📶 YC S24 takeaways

Sponsored by

Good morning 👋

And happy Friday.

YC wrapped up its Summer 2024 Demo Day yesterday which means R.I.P. to the inboxes of those founders.

We’ve got the full recap of the latest batch plus some predictions about where the world is going based on the types of companies attracting funding.

Let’s get right into it.

P.S. 💰 Are you a full-time investor?

Help answer our VC comp survey so we can help you get paid a better market rate.

TL;DR:

• 👀 Top

• 🔗 Links

• 🐥 Tweet

• 📰 Headlines

• 🗳 Poll

TOP STORY
YC S24 takeaways ⏭

YC Demo Day 2 for the S24 batch wrapped up yesterday.

For those who sat through all 254 companies pitching, we salute you. For the rest of you, we have the recap.

Stats:

The short:

• Don’t bet against B2B software and the United States.

• Industrials are making a comeback.

• Govtech isn’t sexy (yet) - that is changing.

• Remote isn’t dead (for startups).

• Venture interests in emerging markets is all but dead.

The long:

Demo Day is a chance to overreact and create predictions for the future, so here are a few themes from this batch.

AI Robots and the Future of Labor

Robots are advancing rapidly with the help of multimodal AI models and vision-language systems, enabling them to learn by mimicking human actions.

Startups like Ultra and Azalea Robotics are leading this charge by designing robots for tasks like ecommerce packaging, grocery shelf stocking, and airport luggage handling. These AI-powered robots promise scalable, consistent labor with minimal human oversight, potentially surpassing human workers in some areas.

AI Navigating Software

AI is also becoming capable of navigating websites and software like humans.

Startups like Lighthouz AI and CardLift are using AI to automate processes such as procurement and online card management, saving businesses time and resources. This trend points toward fully autonomous AI handling more complex tasks in the future.

Transforming Jobs and Developer Tools

AI’s reach is expanding into various sectors, with startups like Merlin AI automating construction management and Olive Legal aiding legal research.

As AI continues to reshape industries, specialized, domain-specific knowledge will become essential. Additionally, developer tools like Pipeshift and Zenbase AI are helping engineers build and optimize AI models faster, driving innovation in the field.

To explore the entire batch, check them out here.

Together with Vestberry
Is it possible to automate your VC portfolio reviews with AI? 🤖

Short answer: yes.

In fact, you can set up automatic weekly, monthly, or quarterly portfolio performance reviews using OpenAI along with tools like VESTBERRY, Slack, Calendly, and Gmail.

✅ Stay updated on your portfolio's performance
✅ Provide timely support to your portfolio companies
✅Give yourself (and your portfolio) more leverage

LINKS

🌎 VC Job Opportunities: Learning VC lists 28 open offers to join the venture capital world across the globe

🦮 Personal Finance Guide for Startup Founders on Notion: Ankara Nagpal wrote a 20,000 word guide that cover equity, fundraising, how to set up cap table, etc

🙈 Anime is Eating the World: Eye-opening article that details how anime has transcended gender, race, age and geography to become a $50B industry

🤿 How do VCs Really Make Decisions?: VC Corner takes a deep dive behind the curtain

🛜 How Arc Grows—Building the New Window into the Internet: Arc believes there is a better way and How They Grow offers lessons on avoiding competition, building what people don’t know they need and ignoring the numbers

👥 Community Builder Playbook (20% off): Everything we’ve learned from building, scaling, and monetizing an online community over the past four years (get 20% off with this link) *

📊 Supercharge your marketing, sales, and design teams with offshore talent: And get a $1,500 credit towards your first hire *

*Sponsored

TWEET

HEADLINES
What else we’re reading

• Pear wants to empower up-and-coming VCs with its new emerging managers in residence program (TechCrunch)

• OpenAI CTO Mira Murati resigns in latest high-profile exit (Pitchbook)

• How These Software-as-a-Service Startups Are Making Life Harder for Everyone Else (WSJ)

• Whatfix Raises $125M To Help Employees Learn Software Tools More Effectively (Crunchbase)

Search Partners
Hiring (or hiring soon)? 📌

Hire A players from the #1 venture capital community in the world.

🔎 Explore a talent base of 2,250+ vetted candidates
🤝 Our team sets up 10+ intros for you
☑️ Don’t pay until we finish the job and find the right hire for you
🔄 90-day money-back guarantee

Set up a free call to learn more.

POLL

Thanks for reading this far and giving us a little bit of your attention this week.

Feel free to unsubscribe whenever this stops becoming valuable to you.

- Clay

RESULTS

Here are the results from our poll question in yesterday’s piece:

What do you think of keeping this format (big story + separate section for other headlines)?

🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩 ✅ Keep sending it out this way (15)

🟨🟨🟨🟨⬜️⬜️ ❌ Don't like this format - stick to only giving news links (10)

25 Votes

via @beehiiv polls