@shubham_dhawan I think COVID has actually been a huge boon to YC, as it was forced to go remote only, which really unlocked YC's potential to be the #1 startup accelerator globally. Previously founders had to choose whether they really wanted to move to California to do YC. The pro argument was that it unlocked access to Silicon Valley investors, gave you access to a global community of other founders, and helped you build the DNA of discovering Product-Market Fit. The anti argument was that often these founders' businesses were local to their country and very difficult to run remotely for 3+ months. Now, founders don't have to make that choice, because they can attend YC from India or Africa or any other time zone and get all the advantages. I think this will lock in YC as THE place to go for entrepreneurs forever. As an angel investing in YC companies, the trends follow this: the companies are much more global, the founders are more dispersed all over the world. Lots of founders becoming interested in starting climate change related companies, which is top of mind for many younger founders. My investing approach remains the same as always: invest in founders who look like they will run through walls and are constantly learning, in areas that are interesting to me personally.

@rrhoover I work on what I am good at: sales, recruiting, evangelism, fundraising, and partner with a cofounder who is the CEO and focuses on product. I like working so I find I have a deep well of energy to do the activities I love, and time has never been a problem for me.

@justinkan how dare you *like* work. 🙌🏼

@ashrahman Merchants flocking to Shopify was a reaction to Amazon's dominance in e-commerce: every vendor was looking for a new channel to access their customers. Of course, they ended up paying Google and Facebook to acquire the customers for this channel. The IDFA changes from Apple (and Google) demolished this... and now everyone out there is trying to figure out what is next. Our goal with Rye is to build a new channel that connects developers building new e-commerce modalities / experiences / stores with merchants selling product.

@aaronoleary I wanted to create a marketplace in crypto and e-commerce is the biggest and made the most sense

@aleksanshrestha Rye is an API for e-commerce entrepreneurs to search and get inventory data from a global product catalog, and allow their customers to check out. Our goal is to make the true open marketplace for e-commerce, and reward the merchants and developers who make that marketplace with ownership in and governance of the protocol. I think VC investment into e-commerce infrastructure will continue as it was pre-pandemic, and e-commerce will continue to take market share from offline retail slowly but steadily.

@jun_gong I'm back to obsessing about product. I was wrong. Product always is most important in the stories of the biggest companies out there (Google, Facebook, Apple etc).

@daniel_friis we were very inspired by my friends at Braintrust, who built a protocol that enables freelance engineers and designers to work for companies. If you are like I was initially, you probably are asking yourself: doesn't Upwork do that? Why does this need to be on the blockchain? But Braintrust realized that the next wave in marketplace is giving control and ownership to the people who actually make the market. By doing this, they were able to onboard >100k freelancers in under a year, as workers realized it was a fundamentally better deal that other work marketplaces. Our goal at Rye is to reward the people who create applications and sell products with control of the protocol. We also want to robustify the protocol as a truly open protocol that cannot be controlled by a central authority. I could promise all day that I never will sell it, etc, but what if Amazon comes and says here's 10 billion dollars? By making this an open protocol project, it makes it impossible for us to sell it and sell out our vision of a network that is controlled by the participants.

@rempact it could be smart! Creators are going to be the main way people discover products now... and tiktok is part of that.

@omwow It's easier than ever to build an internet business as a non-technical founder. There are many no code tools out there to get started. I can't remember the name of it, but I saw a no code tool that demo'd an airbnb clone entirely built on top of it. Content+commerce is super interesting. I think the most interesting commerce businesses right now are creator brands (like Feastables by Mr Beast or PRIME Hydration by Logan Paul and KSI). If you can figure out how to get user attention you can usually sell them something. The lines between product, marketing and content are all blurring. Channel-wise, outside of creators, we are still figuring it out. iOS 14 destroyed DTC companies acquiring through mobile ads. There will be another wave though.

@omwow check MakerPad.co this is the platform with the Airbnb no-code clone that Justin is speaking about. This is a platform of no-code tutorials for you to be successful

@heruwim no one wants 24/7 broadcasts. People are only interesting for a few minutes a day. This is why Instagram Stories >> Justin.tv.

@kyle_banta I am working on both. I partner with a CEO cofounder who is product and management focused, and I work on what I am best at, which is sales/recruiting/fundraising/marketing.

@wade_burrell our customer is the developer building an e-commerce experience (and they in turn market to the end buyer). Our goal is to be a great API that makes it super simple to build something, and make content around how to build e-commerce apps.

@justinkan I love it. It's a great initial strategy. Show the value, show the ease-of-use. Best of luck to you and the team!

@kaspian We ported over our base of gaming streamers from Justin.tv. But we also just reached out to everyone we could find who was streaming on another site and asked them to stream on Twitch.

@justinkan thanks and impressive. What was the value proposition for the streamers to change the platform they already used?

@tomas_budrys Rye is a web3 project that could exist as web2 (i.e. it is actually a valuable standalone idea even if you removed the crypto components). 2) not yet, but we will allow eventually.

@justinkan Thanks! Meeting Saurabh Sharma from your team today to learn more about the affiliation system. I am positive that we will use Rye for the project.

@david_sipos1 I'm very interested in marketplace projects that incentivize participates to make a new market. Helium, Braintrust and Audius come to mind. This is not a recommendation to invest in any of these fyi. I think the idea of a community owned marketplace is the future of the internet. When we started Twitch, we paid streamers cash for streaming but they were not able to participate in the upside of the platform, nor the governance. I think the promise of the internet is community ownership, and my hope is that there will be more consumer facing projects in this direction as crypto evolves.

@bhaskerkode we haven't fully decided what chain to build on yet. Not clear what you mean by secondary sales?

@rnhieu I like learning about new things. To me businesses are just exploring different markets. B2B is easier to tell if you are building something of value (people are paying for it).