LIVE @ YC Demo Day | Nate Bosshard, Joshua Reeves, Joshua Browder, Burkay Gur, Theo Browne & MORE
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Entrepreneurial Journeys: From Jailbreaking to Robotics
This chapter explores the entrepreneurial journeys of individuals who ventured into online business, from creative exploits like jailbreaking phones to hardware testing for innovative technologies. It culminates in a Demo Day event where new startups present their unique solutions.
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- (00:00) - Nate Bosshard, founder of Offline Ventures and co-founder of Tonal, has a background in marketing leadership at companies like GoPro and The North Face. In the conversation, he reflects on his early entrepreneurial ventures, such as selling used records on eBay, and discusses the evolution of Y Combinator's Demo Day to a quarterly event. He also highlights Andrew Dudum of Hims & Hers as an underrated entrepreneur, noting the company's rapid growth and successful public offering.
- (24:17) - Jerry Qian, co-founder and CEO of Reacher, an AI-powered platform that automates creator marketing workflows for brands, discusses how Reacher helps brands find the right creators, personalize outreach, manage payments, and generate scripts to create viral content. He highlights the emergence of TikTok Shop as a significant social commerce platform and emphasizes the role of AI in enhancing creator marketing. Jerry also shares that Reacher has achieved $137,000 in monthly recurring revenue.
- (27:52) - Joshua Reeves, CEO and co-founder of Gusto, a company reimagining payroll and HR services for small businesses, discusses his journey from Stanford electrical engineering graduate to entrepreneur, highlighting his experience with Y Combinator's Winter 2012 batch and the early days of Gusto. He shares insights into the company's initial focus on payroll, the importance of using their own product before paying themselves, and the challenges of raising funds during a time when many startups were centered on social and mobile platforms. Reeves also reflects on the significance of customer-centricity, drawing inspiration from Steve Jobs' 2005 Stanford commencement speech, and emphasizes the value of understanding and serving customers to build a successful business.
- (33:28) - Bruno Koba, co-founder of Gauss, introduces their AI-driven investment analyst designed to assist retail investors in making informed decisions by monitoring markets, filtering noise, and delivering personalized insights. He emphasizes the platform's focus on reducing emotional investment mistakes and catering to thesis-driven investors who lack time for extensive market research. Bruno also shares his background, including roles at Nubank and Monashees, and mentions Gauss's subscription model, charging $19 per month, with plans to transition to a Registered Investment Advisor (RIA) model.
- (39:24) - Jason Cornelius, co-founder and CEO of Perseus Defense, discusses the development of affordable 16-inch guided missiles designed to counter drone threats. He highlights the limitations of existing counter-UAS solutions, such as electronic warfare and high-cost interceptors, and introduces Perseus Defense's cost-effective alternative, aiming to produce missiles for under $10,000 per unit. Cornelius also shares the company's rapid prototyping progress, including multiple missile iterations and live-fire tests, and mentions engagements with the Department of Defense to advance the technology's deployment.
- (44:53) - Farhan Khan, co-founder of Meteor and former University of Washington computer science student, discusses their AI-native browser designed to automate repetitive online tasks, positioning it as a superior alternative to Google Chrome. He explains that Meteor employs AI agents to handle activities like scheduling meetings and data entry, aiming to save users significant time. Farhan also shares his entrepreneurial journey, including previous projects and his decision to drop out of college to focus on building Meteor.
- (48:31) - Wyatt Lansford is the co-founder and CTO of Pally, a platform that consolidates contacts and conversations from various platforms into one place, utilizing on-device AI to maintain user privacy. In the conversation, Haz Hubble, Pally's founder, discusses the platform's functionality, emphasizing its local data processing to ensure privacy, and shares the company's growth metrics, including reaching over 3,500 users and achieving $125,000 in annual recurring revenue within two months of launch. He also recounts his entrepreneurial journey, highlighting his admiration for Richard Branson and an early venture selling FIFA Ultimate Team coins at age 12.
- (52:10) - Luigi Pederzani is the co-founder and CTO of mcp-use, an open-source toolkit that enables developers to build and deploy AI agents using the Model Context Protocol (MCP). In the conversation, he discusses mcp-use's open-source strategy, its growing GitHub repository with over 7,000 stars, and the company's bottom-up approach to enterprise adoption, similar to Supabase. He also mentions raising $6 million in funding and his previous experience in Zurich working on virtual try-on technology for e-commerce.
- (56:18) - Dhruv Roongta is a 20-year-old entrepreneur and co-founder of Slashy, an AI agent that integrates with various applications to automate repetitive tasks. In the conversation, he discusses how Slashy connects to tools like calendars, Gmail, and Notion to streamline workflows, reducing the need for manual input. He also shares that 40% of their batch uses Slashy, with a 30% week-over-week growth, and mentions that 30% of the VCs at Demo Day are utilizing the product for meeting preparation.
- (01:01:21) - Anmol Tukrel, CEO of Closera, a Y Combinator-backed startup, discusses how his company leverages AI to automate time-consuming tasks for commercial real estate brokers, such as creating sales materials—a process that traditionally takes four weeks and costs $5,000, but with Closera, can be completed in about five minutes. He also shares his background as a former Google product manager who monetized projects like Gemini and NotebookLM, and as the creator of iDentifi, an app aiding the visually impaired, which was featured in a Google commercial alongside notable figures.
- (01:05:23) - Joshua Browder, founder and CEO of DoNotPay, discusses the emergence of AI-driven solutions in niche sectors, highlighting a startup utilizing AI for waste collection. He emphasizes the potential for building substantial businesses in specialized areas that large AI models may overlook. Browder also reflects on his early entrepreneurial ventures, including selling jailbroken phone themes at age 13, and expresses admiration for Larry Ellison's pricing strategies and business acumen.
- (01:12:06) - Anson Yu is the founder of Normal, a company that automates hardware testing and compliance processes, focusing on robotics, drones, and other electrical components with radio features. He discusses how Normal streamlines testing infrastructure, which is often cumbersome or located overseas, to support teams in efficiently validating their hardware products. Since launching three weeks ago, Normal has achieved $35,000 in revenue and completed its funding round.
- (01:15:47) - Aden Clemente, CTO of Effigove, is developing an AI operating system for local governments, starting with a 24/7 311 call center service. He discusses the limited availability of 311 lines in cities and how Effigove's AI-driven solution aims to provide consistent information services to all municipalities, regardless of size. Clemente also shares that Effigove is live in one city with an $80,000 ARR and has two additional contracts pending.
- (01:22:10) - Zane Hengsperger, founder of Nox Metals, is revolutionizing the U.S. metal supply chain by integrating software and automation to deliver raw materials more efficiently to manufacturers. In the conversation, he discusses how his company purchases large metal billets, cuts them using advanced band saws, and supplies precisely sized blocks to clients like Hadrian for CNC machining. Hengsperger emphasizes the importance of reindustrializing America by enhancing factory efficiency through technology, aiming to provide next-day delivery of custom-cut metal blocks to factories n...
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