On Demo Day, the name of an existing company was most often combined with a new international market or sector, for example: “Impossible Foods for seafood”. Or another one for cat food (primarily treats)
There was an “Indian Flexport”. “Latin American Bill.com “. “WealthFront for Saudi Arabia and the Middle East”. “Square for micro-merchants in Latin America”. As for the sectors, the event featured “Ramp for Marketing”, “Plaid for DeFi”, “One Medical for Animals” and “Grammarly for Data”.
Although YC companies can be criticized for copying models, such comparisons are useful because they help to understand what the company is doing in a minute.
There is also a place for pleasant surprises
One startup, Airhart, has unveiled an airplane that “will make flying to Tahoe as easy as going to the grocery store,” which sounds like a dream.
Velontra offers an even more exciting ride — it is claimed that the hypersonic space plane they developed can take off “from anywhere in any weather” and has already received contracts and agreements worth millions of dollars.
The Needl startup is aimed at performance fans. He is developing a search bar that will allow you to search for the desired file in Gmail, Google or Slack.
Choosing which of the set will become the next billion—dollar company is a task best solved by venture capitalists. According to YC, most of the submitted projects will not become unicorns, but they give a good idea of the interests of the new wave of entrepreneurs.
The existential question for many of them is whether they will receive funding. As one of the investors commented, the estimates give the impression that YC is still alive in 2019, and do not correspond to changes in the market. Just as in the case of the W20 party, which was launched during the pandemic, the success of this cohort will become a benchmark for financing startups.