13 Companies from the YC Winter 2019 Batch Part 2

by Y Combinator2/26/2019

At YC, founders decide when they want to announce that they’re part of the program. Meet 13 of the companies who recently announced that they’re part of the YC Winter 2019 batch. To see more YC W19 companies, read Part 1 here.

Dyneti Technologies makes an SDK that helps apps stop fraud and process payments faster by taking a photo of the credit card. Merchants are liable for fraud losses on digital transactions, which some estimate will amount to a $48 billion dollar problem by 2023. Under the hood, mobile deep learning is the tech that powers the SDK — and this has only been made possible very recently by more neural net processing power and better tooling on devices. The founders, Lena Evans and Julia Zheng, have experience in deep learning and fraud from Uber. They closed their first client (a tech unicorn) a few weeks ago.

Point is the only digital bank to offer a debit card with travel and dining rewards, 2% APY on savings, and no hidden fees. Today, millions of people across the United States are burdened with record credit card debt, yet wish to enjoy the perks associated with these cards. Point offers the first debit card alternative, which allows you to benefit from the rewards of an elite credit card without going into debt. You can reserve a Point membership at trypointcard.com.

Traverse Technologies uses geospatial supercomputing to find the most profitable locations on Earth to build renewable energy power plants. Their customers include energy funds, utilities and independent power producers. Since they launched in November 2018, Traverse has closed $200M in LOIs with customers to develop and deliver wind and hydropower projects in multiple countries. Global clean energy investment exceeded $300 billion in 2018. Traverse’s technology will drive down the risk and cost of building the 30,000 clean power plants that are needed over the next decade to meet global demand.

Withfriends runs membership programs for event organizers and music venues. Whether you run a nightclub, theatre, or monthly comedy series, people can become members of your events and support the community you’ve already grown. Over 200 event organizers have boosted their income from 20%-300% with over 4,500 monthly paying members on Withfriends. These include immersive concerts in unique locations, like Ambient Church, world-class dance parties, like Elsewhere, and locally-sourced supper clubs, like North Brooklyn Farms. Running events is more expensive than ever, but Withfriends makes sustainable income easy by growing memberships and automating benefits.

PadPiper helps traveling professionals find monthly housing and compatible housemates. Moving to a new place for just a few months can be difficult and lonely. PadPiper enables renters to browse furnished rentals, find housemates with similar interests and lifestyles (and avoid pet peeves), request to rent spaces, and pay monthly rent.

MyScoot is a platform for meeting new people at house parties in India. It works just like Airbnb; people can discover house parties or host them — making money for dinner parties, brunches, or evening gatherings, for example. MyScoot uses a 5-step verification process to screen users and help ensure a safe environment. Today, the platform is available in four cities in India and has a budding community of 150 hosts in India.

Skill-lync provides online courses for Mechanical Engineering students in India. Students pay $250/course and get a better job after just 4 courses. They learn skills that are not taught in college but are required to accelerate their careers. Skill-lync’s initial target market is Mechanical Engineering students because more than 70% of engineers in India are non-software engineers. That represents 5.6 million new engineers every year. This April, Skill-lync is releasing India’s first Masters course in Hybrid Electric Vehicle Design & Analysis. This program is India’s first Job Guaranteed course. Students who don’t get a job will get a full course refund. Read more about Skill Lync in TechCrunch.

Superb AI uses AI to customize training data for large tech companies. Customers like LG work with Superb AI to augment machine learning based features in their products much faster than they can do it themselves. Almost every magical feature powered by AI was actually built using training data powered by humans — outsourced workers who click for hours on end to label data. Instead of relying on slow and error-prone manual labor, Superb AI uses proprietary Deep Learning AI that assists humans to achieve up to 10x and 100x speed up for labeling images and videos, respectively. Superb AI has generated over $250k in total revenue in less than three months after its launch last October. Read more about Superb AI in TechCrunch.

Postscript is Mailchimp for text messaging. It plugs into e-commerce businesses and helps them overcome declining email engagement by sending customers targeted, customizable SMS marketing. Prior to founding Postscript, the founders were working in e-commerce and saw the decline of email engagement firsthand. SMS is becoming a top 3 revenue channel for companies, and we funded Postscript because we believe what they’re building will be an essential part of any e-commerce company’s marketing stack. Live for four months, brands using Postscript have generated over $1MM in sales and see an average ROI of 21x. Read more about Postscript in TechCrunch.

Sunsama is an invite-only daily task manager for the top 5% of knowledge workers. Sunsama gives busy professionals struggling with stress and burnout a way to prioritize all their tasks, meetings, and to-dos one day at a time. The founders have spent the past five years researching this methodology. They recently launched this version of the product, and it is now used by over 100 YC founders and tech executives. Read more about Sunsama in TechCrunch.

Trexo Robotics builds wearable robots that help children with Cerebral Palsy walk, in many cases for the first time in their lives. Trexo’s mission is to enable mobility for everyone, starting with children. The company was started when founder Manmeet Maggu’s nephew was diagnosed with CP and was told that he would never be able to walk. Trexo launched their first product for home use, and kids are already using it to walk everyday. Over 65 families have tried out the Trexo, and testing events are being hosted around North America. Families can sign up on their site. Read more about Trexo Robotics in TechCrunch. Watch a video about Trexo here.

Latchel is a 24/7 virtual maintenance department for property managers across the US. Latchel takes maintenance requests directly from tenants, troubleshoots issues with on-demand service professionals, and then dispatches contractors if an issue can’t be fixed over the phone. Maintenance is the #1 reason management companies fail to scale operations and retain tenants. With Latchel, management companies spend less than 15 minutes per day on maintenance related activities and tenants rate Latchel with 4.7/5 stars across 1,460 reviews. Read more about Latchel in TechCrunch.

Mudrex helps crypto traders automate their trading without needing to write a single line of code. Traders can write their trading logic using a flow chart style tool, test their trading rules on historical or live data, and put their strategies live on multiple exchanges to trade automatically. Any trader can get started with automated trading within minutes without spending a dollar. Prior to Mudrex, the founders started companies like Housing.com and Niffler & PaxPlay, and raised funds from investors including Softbank, Saif Partners, and Nexus Ventures. Read more about Mudrex on Forbes.

Author

  • Y Combinator

    Y Combinator created a new model for funding early stage startups. Twice a year we invest a small amount of money ($150k) in a large number of startups (recently 200). The startups move to Silicon