mobius.io here, we make hardware and were pretty excited when we read http://www.paulgraham.com/hw.html. Got rejected today and checked the server logs, saw nobody ever logged into our demo site. Is this typical or just means that our application was really, really bad?
Well, put another way, it might mean that your application wasn't really, really good. It could have been good, or, in fact, it might have been really good - but, I suspect the YC approach is to start with the very, very good applications. They then try and eliminate some percentage of those through some further due-diligence, bring a smaller group in for interviews, and then finally select a very small percentage of the original group.
Because YC hires primarily based on team/commitment/skill/fortitude/enthusiasm and potential, I'm guessing that reviewing the demo is done after there is some belief that the first properties are present.
[edit: I checked your site - the first two questions that come to my mind are, "What is the potential for this growing into $10B enterprise" and "What is their unfair competitive advantage in building this interface system?
PS - with a bit of work, this would be the start of an awesome Kickstarter. Then you don't have to give any equity away, which, if you really believe in your prospects, should also be attractive)
Thanks for the tips. As for enterprise, we want to eat ni.com's lunch since a lot of threir lower end systems require a computer to operate. We're thinking of doing a kick starter to get 50 to 100 prototypes built and the case design finalized. The hardware is solid and the firmware/server side features are pretty much done.
Feel free (anyone else too) to contact me if interested in a demo. We're in Mountain View.
Probably a better strategy. If you take a look at Jessica Livingston's talk from Startup School (http://startupschool.org/2012/livingston/) she notes that YC gets nervous about hardware--but nerds (like me) on Kickstarter love it. That's how the pebble watch came to grow successfully. Kickstarter is once of the few places you can find and fund really innovative hardware products. Best of luck
Thanks for the link. I figured YC knew the risk if PG asked for more hardware people to apply. It's true that it's very hard to have the same type of growth in a hardware startup as software, but someone has to make the gadgets. Additionally, while Kickstarter gives you funding, they don't provide the same type of mentorship that YC may offer.
Yes, the general fear of hardware in the valley was cured over the past year. There are still issues specific to hardware companies, but it is no longer that big a problem.
Things which are hardware plus service are even more popular.
The initial mobius.io device has 16 general purpose I/O lines, several serial ports, and analog in, so it is much more flexible than Nest. As for Android@Home, mobius also has its own cloud service, so you don't need to worry about infrastructure. What we would like to do is to have the same functionality of something like NI USB-6009 (http://sine.ni.com/nips/cds/view/p/lang/en/nid/201987) without the computer. And we also have LabVIEW drivers for our device. So you can automate things in your business/home from anywhere using JS/LabVIEW/HTTP GET if you wanted to.
