Y Combinator (YC) is a well-known American startup accelerator dedicated to helping startups succeed since its founding in 2005. As a leader in the startup world, YC is characterized not only by providing funding but also offering mentorship, resources, and networks to help startups stand out in a competitive market. YC’s success stories include Airbnb, Dropbox, and Reddit, all of which are now giants in their respective fields.
YC’s “Requests for Startups” (RFS) is a forward-looking call to the global startup community based on its deep understanding of market trends, technological advancements, and global challenges. We believe it can provide plenty of inspiration for entrepreneurs and those looking to join startups. The 2024 RFS covers 20 directions in total; this is the first part, covering the first ten. If enough people read it, I will continue translating the remaining 10. Here is the full text.
Introduction
Although the best startup ideas we’ve invested in were often not what we were initially looking for, but rather happy accidents.
Nevertheless, we are very excited about several categories of startups. Below is our latest 2024 version of Requests for Startups (RFS), briefly outlining some entrepreneurial directions we are paying attention to.
But this doesn’t mean you can only apply to Y Combinator by choosing these directions. In fact, most of our investments still focus on the internet and mobile sectors we’ve always paid attention to. So if you already have a startup idea in a related direction before reading this, please keep going.
Similarly, just because we’ve listed these directions doesn’t mean you have to start a company based on them. The purpose of RFS is: if you happen to already have a similar idea, you are welcome to apply to us.
Also, if you want to know what types of nonprofits we are looking to invest in, you can read this article.
Author: 木鸟杂记 https://www.qtmuniao.com/2024/01/03/yc-2024-rfs Please indicate the source when reposting
1. Artificial Intelligence (A.I.)
Artificial intelligence will have a major impact on society.
AI is likely to be a watershed moment in the history of technology, with the world looking completely different before and after its emergence. We are interested in people applying AI to any vertical (drug discovery, coding assistants, legal consulting, fraud detection, etc.), especially those focusing on the intersection of AI and robotics (manufacturing, autonomous vehicles, etc.).
2. Biotechnology (BIO)
Although still in its early stages, we are finally making some real progress in the field of biotechnology.
We are convinced that this field will continue to be an amazing, powerful, and controversial domain over the coming decades—somewhat like microcomputer technology that began in the 1970s.
Engineering principles are now routinely applied to synthetic biology, and biotechnology is reaching every aspect of our daily lives, from healthcare to manufacturing, and even food and agriculture.
There are many sub-directions here—fighting disease, slowing aging, human-machine integration, memory uploading, genetic programming, etc.
DNA reading technology has become very fast and low-cost, leading to many interesting applications. As DNA editing technology matures, it may give rise to even more interesting applications.
We are also interested in areas that prevent the misuse of biotechnology. For example, if bad actors can quickly create new infectious diseases, good actors must also be able to quickly find new treatments and vaccines.
3. Brick-and-Mortar 2.0
We are interested in startups that use physical commercial or retail space (brick-and-mortar) in interesting and efficient ways.
Amazon is bankrupting physical malls and large chain stores. Rather than competing hopelessly with Amazon, physical brands should rethink how to use retail space in ways that fully leverage their own strengths. For example, Tesla, Warby Parker, and Peloton use physical stores as showrooms to complement their online sales channels. Eliminating the need for inventory allows retail space to be used more efficiently.
Some interesting uses of physical space are not limited to retail stores—restaurants, entertainment venues, local service providers, and office buildings are also undergoing similar transformations. New business models will shift toward serving customers accustomed to online ordering, deep integration with other services, and instant delivery. Flexibility is key here. For example, instead of offering multi-year long-term leases, future business models are more likely to offer “micro-leases” lasting days or even hours.
Furthermore, the consumer preference trend of moving away from city centers toward suburban big-box stores surrounded by parking lots (translator’s note: mainly referring to the counter-urbanization trend of shopping in the U.S.) may change with the advent of the autonomous driving era. Once autonomous driving technology becomes widely available, our relationship with physical space will undergo unpredictable changes. We hope to see startups that think about this transformation and thereby build new ways of using physical space.
4. Carbon Removal Technology
The Paris Climate Agreement set a global goal of limiting Earth’s temperature rise to at most 1.5°C this century. Efforts such as transitioning to renewable energy alone are not enough to achieve this goal. Therefore, we must also vigorously develop atmospheric carbon removal technology.
Carbon removal and sequestration technologies are still in their early stages. Current solutions can be divided into two categories: nature-dependent (such as reforestation and biochar) and technology-heavy (such as direct air capture). Several countries, including the U.S., have recently increased fiscal incentives for removing carbon from the atmosphere, but with current technological capabilities, it is not yet cost-effective.
Some other geoengineering methods for curbing climate change also have great potential.
You can view more related content on the carbon.ycombinator.com page.
5. Cellular Agriculture and Clean Meat
Recent scientific developments have changed the way we think about protein production.
For the first time, we are able to produce food that is scientifically identical to animal products (such as meat and dairy) using only their cells without harming animals.
Today, humans primarily rely on farm-raised animals for meat and dairy. Setting aside whether this practice is cruel and wasteful, it is at least unsustainable. Every year more people eat more meat, but there is virtually no new farmland left in the world for meat production. Agriculture is the world’s second-largest source of greenhouse gas emissions after the energy sector, and the widespread use of antibiotics in agriculture causes real harm to our own health systems.
Growing real animal meat directly from cells is a revolutionary science. We would be very happy to invest in more startups that bring this technology to market, and we also want to invest in startups focused on scaling cellular agriculture. The world would benefit greatly from this more sustainable, cheaper, and healthier way of producing meat.
6. Diversity
A diverse workforce benefits both business and the world.
Without different perspectives, the products and services we create will miss out on huge opportunities for a large portion of the population. We hope to invest in nonprofits and startups that help bring technology to serve more people, regardless of age, race, culture, or sexual orientation.
7. Education
If we can solve the education problem now, we will eventually be able to solve all the other problems on this list.
Because most people lack good education, the overall brain potential of humanity on this planet is greatly underestimated. A strong education system will lead to greater social mobility, stronger workers, better citizens, and more and more advanced startups. Even a small increase in the intellectual output of the global education system would have a huge impact on human productivity and economic growth.
We are interested in new school models that can cultivate critical thinking, creativity, civic awareness, and vocational skills at scale. We are looking for startup ideas that combine technology with human interaction to provide highly personalized educational experiences.
We know that 90% of brain development is completed before the age of 5, and the achievement gap opens before kindergarten. We are interested in startup projects that can greatly improve the capabilities of children from birth to age five, reduce inequality, and improve the future quality of life for these children and their families. Thanks to the gradual development of brain science and advances in technologies such as smart homes, wearables, and mobile internet, scalable solutions in the above areas should be feasible at this point in time.
8. Energy
There is a significant correlation between energy cost and quality of life.
Historically, whenever energy costs have fallen sharply (for example, the steam engine revolution), people’s quality of life has improved greatly.
Cheap energy will greatly reduce poverty. Adding new sources of energy can also help protect the environment, boost the economy, reduce wars, ensure a stable future, increase food and drinking water supplies, and more.
We believe economic factors will dominate—even without subsidies, new energy sources must be cheaper than old ones and meet global demand. Nuclear energy may meet these requirements, and renewable energy might too. But pricing is the primary issue.
In addition to power generation, we are also interested in energy storage and transmission. If battery capacity improves 10x, it will enable great new things; if energy can be transmitted conveniently, we believe the same effect will occur.
9. Enterprise Software
The software used by large companies is still terrible, making this market still very profitable.
Enterprise software companies with industry-defining capabilities will emerge to solve problems across different industries, enterprise sizes, and job functions. Here are three very interesting specific areas:
- Reducing software costs: Due to the high cost of traditional enterprise software, many previous solutions were not cost-effective for small and medium-sized enterprises.
- Adding one billion workers: Traditionally, enterprise software users have been office-based knowledge workers. But the proliferation of mobile devices such as smartphones and tablets is transforming various other types of employees (from retail store staff to field service teams) into knowledge workers.
- Digitalization across industries: Every industry is undergoing some form of information technology impact; this is prompting companies to modernize their practices, leverage new data, accelerate key processes, and provide digital convenience experiences within processes.
10. Financial Services
The world’s financial system is increasingly unable to meet the needs of consumers and businesses.
This makes sense to some extent because the speed of legislation aimed at protecting customers has not kept up with the speed of new customer demands driven by technology. This speed mismatch makes the financial system inefficient at almost every level. This affects how people invest their savings, how businesses obtain the capital needed for growth, how risk is priced and insured, and how financial companies conduct business with each other, among many other aspects.
We believe software will accelerate the pace of change in financial services and ultimately change the related regulations. We hope to invest in companies with innovative ideas to achieve this.
