease to reduce hospitalizations.
    • Status: Generating revenue, stealth mode.
    • Funding: Oversubscribed round from Floodgate, Village Global, and Acme Capital.
    • Team: Founder is a Stanford-trained doctor with two prior healthcare IPOs.
  • Athelos (Othelus):
    • Product: Point-of-care blood monitoring using computer vision and microfluidics.
    • Regulatory: First single-drop test for neutropenia to receive FDA clearance; first deep-learning-based test cleared by the FDA.
    • Deployment: Active in hundreds of clinics; serving 10 million immunocompromised patients.
    • Funding: Raised $20M+ backed by Sequoia Capital and NVIDIA.
    • Tech Stack: Computer vision for cell segmentation; trained on tens of convolutional neural networks.
  • Callisto:
    • Problem: 20% of female founders report sexual harassment/coercion by investors, with <20% reporting due to fear of harming company future.
    • Solution: Secure reporting software that connects victims with the same perpetrator using encrypted escrow to verify matches before revealing identity.
    • Tech Stack: Node, Angular; advanced cryptography.
    • Investors: Greylock Partners, Skoll Foundation, Google.org.
  • Checkr:
    • Mission: Democratizing job access through transparent background checks.
    • Volume: Processes 1.5 million checks monthly.
    • Financials: Profitable; team of 300, doubling annually.
    • Tech Focus: Identity matching, machine learning, and backend reliability for high-impact operations.
  • Dreamcraft:
    • Mission: Platform allowing game modders to create, sell, and distribute games (simulation, editor, and distribution platform).
    • Goal: Unlock the potential of millions of independent creators who previously lacked professional pathways.
  • Daineti Technologies:
    • Product: Mobile device authentication via credit card scanning SDK using on-device computer vision.
    • Founders: Ex-Uber; first engineer is a former early Android engineer at WhatsApp.
    • Tech Stack: Python (backend deep learning), TensorFlow Lite, server-side Swift, client-side Swift/Java.
    • Focus: Intersection of deep learning on the edge and real-time fraud detection.
  • FAIR:
    • Mission: Wholesale marketplace connecting independent retailers with products to compete against Amazon and Walmart.
    • Funding: Raised >$100M from Sequoia, YC Growth, and Lightspeed.
    • Tech Stack: Kotlin (Android/iOS backend), Swift, React.
    • Engineering Culture: Emphasizes automated testing, frequent deployment, and data-driven A/B testing.
  • Give Campus:
    • Mission: Platform for schools to manage online fundraising from private donors.
    • Financials: Profitable since early 2016; team of 28, 50% female.
    • Tech Stack: Ruby on Rails, Postgres, Heroku, Vanilla.js, React.
    • Hiring: Roles open in DC and San Francisco (specifically seeking a tech lead/senior engineer).
  • Glide:
    • Product: Converts spreadsheets into functional mobile apps (bi-directional sync).
    • Market: Targeting "dark apps" (internal enterprise apps built on spreadsheets).
    • Advisors: CEOs of GitHub and Figma.
    • Tech Stack: TypeScript, React, Firebase (despite initial C++ joke).
    • Team: 7 people currently; seeking their 8th employee.
  • Goodly:
    • Product: Student loan repayment as an employee benefit.
    • Market Trend: 4% of US companies offered this benefit at submission; rose to 8% in 12 months; projected to reach 32% in two years.
    • Goal: Help employees pay off loans 30% faster.
    • Hiring: Seeking first full-stack engineer outside founding team.
    • Investors: Y Combinator, Norwest (Jeff Crowe).
  • HealthSherpa:
    • Impact: Enrolled 1.8 million people in ACA health insurance; saved $6 billion in annual premiums.
    • Financials: >$10M annual revenue; 3x YoY growth; highly profitable.
    • Tech Access: First company with direct API access to the backend of healthcare.gov.
    • Tech Stack: Ruby on Rails, React, Python/R (data science), Elasticsearch, MapReduce.
    • Team: Originally built by 4 engineers; remote/hybrid roles available.
  • Human Interest:
    • Mission: Automating 401k management for small businesses (only 20% of US small businesses currently offer them).
    • Growth: 1,000+ startup clients; 75% of customers had no prior 401k offering.
    • Team: 65 employees; Series B imminent.
    • Tech Stack: JavaScript-heavy (TypeScript, Node.js, Postgres, React, GraphQL).
    • Hiring: Looking for backend-leaning engineers to help rewrite core accounting systems.
  • InstaWork:
    • Product: Mobile API for labor matching in hospitality (hotels, restaurants).
    • Funding: Raised ~$30M (Series A from Benchmark's Bill Gurley; Series B recently announced).
    • Culture: Mandatory "gig work" requirement for all employees to build empathy for users.
    • Tech: Serverless architecture; in-house mobile framework "Hyperview."
  • Kalshi:
    • Product: Legal prediction market allowing bets on real-world events (e.g., elections, Oscars).
    • Market: First legal prediction market in the US; currently the only one.
    • Tech: Backend trading exchange infrastructure; machine learning for market surveillance.
    • Founders: CS/Math backgrounds from MIT.
  • Keeper:
    • Product: AI bookkeeper for gig workers to optimize tax deductions.
    • Problem: Gig workers overpay taxes by missing expense deductions.
    • Tech: React, Node, Python (data science); chat-based interface.
    • Team: Founders from quantitative trading and product management (Harvard/Square/Amplitude).
    • Role: Hiring a founding engineer to drive technical decisions.
  • Lob:
    • Mission: API platform connecting businesses to the offline world (address verification, print/mail).
    • Scale: 100M API requests/day; $80M projected revenue; #61 in YC valuation.
    • Tech Migration: Moving from Node to Go and Elixir to handle scale.
    • Challenges: Global address parsing (280+ countries) and mail routing optimization.
    • Culture: Explicit goal to retain employees for 30+ years; pet-friendly office.
  • LogDNA:
    • Product: DevOps log aggregation and monitoring platform.
    • Growth: Tripled ARR in six months; Series B funding.
    • Customers: Reddit, Instacart, Lime, IBM Cloud, IBM Watson.
    • Tech Stack: Node, Mongo, Vue.js, Kubernetes, Rust, Elastic.
    • Values: "HOT PIE" (Honesty, Open communication, Trust, Passion, Empathy, Execution).
    • Open Source: Open-sourcing a new Kafka implementation called "Buzzsaw."
  • Modern Health:
    • Mission: Mental health platform for employers; named Crunchbase's #1 startup of 2019.
    • Funding: $11M+ from Kleiner Perkins, YC, and Jared Leto.
    • Growth: Tripled in three quarters.
    • Tech Stack: Python, Django, GraphQL; DevOps-focused with infrastructure ownership.
    • Culture: Prioritizes employee well-being as the core value.
  • Newfront:
    • Industry: Commercial insurance (full-stack startup building software to support operations).
    • Growth: Expanded from 135 clients in 2018 to ~3,000 clients today.
    • Tech Stack: TypeScript, Go (microservices), React (with hooks).
    • Team: 19-person engineering team with diverse industry backgrounds.
  • Open Phone:
    • Product: Modern business phone app for iOS, Android, and web.
    • Traction: 4,000 paying customers one year after launch (YC Summer 18).
    • Funding: Recent seed round.
  • Outschool:
    • Product: Marketplace for live, small-group online classes for kids.
    • Users: 1,000 teachers, 30,000 families; 5x growth last year.
    • Tech: Built on Zoom API for video; React/Node web app.
    • Hiring: Seeking 5 engineers to double the team.
    • Investors: Series A from Union Square Ventures.
  • Patch Medical:
    • Mission: AI-driven wearable monitoring to prevent sepsis readmissions in discharged patients.
    • Algorithm: Validated on 48,000 patient records; outperforms standard of care.
    • Goal: FDA approval for AI healthcare application.
    • Tech: Deep learning and wearable integration.
  • Pull Request:
    • Product: Code review as a service (automation + human network).
    • Scale: Processes 3 million lines of code/day.
    • Integrations: GitHub, GitLab, Bitbucket.
    • Tech: Go, React; supports languages from Clojure to Elm.
  • ReadMe:
    • Product: Developer experience platform for API documentation.
    • New Features: API log ingestion and debugging.
    • Culture: Quarterly off-sites; interview process includes candidate-chosen projects.
    • Funding: Recent round from Excel.
  • Rescale:
    • Product: On-demand "supercomputer" for scientific computing simulations.
    • Value Proposition: Elastic capacity on major cloud providers (no idle hardware costs).
    • Customers: Nissan (crash testing), Boom Supersonic.
    • Tech: React, Python/Django, Postgres, Redis, Java, DropWizard.
  • RevenueCat:
    • Product: SDK for managing in-app subscriptions on iOS/Android.
    • Scale: 50,000 requests/minute (peak 80k).
    • Tech: Python, Postgres, React, AWS, Heroku.
    • Culture: Engineering-driven; heavy focus on testing and back-end stability.
  • Rippling:
    • Mission: Unified HR and IT software to sync employee data across 100+ disconnected systems.
    • Growth: $100M raised (Series A from Kleiner Perkins); Net Promoter Score in high 60s.
    • Function: Single source of truth for hiring, onboarding, and system synchronization.
  • Scale:
    • Mission: Data platform to accelerate AI/ML development (ground truth labeling).
    • Problem: Supervised deep learning requires massive labeled datasets.
    • Tech: End-to-end API platform with ML-assisted labeling acceleration.
    • Customers: OpenAI, Waymo, Cruise, Lyft.
    • Growth: Team tripled in the last year; raised >$20M from a16z, Index, Greg Brockman, Nat Friedman.
  • Segment:
    • Product: Customer data platform collecting user data and routing to 250+ tools (GA, Marketo, etc.).
    • Scale: 250k messages/second average; up to 750k/second during peak events (Super Bowl).
    • Product Line: "Personas" is a standalone $10M business launched 2 years ago.
    • Open Source: 500 repos, 50k stars.
  • Simply Insured:
    • Mission: Online health insurance for small businesses to eliminate consumer fear.
    • Case Study: Mobile ID cards helped a user verify coverage in an ER when her physical card failed.
    • Partnerships: Distributing platform via Intuit and Square.
    • Tech: React/Redux, Ruby on Rails, AWS.
  • Slapdash:
    • Product: Operating system for cloud work (integrating GitHub, Asana, Trello, etc.).
    • Tech: Modern stack (TypeScript, GraphQL, React); custom database access layer for batching/coalescing.
    • Team: 3 founders; ex-Facebook and ex-WhatsApp infrastructure experience.
    • Goal: Provide desktop-like productivity within cloud apps.
  • Sorcerer:
    • Mission: AI-powered hiring platform to replace human recruiters.
    • Team: "Dogfooding" their own product; diverse high-caliber hires (OpenAI, Recurse Center, etc.).
    • Financials: $2.5M ARR; $10M Series A.
    • Culture: Weekly paper clubs, executive coaching, focus on reducing hiring bias.
  • Standard Cognition:
    • Product: Autonomous checkout technology for physical retail stores using computer vision.
    • Market: $25T retail market; $200B+ spent on checkout operations globally.
    • Deployment: 10+ Amazon stores, multiple stores deployed in 6 months.
    • Tech: High-performance computer vision; visual tracking without facial recognition.
  • Thunkable:
    • Mission: No-code/low-code platform for building mobile apps (drag-and-drop visual programming).
    • Goal: Turn passive consumers into creators.
    • Tech: React (frontend), Node/Express (backend), React Native (mobile), GraphQL, Google Cloud/Kubernetes.
  • Theorem:
    • Mission: Fintech lending platform to fix misaligned incentives in loan pricing.
    • Volume: Funds $60M in loans/month; aiming for $200M/month in 18 months.
    • Tech: Heavy reliance on machine learning for underwriting; infrastructure built for <100ms offer generation.
    • Team: Small (23 people), high-revenue efficiency ($15M revenue).
  • VoiceOps:
    • Product: Transcribes and analyzes call center conversations to extract structured insights.
    • Growth: $11M raised; 25% MoM growth; customers include Square.
    • Tech: Processing messy human dialogue; optimizing data pipelines for scale.
    • Hiring: Seeking engineers to own products end-to-end in a tight-knit team.
  • Valancy:
    • Product: Autonomous aerial delivery drones (payload 10-200 lbs, range 60-1000+ miles).
    • Customers: US Dept of Defense, Caterpillar, medical supply chains.
    • Locations: Operations in Bahamas, Puerto Rico, Africa, Southeast Asia.
    • Tech: Robotics-first; building flying robots rather than autonomous planes.
  • Zypher:
    • Mission: Help brands bypass Facebook ads to build community engagement platforms.
    • Revenue: $6M ARR projected; Series A funded.
    • Tech: Go, Python, React, Native apps, TensorFlow (computer vision, recommender systems).
    • Team: 12-person engineering team; filing first patent for computer vision work.