Y Rumors

Justin.tv: Live webcast of Kiko co-founder's life

2007-03-16T00:59:00.000-07:00

The first I heard about justin.tv was last summer when PG blogged that, "Y Combinator funded [the Kiko founders'] new idea yesterday... It's probably the most outrageous startup idea I've ever heard."

Most outrageous ever? I'm intrigued.

Then, two days ago, PG busts out this gem in response to a post about YC companies that didn't last: "The Kikos are the only startup so far that has died of causes not of their own making. As everyone will soon realize when they launch justin.tv, they did not fail because of lack of balls."

I noticed a photo of Justin Kan, co-founder of Kiko (which was recently sold on eBay), taken at a YC WFP 2007 dinner. In the picture, he's got a webcam strapped to his ear. Hmmmm. Justin.tv? "Just in" TV. He's doing some sort of live video streaming. YouTube -- but happening right now. Maybe.

A Google search turns up this blog which claims that "[Justin’s] creating a 24/7 reality show in SF where he’s going to live cast his life to the web."

Do the Kikos have your interest now? Yeah, mine too.

YC Company Thinkature Launches

2006-11-01T10:35:00.000-08:00

Thanks to a reader tip, I found that Thinkature Corporation launched late last night. With Thinkature, users can create collaborative whiteboards or "workspaces" which support sketches, text, diagrams, and chat.

One cool feature I noticed right away is their "hand tool." Click the hand on any piece of your whiteboard and a shrinking box zooms in right where you clicked, letting your collaborators know what your chatting about. It's like a laser pointer, except useful and cool, instead of totally annoying.

Y Combinator doesn't let interviewees use Powerpoints. I wonder if Thinkatures will be fair game.

Reddit Acquired

2006-11-01T08:10:00.000-08:00

Yesterday the internet was abuzz with the news that Reddit has been acquired by Conde Nast/Wired. Reddit, one of the original batch of Y Combinator founders, took less than $100,000 in funding. Acquisition talks began when the team worked with Conde Nast to create a version of Reddit dedicated to celebrity news, called lipstick.com.

After the announcement, two of the founders, Steve and Alexis, were interviewed on TalkCrunch.

How big was the deal? The Reddits won't (can't) say, despite the fact that people really want them to know. Founder Aaron Swartz did post a blog entry in which he says, "I logged into my bank account this morning and saw more digits in my balance than I've ever seen before."

Kiko For Sale on eBay

2006-08-16T18:35:00.000-07:00

The online calendaring company Kiko put their site up for sale on eBay today, presumably signifying the end of their company. This will be the second Y company to fold (the first was Simmery). According to the eBay description, "We are selling Kiko because we want to have time to work on other projects as a development team. We had a project in mind we just didn't want to wait on :)."

Things didn't look good for Kiko when Google entered the market, but co-creator Justin said he wasn't scared. According to one Reddit poster, Kiko has been down for the last few days.

~~Currently there are no bidders for the site, which has a starting price of $49,999.99.~~

Update: ~~There is now one bidder!~~ After 111 bids, Kiko was sold for $258,100.

Angel Day

2006-08-07T23:15:00.000-07:00

Y Combinator Angel Day is this Thursday. The web page about the event includes a one-liner description for each of the 12 SFP companies. I've included each description below, but added (where known) the company that the description refers to. Please comment below, or contact me, if you can fill in any of the blanks.

a variant of Craigslist;
a service that enables chat on third-party sites;
a dating site that reflects how dating works in the real world;
a site for remixing music;
a successor to IM for businesses;
a site where people categorize themselves by selecting images; Pairwise
a collaborative "Dear Abby" site; Pollground
software to improve the efficiency of corporate email; Xobni
a social site about fashion;
a service bridging IM, text-messaging, and email;
a shopping blog service;
and a job site for programmers

Note that number 6 is evidence that Pairwise (mentioned in the last post) is indeed a Y Combinator company.

More Y Companies Surfacing

2006-07-27T19:52:00.000-07:00

First off, there's Pollground, a site in which users submit multiple-choice questions, and the crowd answers. As of this post, one poll on the site thinks Pollground is more likely to succeed than fail, and another says that it's the Y startup that's least likely to succeed. Oh, and of course, the site has been reddited.

An anonymous reader pointed me to a Flagr map for Y Combinator Team Headquarters. On this map are four companies you know about, but one you may not: Thinkature. There's just a stub page there now, but it promises "online collaborative thinking" and the end of "do not erase." It also, apparently, "puts the keke on the face." I don't know what that means.

I got word that Pairwise is another Y Company. This was "confirmed" on Wikipedia but has since been deleted. Take this with a grain of salt, because that same link presents Litepost as a Y Company, which it is not. Pairwise seems to run two sites, likebetter and hatemore.

Update: Pairwise is confirmed as a Y company (referred to as "LikeBetter" in the FAQ).

Mystery Abounds! The Next Y Company: Clustrix

2006-07-10T19:27:00.000-07:00

Zak Wilson (owner of doomed startup) pointed out to me that Clustrix is the next Y Company to surface. Judging from the dates on their blog, they are probably a member of the Y Combinator Winter Founders Program. Their website is essentially empty, at least to the public. They do, however, have a help wanted page.

News of this company started on the reddit-sphere when dooka made a comment implying that Clustrix was a good company that was started by business types and not hackers. Paul Graham then responded, "Clustrix at this point is 100% hackers." Who are (or were) these business types and where'd they go?

It also seems that the first post on their blog, titled "Coming to Mountain View," which I saw last night, has vanished. This was the post that mentioned Y Combinator. (There are some pictures which were a part of the post that are still online.) I can only assume it was deleted. But why?

So what does Clustrix do? I don't know. I've dropped the company an email, but heard no response yet.

Wufoo Likely Received $100,000 in Angel Round

2006-07-05T20:48:00.000-07:00

According to Marshall Kirkpatrick of TechCrunch, "Wufoo is funded by two angel investors and the VC firm Y Combinator. That funding added up to $118,000." I assume the $18K is from Y Combinator ($6000 times three founders). That leaves $100K from the two angels.

I brought up the possibility of Wufoo receiving funding in an earlier post.

Wufoo Launches

2006-07-05T15:30:00.000-07:00

Today Ininifty Box Inc. announced the launch of their form building application, Wufoo. "After moving to Silicon Valley, 6 months of development, and many many caffeinated beverages, we’re proud to announce that Wufoo has launched and is open to the public," says the new Wufoo blog.

The company is offering a range of plans priced from free to $199 per month. Wufoo is currently the only Y company actually selling a service directly from their website. (TextPayMe does charge users a small fee if the user requests a paper check payment.)

Which Y Company will be purchased first?

2006-06-25T18:53:00.000-07:00

If inkling is really the seer that it claims to be, then we'll soon know which Y company will be bought out first. Or, more precisely, we'll know the probability, for each Y company, of it being bought out in the next two years. As of this post, reddit is in the lead big time. Incidentally, I saw this idea on reddit a few months back.

I believe that there's supposed to only be one answer in these inkling markets. But it's certainly possible that more than one company could be purchased in the next two years. In the event of more than one, does the first one to be purchased win the market?

Update: I realize that I think I've misunderstood the market. We aren't picking the one company that will be purchased. It seems to be an individual market for each company. And the dollar value for that company is an estimate to the probability that that company will be acquired in 2 years. Each company started at $50, corresponding to 50% probability (why 50% I wonder?).

Pixoh Changes Name to Snipshot

2006-06-20T22:53:00.000-07:00

I'd heard the chatter before on the wiki, but now it's confirmed: Pixoh is now Snipshot. Their site reads, "We’ve been asked to change our name due to a possible trademark conflict." Snipshot credits a Zach Baker with thinking of the name. He's a guy with a Startup School link on his blog, and one who, according to an apparent self-report on the Startup School wiki, "just left game developer Luxoflux to work on startup." Might this be another Y company?

So who has the trademark that potentially conflicts with Pixoh? Well, Baker's most recent blog post is about Pixar. That, of course, might just be coincidence, but the names do sound similar.

Wufoo Getting Funding?

2006-06-13T21:44:00.000-07:00

Chris Campbell, co-founder of Y Combinator funded Wufoo, posted The Top 10 Questions Investors Asked Us. Chris writes, "We had one investor invite us out to a casual dinner... We got a follow-up meeting and an offer out of it." Did they accept? No word yet, but even if they didn't, if they're turning down offers, that's looking good for them.

Another Y company, the still-in-stealth-mode flipt, got $5 million bucks from a series A round led by Sequoia. No word if any other of the Ys have been able to secure VC funding.