Startups - the spirit of the times
When you peer at offers coming to the venture capital firm Y Combinator, it seems that you are peering at the crystal ball of the future.
Twice a year - in winter and spring - thousands of people turn to the venture capital firm Y Combinator with their suggestions. - Each of these bright minds has its own vision of the future of technology. They give out ideas related to Bitcoin, drones, new drugs, virtual reality and almost all other topics that you can only imagine.
Since 2008, we have received tens of thousands of such offers. All of them together allow you to feel the ideas that energetic and intelligent people are working on and how it all changes with time. We never talked about them in public before.
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But recently, we commissioned Priceonomics (YC W12) to analyze our data on the proposals (without reference to the authors) for eight years. After analyzing the suggestions for keywords, they calculated the percentage of applicants who mentioned a particular term.
Consider this data, starting with a simple example.
Y Combinator has questions for applicants: “Who are your competitors? Who are you most afraid of? Analyzing the answers to this question, we can see what the founders of companies think.
Goliaths in the world of IT
When Twitter appeared and - after the launch of the new version of this site in 2010 - began to grow rapidly, there were many startups making Twitter-like applications and tools for Twitter users, who, accordingly, were worried that Twitter could compete with them. Very few applicants mention Microsoft - Paul Graham recently wrote why this might be.
Some startups are already included in the same top list of competitors. Uber and Airbnb are about half the time Google is mentioned.
Competitors for startups
Other companies have completely dropped out of the list. Do you still remember MySpace?
Fallen giants
The rest of these graphs are based on the answer to the question: “What is your company going to do?”. Let's see what this can say about the shift in position from websites to applications.
Comparison of websites with applications
While the trend on this graph is not news, it was unexpected that applications were able to catch up with websites already in 2016.
Among mobile devices, the iPad was especially often mentioned after its first appearance. Now it is rarely mentioned - probably not because people no longer make apps for the iPad, but simply now it is so obvious that support will be provided for the iPad that it is not necessary to recall this. The interest in this Kindle plan has never been very strong.
Tablets and e-books
In the first years after the emergence of Y Combinator, applicants often indicated free and ad-supported business models. Gradually, in the world of startups, this business model has become less common, it has been replaced by companies that are paid directly by customers. We always expected such a situation, as can be seen on this chart.
Saas-companies in comparison with companies supported by advertising
The reference to “SaaS” (“Software-as-a-Service” (“Software as a service”) or, in other words, people pay for it) has increased 4 times since 2008, while the mention of “advertising” companies has decreased more than than 60%.
Startups were associated with blogging, which was very fashionable - many applicants offered tools, the best sites for bloggers or search engines for blogs. This direction is now unpopular.
Reduced interest in blogs
There are still many ideas aimed at improving or eliminating email, but not as much as before. Messengers are becoming more and more popular.
Messaging and communication
In the depths of the above graph, the rapidly growing popularity of Slack messaging service is visible.
Let's take a closer look at the rise of Slack, comparing it with the number of applications mentioning other popular services "GitHub" and "Docker":
Slack: Leader in Enterprise Tools
Many startups believe that Slack has created an unmatched distribution opportunity. Interest in Slack-related concepts, mainly bots and concierge management, began to grow in an explosion-like manner last year.
Now let's see what happened with Bitcoin during these years.
Digital currencies and technology
Bitcoin-related ideas have been extremely popular for some time, but interest in them quickly fell. Currently, the creation of add-ons on the blockchain is growing and it seems that Bitcoin itself can surpass.
Hardware and biotechnology are becoming increasingly popular. This is partly due to a change in the content of startups considered by Y Combinator. Initially, Y Combinator focused on software companies, but in recent years has extended its funding to all areas. This is reflected in the rapid growth of interest in hardware and biotechnology now that work in laboratories has become much more accessible to startups.
Growing interest in hardware
Biotechnology and pharmaceuticals
Among the hardware, smartphones, smart watches and other wearable devices remain popular, although interest in them has now stabilized.
Smart devices and wearable accessories
Other representatives of the hardware could not resist. The mention of tablets and e-books has dramatically decreased in the offers for Y Combinator in recent years.
Tablets and e-books
Interest in virtual reality (VR) is great and continues to grow, which is not surprising. We recently tweeted a request for VR apps and got a great response.
Virtual and Augmented Reality
But the biggest trend in the last couple of years has manifested itself in a surge of interest in the use of artificial intelligence in everything. Even these graphs do not fully demonstrate the importance that artificial intelligence has now in the ideas of many companies.
Artificial Intelligence
In conclusion, we have collected many of the most popular positions mentioned in this note in one table, where they can be compared with each other. Positions in the list are ranked by relative share of their references in sentences. All named companies are highlighted in orange.
List of the most popular positions from the proposals to the venture company “Y Combinator” in 2016
Despite the decline in interest in them, Facebook (4.2%) and Google (4%) remain, nevertheless, the most mentioned companies in the Y Combinator queries. Beginners are growing rapidly - Uber (2.6%), Airbnb (2.1%) and Slack (1.1%).
This table does not indicate which positions are growing, and which are going down. Therefore, we have identified technologies and companies to which our applicants lose interest, as well as those to whom this interest is growing rapidly. We have limited this list to the positions mentioned in at least 0.5% of all applications in 2016 (rounded to tenths of a percent).
Positions that have lost the greatest interest of applicants from 2015 to 2016
As can be seen, the position of “Bitcoin” could not be kept in the references to applications in “Y Combinator” in the last year - a decrease of 61%. It should also be noted that Bluetooth, Crowdfunding and Websites showed a similar decline.
Of all the positions included in this note, one has bypassed completely the rest in popularity - this is Slack. Over the past year, the mention of this company in applications at Y Combinator has grown by 850%.
Positions, the interest of applicants to which from 2015 to 2016 increased to the greatest extent
We believe that these data are quite interesting, and we plan to track them more closely. If you have other opinions on the interpretation of this data or have ideas on issues that we can consider, we are waiting for your comments.
Twice a year - in winter and spring - thousands of people turn to the venture capital firm Y Combinator with their suggestions. - Each of these bright minds has its own vision of the future of technology. They give out ideas related to Bitcoin, drones, new drugs, virtual reality and almost all other topics that you can only imagine.
Since 2008, we have received tens of thousands of such offers. All of them together allow you to feel the ideas that energetic and intelligent people are working on and how it all changes with time. We never talked about them in public before.
')
But recently, we commissioned Priceonomics (YC W12) to analyze our data on the proposals (without reference to the authors) for eight years. After analyzing the suggestions for keywords, they calculated the percentage of applicants who mentioned a particular term.
Consider this data, starting with a simple example.
Y Combinator has questions for applicants: “Who are your competitors? Who are you most afraid of? Analyzing the answers to this question, we can see what the founders of companies think.
Goliaths in the world of IT
When Twitter appeared and - after the launch of the new version of this site in 2010 - began to grow rapidly, there were many startups making Twitter-like applications and tools for Twitter users, who, accordingly, were worried that Twitter could compete with them. Very few applicants mention Microsoft - Paul Graham recently wrote why this might be.
Some startups are already included in the same top list of competitors. Uber and Airbnb are about half the time Google is mentioned.
Competitors for startups
Other companies have completely dropped out of the list. Do you still remember MySpace?
Fallen giants
The rest of these graphs are based on the answer to the question: “What is your company going to do?”. Let's see what this can say about the shift in position from websites to applications.
Comparison of websites with applications
While the trend on this graph is not news, it was unexpected that applications were able to catch up with websites already in 2016.
Among mobile devices, the iPad was especially often mentioned after its first appearance. Now it is rarely mentioned - probably not because people no longer make apps for the iPad, but simply now it is so obvious that support will be provided for the iPad that it is not necessary to recall this. The interest in this Kindle plan has never been very strong.
Tablets and e-books
In the first years after the emergence of Y Combinator, applicants often indicated free and ad-supported business models. Gradually, in the world of startups, this business model has become less common, it has been replaced by companies that are paid directly by customers. We always expected such a situation, as can be seen on this chart.
Saas-companies in comparison with companies supported by advertising
The reference to “SaaS” (“Software-as-a-Service” (“Software as a service”) or, in other words, people pay for it) has increased 4 times since 2008, while the mention of “advertising” companies has decreased more than than 60%.
Startups were associated with blogging, which was very fashionable - many applicants offered tools, the best sites for bloggers or search engines for blogs. This direction is now unpopular.
Reduced interest in blogs
There are still many ideas aimed at improving or eliminating email, but not as much as before. Messengers are becoming more and more popular.
Messaging and communication
In the depths of the above graph, the rapidly growing popularity of Slack messaging service is visible.
Let's take a closer look at the rise of Slack, comparing it with the number of applications mentioning other popular services "GitHub" and "Docker":
Slack: Leader in Enterprise Tools
Many startups believe that Slack has created an unmatched distribution opportunity. Interest in Slack-related concepts, mainly bots and concierge management, began to grow in an explosion-like manner last year.
Now let's see what happened with Bitcoin during these years.
Digital currencies and technology
Bitcoin-related ideas have been extremely popular for some time, but interest in them quickly fell. Currently, the creation of add-ons on the blockchain is growing and it seems that Bitcoin itself can surpass.
Hardware and biotechnology are becoming increasingly popular. This is partly due to a change in the content of startups considered by Y Combinator. Initially, Y Combinator focused on software companies, but in recent years has extended its funding to all areas. This is reflected in the rapid growth of interest in hardware and biotechnology now that work in laboratories has become much more accessible to startups.
Growing interest in hardware
Biotechnology and pharmaceuticals
Among the hardware, smartphones, smart watches and other wearable devices remain popular, although interest in them has now stabilized.
Smart devices and wearable accessories
Other representatives of the hardware could not resist. The mention of tablets and e-books has dramatically decreased in the offers for Y Combinator in recent years.
Tablets and e-books
Interest in virtual reality (VR) is great and continues to grow, which is not surprising. We recently tweeted a request for VR apps and got a great response.
Virtual and Augmented Reality
But the biggest trend in the last couple of years has manifested itself in a surge of interest in the use of artificial intelligence in everything. Even these graphs do not fully demonstrate the importance that artificial intelligence has now in the ideas of many companies.
Artificial Intelligence
In conclusion, we have collected many of the most popular positions mentioned in this note in one table, where they can be compared with each other. Positions in the list are ranked by relative share of their references in sentences. All named companies are highlighted in orange.
List of the most popular positions from the proposals to the venture company “Y Combinator” in 2016
Despite the decline in interest in them, Facebook (4.2%) and Google (4%) remain, nevertheless, the most mentioned companies in the Y Combinator queries. Beginners are growing rapidly - Uber (2.6%), Airbnb (2.1%) and Slack (1.1%).
This table does not indicate which positions are growing, and which are going down. Therefore, we have identified technologies and companies to which our applicants lose interest, as well as those to whom this interest is growing rapidly. We have limited this list to the positions mentioned in at least 0.5% of all applications in 2016 (rounded to tenths of a percent).
Positions that have lost the greatest interest of applicants from 2015 to 2016
As can be seen, the position of “Bitcoin” could not be kept in the references to applications in “Y Combinator” in the last year - a decrease of 61%. It should also be noted that Bluetooth, Crowdfunding and Websites showed a similar decline.
Of all the positions included in this note, one has bypassed completely the rest in popularity - this is Slack. Over the past year, the mention of this company in applications at Y Combinator has grown by 850%.
Positions, the interest of applicants to which from 2015 to 2016 increased to the greatest extent
We believe that these data are quite interesting, and we plan to track them more closely. If you have other opinions on the interpretation of this data or have ideas on issues that we can consider, we are waiting for your comments.
Source: https://habr.com/ru/post/300664/
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