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Pitch Us - Y Combinator Lays Out The Startup Ideas They'd Like To Fund

I've been a big fan of Paul Graham's Y Combinator for a while now. Ryan Junee and his team at Omnisio (Y Combinator Jan-Mar '08) had great things to say about their time at the quasi-incubator. While they haven't yet had their blowout hit from an investment standpoint, Y-Comb alumni firms are quickly becoming names in the social web landscape: Disqus, iminlikewithyou, Justin.tv, and Reddit to name a few.

Now Paul is laying out what he'd like to to have pitched, aptly dubbing his list, "Startup Ideas We'd Like to Fund." It's a refreshing and pretty candid post. Take for example #11 on the list:

11. Web Office apps.  We're interested in funding anyone competing with Microsoft desktop software.  Obviously this is a rich market, considering how much Microsoft makes from it.  A startup that made a tenth as much would be very happy.  And a startup that takes on such a project will be helped along by Microsoft itself, who between their increasingly bureaucratic culture and their desire to protect existing desktop revenues will probably do a bad job of building web-based Office variants themselves.  Before you try to start a startup doing this, however, you should be prepared to explain why existing web-based Office alternatives haven't taken the world by storm, and how you're going to beat that.

One common theme throughout the list is the need for not only the killer idea complete with its disruptive tendencies, but the ability to identify why it hasn't been done before. It's one thing to spot the market that is rife with bloat, but it's not always so easy to spell out why. 

On my end, I'm still looking for startups that fill the 5 Web 2.0 Services I'd Like to See (and I'd acutually pay for.) Though I have to give a nod out to Brian McConnell for pointing me to his firm, worldwidelexcion.org for blog translation services. More on this in another post, but it sounds promising.  It is, as he calls it, a "suite of collaborative translation tools for publishers and bloggers that combine machine translation, volunteers (from your readership) and if desired professionals."

11 Startups Show-Off at Twiistup 4 Tonight in Santa Monica

Heading over to Twiistup 4 tonight in Santa Monica and looking forward to catching up with some fellow entrepreneurs. I'll second Brady Brim-DeForest in saying a big congrats to Mike Macadaan for pulling this all together and showing that the LA Tech community is alive and well.

Some intriguing startups showing off tonight, including Twiddla, which I wrote up a few months back.

From the Twiistup site:

Showing Off at Twiistup 4

Keeping with Twiistup tradition, we were going to select ten local start-ups. Due to the overwhelming interest, we expanded the list of featured companies to 11, including seven of Southern California’s best and brightest and four ‘crashers’ from Texas, Vancouver and the Bay Area.

South Pasadena - Big Stage is a media company whose breakthrough technology allows users to easily create and integrate a life-like 3D avatar of themselves into everything from famous movie scenes, TV shows and video games, to music videos, short video clips, virtual worlds, still images, user-generated content, instant messages, emails, social networks and more - instantly.

San Jose - BookRenter is the first online book rental service. BookRenter.com replaces traditional bookstore sales with online book rentals for students at schools throughout the nation.

Venice - Compulsion is a simple, easy to use tool that makes video clickable. The clicks become links that turn the video into an entire interactive universe of an individual’s design. Users can offer or sell those links for click and shop, gossip, trivia, news, music, more video, or anything imaginable.

Los Angeles - The LOUD3R Enthusiast Network is made up of in-depth, topic-oriented Web sites that are designed for the enthusiast and the curious who want to quickly find the best, richest content about a specific topic.

Austin, Texas - Minggl is a social interaction manager. The Minggl toolbar makes it easy to manage information, communication and navigation across social networks.

Los Angeles - Musicshake is the world’s first online UGM (User Generated Music) creation service that provides music composing solutions aimed at the general public (a.k.a. music dummies) without previous musical knowledge or expertise.

San Jose - Phonevite is the new, fun and simple way to send announcements and reminders over the phone, in the user’s own voice.

Los Angeles - Seethroo’s smart targeting technology allows advertisers to connect with individual social website users, creating more relevant ads and higher revenues for everyone.

Vancouver, BC - From grassroots scrappers to all star pros, Strutta brings players together from around the world in the spirit of true competition.

Santa Monica - Tools To Life is the world’s first free online self-help social network with real programs and community-driven support networks.

Los Angeles - Twiddla is a free, real-time online collaboration tool that offers simplicity and accessibility. It doesn’t require plug-ins, installs or downloads, and users don’t have to work around complex firewalls or advanced scheduling.

Discovery Is The New Cocaine - Going Beyond Engagement

Excellent slides on the value of discovery as a critical component of your site. It's human nature.

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Rolf Skyberg and the Web 2.0 Petri Dish

For those who haven't caught this one yet, here are Rolf Skyberg's slides from his eBay Developer’s Conference ‘08 presentation, “Web 2.0: Lies, Mystery and Opportunity.”

Key takeaway: solve problems that your potential customers have and they won't look at paying for your service as a cost, but as an investment.

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And here are Rolf's slides from last year in case you missed those too.

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