The 10 YC Companies (S18) I’d Invest In
By: Alex Mitchell
Tags: Tech, Fintech, Investing, Ycombinator, Startup

It’s Demo Day (again)!

By this point, you should be pretty used to me writing about the companies I’d invest in from YC! If you haven’t seen them yet, here are my past posts for the YC W18 class and S17 class if you want to check how my predictions have performed.

YC’s Summer 2018 class was one to remember! 132 startups, with a very high percentage of both B2B software companies (30%) and companies based outside of the United States (28%)

These companies presented to YC partners and potential investors on 8/20 and 8/21/18.

The Top 10 Companies I’d Invest In

**Credit to TechCrunch for their descriptions of the companies below**

Alpha Vantage— APIs for All Financial Market Data

TechCrunch Description: Alpha Vantage provides affordable, low-friction API access to financial market data including stocks, currencies, cryptocurrencies, and quantitative trading signals. These APIs allow developers to create digital assets such as iOS/Android apps and assist investors with trading decisions. Alpha Vantage has 100,000+ registered users making 300 million+ API requests on a daily basis.

Why I Would Invest: You don’t have to look too far to see that the world of Finance has been massively changed by technology. Whether it’s the multi-billion-dollar valuation Robinhood app or billion-dollar robo-advisors Wealthfront or Betterment, tech has taken over Finance.

Alpha Vantage makes a wealth of financial data significantly more accessible and affordable to developers building new financial algorithms, apps, or data streams. And we’ve seen what happens when a startup packages previously difficult to access data in a nice, tidy, API (Checkr, Lob, Stripe, etc.)

2. Scanwell Health— At Home Urine Testing App

TechCrunch Description: Scanwell Health has created the first and only FDA-cleared urine testing app. They allow anyone to test at home by taking a picture of a test strip for instant clinical grade results. Their first test provides on-demand relief for urinary tract infections. Using Scanwell, anyone can test their urine in 3 minutes and receive a prescription for antibiotics the same day.

Why I Would Invest: It is 2018. Why do I need to go to the doctor to take a simple urine test? This is not only inefficient, it’s expensive. The cost of my test not only includes the testing materials and lab time, but also the rent for the physical space and the doctor or PA’s time. Plus, on top of all of that, it’s usually slow to receive results!

While Scanwell is starting with a relatively narrow use case (UTIs), I’m optimistic they can keep expanding the tests they offer and own this new market. Their FDA approval is a major early win too.

3. Goodly— Student Loan Repayment as an Employee Benefit

TechCrunch Description: Goodly makes it easy for companies to offer student loan repayment as an employee benefit. This helps them recruit and retain top talent and improve diversity and inclusion. Women hold two-thirds of student debt and owe half a trillion dollars more in student debt than their male colleagues. African American employees hold 31% more student loan debt than their white peers, and LGBTQ student loan borrowers owe 17% more than the general population. An employer contribution of less than the cost of a cup of coffee per day will help the average employee pay off their student loans 8.5 years faster than they otherwise would.

Why I Would Invest: I’ve written before about the crazy spending habits of my fellow Millennials (See: Open Financial Letter to Millennials). The amount of debt we’ve managed to accumulate at such an early age is daunting.

We need creative solutions like Goodly to help us pay down this debt more quickly. Wrapping loan repayment into an employee benefit is a brilliant idea.

Employees with lower amounts of debt will be less stressed and more successful at their jobs. Additionally, its highly likely that companies with this benefit will retain Millennial employees longer. Win. Win.

4. CSPA— Standardized Exam for Software Engineers

Just a (small) sample of companies that accept the CSPA

TechCrunch Description: CSPA (Computer Science Proficiency Assessment) designs and administers a standardized exam for software engineers. It’s essentially the SAT for software engineers. Tests are held in classrooms on or near college campuses. The CSPA tests both academic and practical topics. Students sign up and pay to take the exam, and the assessment results are shared with employers. So far, there are over 60 companies using CSPA. As the founder and head of engineering at his previous startup, Crunchyroll, James Lin felt the pain of trying to hire great engineers. He spent a ton of time not only interviewing candidates, but also creating the interview questions. CSPA is his solution to that.

Why I Would Invest: Now that I’ve worked for 3 different technology companies, I can see the great value in something like the CSPA. There is no existing standard to evaluate computer science majors from different schools (or even different countries) on. So companies have been left to create their own questions and programming tests, which is time consuming and difficult.

I’m a little skeptical that the CSPA will have a role beyond the initial filtering step of candidates, but I’m optimistic that the team behind the test will find ways to offer additional, company or industry-specific supplemental tests. Think of the relationship between SAT subject tests and the generic SAT test.

5. Inscribe— Forgery Identification as an API

TechCrunch Description: Using a web platform and APIs, Inscribe is pitching a service to identify digital forgeries in documents. The company’s technology uses image forensics and machine learning to check documents like bank statements, tax forms and forms of state and national identification to look for tampered names, figures, text or signatures. The killjoys at Inscribe may finally get rid of the fake ID, but they’re also solving a billion-dollar market in online fraud..

Why I Would Invest: Fraud is a problem that isn’t going away any time soon and it’s going to perpetually become more sophisticated. Almost every consumer-facing online business will need to be able to programmatically judge the authenticity of documents uploaded by their users (think: banks, insurance companies, utilities, lending companies).

Inscribe is well-positioned to provide this increasingly valuable service, for a fee.