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- 📊 5 standout crypto startups from YC
📊 5 standout crypto startups from YC
A short analysis of my favourite companies in the latest batch...
Hey there 👋 ,
I’ve been a big admirer of Y Combinator since I came across the startup accelerator many years ago - the accelerator has seen companies like Airbnb, Dropbox, Stripe and Coinbase benefit from its program over the years.
The startup accelerator provides funding and resources (as well as what is now a powerful alumni network!) to emerging companies looking to make their mark in the world.
One thing I’ve admired about the firm is its ability to adapt - it has its own biotech fund as well as a “Continuity” fund to continue supporting startups as they scale.
Which is why, it’s no surprise to hear they’ve invested in a number of crypto-based startups in their latest Winter batch (26, to be precise).
So I thought it would be a fun exercise to pick my top five - now, this is solely based on my interests and has nothing to do with any bias towards founders or any investments I’ve made (definitely not a problem for now 😂).
Let’s get to it!
My Top Five Picks from Y Combinator’s Latest Batch
Before I get into it, some quick stats about this batch:
57% of the batch applied more than once
29% of the batch were accepted with only an idea
55% of the batch raised money before YC
10% had more than $50k of monthly revenue when accepted
42 countries represented
About 50% of the companies are based outside the US
18% of the companies have a woman founder, 10% of the founders are women
My Top Five:
One-liner: Chaingrep is a search engine for Blockchains and a new kind of block explorer.
Problem they’re solving: if you’ve ever tried to read a Block explorer (e.g. Etherscan, Solscan), you’ll know that it can be virtually impossible for an untrained eye to understand what’s going on.
How they’re solving this challenge: The Chaingrep team is building a new search engine for on-chain (read ‘transactions that happen on the blockchain’) interactions and digital assets. They’re essentially going to simplify these pages so anyone can read these & understand what’s going on (e.g. who’s transferring what to whom, how much are the transaction fees, what # number block did this occur on etc).
What about the team?: I’ve found two notable folks on LinkedIn - Rosco Kalis, who looks to have entered the space in 2019 as a software engineer at Bitcoin.com & later at Truffle (the same one I wrote about in my newsletter on ConsenSys a couple of weeks back) & Merwane Drai, who’s been a software engineer who’s been tinkering with a Bitcoin utility library and crypto price notifier (from what I’ve seen on his GitHub).
Why do I like this: I’m bullish on applications that make it easier for non-technical users to interact with web3 platforms. This is a company solving a challenge (making things more readable) that’s inherent in web3/crypto: too many things are seen as complex and built to be understood by a niche audience. Solutions like this help make web3 more accessible.
2. CypherD:
One-liner: A multi-chain wallet for everyone, a portfolio page that shows all your coin balances.
Problem they’re solving: Existing wallets aren’t accessible to mainstream users, so they’re building a multi-chain crypto wallet so anyone can view their NFTs & coins directly from one interface. This is different from a centralized exchange like Coinbase because it’s a non-custodial wallet - meaning, they don’t own your keys, the user owns everything.
How they’re solving the challenge: I mentioned it above, but by building a chain-agnostic wallet, they can support mainstream users as they onboard to web3. Also, by giving users a MasterCard debit card they can use after converting crypto into USD inside the wallet, they’re making it much easier for users to interact with Decentralized Finance and web3.
What about the team?: Pretty stellar team with crypto wallet experience and strong engineering chops - Dheeban S.G. was a software engineer at Magic (previously raised $27m to tackle a similar problem) with stints at Strips and eBay, while CEO Kuberan Marimuthu was a senior engineering manager at Coinbase.
Why do I like this: We’re going to live in a multi-chain world (see my bullish in the previous newsletter), so we might as well start embracing the tools that enable this future to become a reality. One thing I really like is the design and playful interface, making it look inviting to interact with their mobile app and bridging solution.
3. SimpleHash
One-liner: “SimpleHash allows web3 developers to query all NFT data from a single API. We index multiple blockchains, take care of edge cases, provide a rapid media CDN, and can be integrated in a few lines of code.” OK, so they basically allow you to get a bunch of metadata (and more) on NFT collections/PFPs very quickly —> “query data faster, on any chain, anytime” is a strapline I resonate with.
Problem they’re solving: I actually want to play around with their API before commenting but I figure the challenge is retrieving data on your own collection or even on other collections to make better data-driven decisions and understand more about how your own collection is being used/traded.
How they plan to solve this: It’s in the strapline but by building a robust API to query information faster. They support platforms like OpenSea and index numerous Layer 2 Chains (Optimism& Arbitrum with support coming for other chains like Polygon (sidechain) and Solana (alt-L1).
What about the team?: Currently, a lean team by the looks of things, is made up of: Alex Kilkka, who previously co-founded Showtime (a social platform to discover and showcase NFTs) as well as being an On Deck Fellow in 2021 & Olly Wilson, a self-taught dev who’s ex-McKinsey and was/is an Entrepreneur-In-Residence at Portage Ventures.
Why do I like this: I love companies that act as building blocks. By standardizing NFT compatibility, they’re making it easy for any company building Dapps on any chain to index data faster. They’re also making it super easy for developers to get access to these tools with a few lines of code. By standardizing the information flow, they’re making this easier for developers to manipulate to their use case. Definitely one I’ll keep an eye on to profile in a future newsletter.
One-liner: Payourse builds the tools and infrastructure that make it easier, faster, and cheaper for anyone in Africa to access crypto and web3.
Problems they’re solving: One of the biggest use cases for crypto is to give financial tools & access to unbanked users in developing countries. However, little funding or tools are created with serving these users in mind.
How they plan to solve this: They’ve built tools to allow anyone to build a range of tools to cater for different markets - for example, with Simpa, anyone can start an exchange using their no-code tools. It’s also easy to use their API to integrate Bitcoin, Ethereum and USDT into new applications in an easier way compared to whatever else is out there.
What about the team?: Hakeen Oréwọlé comes with blockchain & software development experience, having been at Frontdoor, built Coinprofile and now the Tech Lead at Payourse. CEO Bashir Aminu was the Head of Binance’s P2P Africa operations, with John Anisere having a strong physics background backed up by building crypto products.
Why do I like this: It’s no secret that this market has been neglected and I welcome more companies building intuitive tooling to support users in developing countries to take part in the ownership economy of the future and feel like they’re interacting with tooling built for them, in their market.
One-liner: “A single API for fintechs to embed DeFi products on their platform. This allows them to acquire more customers, retain these customers and increase revenue & engagement, all in a custodial, secure, & compliant way.”
The problem they’re solving: As an everyday consumer, I expect my finance apps to integrate everything in one place for me. I can store money in different currencies, and trade stocks AND trade crypto in one place (I’ve been spoilt by Revolut). This is notoriously difficult to do when it comes to corporates getting access to such services, and even more challenging to offer DeFi opportunities to their customers.
How they plan to solve this: By developing an API for Fintech’s, it’s much easier for these companies to access opportunities for higher-yielding accounts (e.g. 10%+) to their customers. They remove all the complexities by offering a global API, handling accounts, ledgering and have a compliant/privacy-focused approach to their solution.
What about the team?: CEO Pranay Shetty worked at a range of global companies & startups such as The World Bank, PayPal and Cloud Kitchens. CTO Ramkumar Venkatraman was part of On Deck, and has 10+ years of experience building payments infrastructure across companies like PayPal and Amazon.
Why do I like this: As you know, I’m bullish on the API-economy, especially in web3 where there is far too much complexity and a lack of focus on the mainstream user experience. The team seems focused on serving businesses and opening up the TradFi world further to better opportunities.
What do you think of the five I’ve chosen?
📚 Things I read this week:
My kind of article - a deep dive into a review of a set of companies profiled in a 2015 Accel article entitled, ‘APIs are the next big SaaS wave’ - TLDR: on average, these companies have grown 100x in valuation. The article also predicts the next wave of API-first break-out companies.
Anything that Multicoin Capital put out, I’ll likely read. When Fractal first came on the scene, they quickly accumulated 100k users in their discord server. The team has continued building its metagame and allowed players to easily trade in-game assets.
A good reminder that even in web3, timeless principles hold merit. It is far better to develop a system that is kept simple - simplicity should be the key goal in design. Understand your end user & north star before developing your product.
Until next time
I hope you enjoyed this week’s edition - I'd love it if you shared it with a friend or two. Got feedback? Reply to this email or tweet at me and let’s chat.
Fahim