Presiding over his final Demo Day as CEO of Y Combinator left Geoff Ralston feeling nostalgic.
Ralston is slated to step down from his post at the end of the year in favor of Garry Tan, a former YC founder and partner. On Wednesday at the kick-off of the firm's 35th Demo Day event — held virtually — Ralston fondly remembered the Mountain View accelerator's pre-pandemic face-to-face gatherings.
"I remember these days, especially when we could meet in person, as the very best of times," he said.
Some 240 founders and companies took part in YC's summer session this year. Those startups are completing its program at a "complicated" time, with significant political and economic upheaval and worsening climate change, Ralston said.
However, to some extent, those problems are balanced by "bright spots," including the flourishing of entrepreneurship and innovation, he said. Even if the economy experiences a downturn, as some economists are predicting, startups that stay focused and lean shouldn't need to worry, he said. Both Airbnb Inc. and Stripe Inc. took part in YC's accelerator program in the midst of the Great Recession, he noted.
"From a founder's perspective, economic shocks can often translate into great opportunities," Ralston said. He continued: "You'll definitely find startups in the summer 2022 batch that have the potential to change the world in equally impressive ways."
This summer's session included 64 companies from the Bay Area. The San Francisco Business Times' Sara Bloomberg already profiled the 51 from the San Francisco area. Here are the 13 that are based in Silicon Valley:
- AiPrise Inc., Santa Clara. Founders: Chaitanya Sarda and Rushabh Shah. Offers software to financial technology companies that allows them to easily verify the identities of their customers in order to prevent fraud.
- DeploySentinel Inc., Foster City. Founders: Warren Jonhow Lee and Michael Shi. Offers software to developers that helps them track events and debug errors on web pages.
- Elessar Technologies Inc., Palo Alto. Founder Utkarsh Tandon. Offers software that lets companies track their employees' engineering progress and create timelines of their projects and accomplishments.
- Hedgehog, Palo Alto. Founders: Jamie Balsillie, Wilson Ruotolo. Developing robotic systems that let farms automate the harvesting and packaging of mushrooms, particularly oyster mushrooms.
- Iollo Inc., Palo Alto. Founders: Daniel Gomari, Brent LaRue. Offers dietary, behavioral and therapeutic advice based on a blood test.
- Malama Health Inc., Stanford. Founders: Daniela Bahamon Arango, Mika Eddy, Orlandi Li. Offers a service that helps doctors remotely track the nutrition and blood levels of patients with gestational diabetes.
- Notebook Labs, Stanford. Founders: Solal Afota, Dhruv Mangtani, Nathaniel Masfen-Yan. Offers software that helps Web3 companies authenticate their users while maintaining anonymity.
- Omni Owl GmbH (dba AccessOwl), Mountain View. Founders: Philip Eller, Mathis Nestler. Offers software that allows IT departments via Slack messages to provide corporate employees access to particular applications.
- Ruleset Inc., Sunnyvale. Founders: Logan Frederick, Zheng Hao Tan. Offers software that helps lenders decide which loan applications to approve or decline.
- SolStar Inc., Monterey. Founders: Ryan Endacott, Drew Wetherington. Offers a service that allows crypocurrency users to send tokens and manage their wallets via Discord.
- Tech Career Group Inc. (dba Taro), Redwood City. Founders: Alex Chiou, Rahul Pandey. Offers mentorship and career advice to software engineers.
- Wolfia, Mountain View. Founders: Fabian DeVos, Naren Manoharan. Offers a service that lets developers convert their in-progress apps into web links to solicit feedback.
- Zoltar Inc., Mountain View. Founders: James Chen, Jensen Kuo. Offers a private development environment for testing smart contracts.
