Startup of the day (April 2017)

Continuing the “Startup of the Day” series of digests, today I present the most interesting projects for April. If you want to get acquainted with the others, then please in my blog. Entries are available on Facebook , ICQ and Telegram .

1. Casetext

American start-up for lawyers Casetext has developed a system of smart search for judicial precedents - CARA. The mechanics are very simple: the user loads his document into the system, AI searches in the database for everything that seems to be appropriate for this case. Casetext differs from Consultant Plus and its analogs in the intelligence of the search: Casetext tries to use the exact meaning of the document without breaking the request into separate keywords.

The basic cost of a subscription without discounts - $ 120 per month. If we compare it with the cost of a man-hour of an American lawyer, the investments will be repulsed in just a couple of successful searches a month.

The project is technologically complex, it develops relatively slowly. Investments are also not very large by American standards - in the amount of $ 20 million. The potential startup market is 1.3 million lawyers in the United States.

2. Farmers Business Network

American start-up Farmers Business Network offers its customers to unite in the fight against nature, buyers and suppliers. There are two ways to combine:

• Simple exchange of information. Farmers enter into the information system everything related to their fields: from yield to purchase prices. This allows comparisons with average and ideal results of colleagues, adjusted for the region and other conditions. It is easier to choose seeds and fertilizers, bargain. The more the farmer provides information, the more data becomes available to him. The accuracy of the input data is controlled using manual moderation and special algorithms.
• Fighting suppliers. FBN organizes joint purchases for its farmers and, at the expense of volumes, knocks out additional discounts - in fact, this is the work of a regular distributor with low margins, the occupation is not very profitable. But farmers get a more substantial reason to pay a subscription: not for some information, but for the opportunity to buy something tangible.

Knowing everything about its customers, FBN can offer them additional services. Now, for example, a “club loan” has been implemented: a startup helps clients attract financing at a reduced rate.

In less than three years, FBN received about $ 80 million in investment. The last estimate is about 400 million. The potential market is huge: there are two million farms in the USA, $ 600 a year from each is about a billion dollars in revenue excluding other sources of income.

3. Turnkey Vacation Rentals

Turnkey Vacation Rentals for 18% of the commission saves its customers from all the worries associated with the daily delivery of houses and apartments: from placing ads on various websites to organizing the reception of guests and cleaning the house after them. The owner need only give the keys once.

In addition to simplifying life, TVR increases the influx of guests, and therefore the income: the startup staff will take a photo of the house correctly, make the ad correctly, place it on a couple of dozen, not on a couple of sites, promptly answer questions. Another important service is dynamic pricing: a startup can automatically raise and lower prices, depending on demand and the average employment of houses in the area. But it is important to understand that most of the additional profit comes from the removal of tourists from homeowners and competitors, rather than a general increase in tourist flow. And when all homeowners switch to professional management, everyone will earn 18% less.

Turnkey works in the upper-middle price segment: the maintenance is taken at home, corresponding to fairly stringent requirements. Very cheap options to the intermediary are unprofitable: fuss with them as much, and check below.

Among homeowners, a startup is already popular, in the cities of its presence in its price range in terms of the number of offers it is only several times inferior to Airbnb. These results were achieved in four years and approximately $ 20 million of investment spent. The other day Turnkey got the same amount.

4. ScyllaDB

ScyllaDB is an open source NoSQL DBMS with a very clear and narrow positioning: "We are like Cassandra, but faster." “As Cassandra” means that they are compatible with the original and according to the protocols, and according to the data, in theory, migration between the DBMS should be no more difficult than updating to the new version. In practice, many Cassandra features are not yet supported, but "we are working on your problem."

C “faster” is still easier - ScyllaDB promises to provide 10 times more requests per second on the same equipment with a “smaller” delay. It’s not a fact that in a living system the superiority will be exactly that, but some advantage is certain: depending on the tests and selected parameters, ScyllaDB on different synthetic tests turns out to be 2–37 times faster than a competitor and is never slower. Developers explain the reasons for superiority in this way. your product:

• The DBMS is written in C ++ instead of Java.
• Used a different architecture of the distribution of tasks between different processors. Cassandra was written long ago and for a smaller number of cores.
• Implemented more accurate cache invalidation when data changes.
• Scylla herself tyunit own parameters on the fly, it is argued that she knows how it is better than the average DBA.

Whether there are enough advantages in RPS for business success is a big question. Older users with Cassandra problems have already learned to cope or accept, the transition to a new DBMS is usually an unwarranted act. When choosing a system for a new project, performance is often uncritical, but a smaller community and a lack of specialists is an important drawback of Scylla. And, unfortunately for a startup, there is not a single task in the world for which Scylla would be the most convenient tool: Cassandra is by definition always more convenient - it has more features, developers and system administrators know it better. But, of course, the number of rps is the number of rps ...

In the rating on db-engines, Scylla is now in 184th place in popularity, a year ago was 257th (for comparison: Tarantool for the year increased from 234th to 179th). Raised $ 23 million investment. Of the key public customers, Ola (Uber’s rival in India) and Outbrain are a kind of American marketgid with huge billions of daily hits. The company earns on support and consulting, has not grown to paid training yet.

5. Luxury Retreats

Luxury Retreats is the “Airbnb for premium villas”, it was only launched in 1999. The project received the first serious round of investments only in 2012. The second round was already in 2015, and this February, Airbnb itself bought Luxury Retreats.

The main difference between Luxury Retreats is that the service is completely on the side of the tenant, not the landlord. A startup inspector inspects each villa before being listed for compliance with quality standards. It is alleged that 4% of applicants are selected. Each trip is accompanied by a concierge service: an employee of Luxury Retreats knows where and how you arrive, will help you book a taxi and, of course, put pressure on the owner of the villa in case of any problems. In return, the landlord receives guests in the literal sense of the word. The usual price for one night in these villas is about $ 1,000 (there is also much more expensive), nor on any other service such offer will not be competitive.

In addition to the commission, LR willingly earns extra services - in addition to helping to order a taxi, a guest and a cook with a housekeeper can provide. And this, of course, is not free.