User blogs

Our picks for the most intriguing companies of Y Combinator’s latest batch were based entirely on substance and our endless expertise, so it’s time for something much more superficial. Here are the 11 best logos from the hundreds of companies that presented yesterday.

Watching companies go by 60 seconds at a time for like 8 hours was pretty mind-numbing even when a lot of them were cool, but I always perked up when I saw something with a nice logo. So I started marking them down, and sure enough soon a post appeared.

Sadly many of these will be bought in short order and their cool logos retired, like what happened with my favorite recent logo, DataFleets. I guess it isn’t really sad because they all get super rich, but there goes a perfectly good logo, you know?

Anyway, let’s proceed. These aren’t in any particular order except that the first three are my favorites and the rest all tie for fourth.

Enombic

A capital E always makes a lot of interesting geometric possibilities available. Enombic’s logo makes the most of this famous trisulc optical illusion while not overdoing it, giving a clear (if impossible) shape that is also obviously a letter — without any extraneous lines or materials, in fact with the absolute minimum. The clean type is also well-chosen (and avoids repetition by changing case). Gold star.

Uiflow

This isn’t the first time a U and I have been joined in this way, but it’s done here very elegantly and with complementary curves and spacing in all the right places. They use the inversion of the above as well, but I think white on black looks better than black on white.

Perfect Recall

Here’s one where the logo is informed by the purpose of the company, which records and highlights video calls. A loop with an arrow is a universal cross-lingual symbol for returning to something, and there are a few ways to do this that are flashier but don’t look as good. Getting the effect of a circle and not just a semicircle without compromising the shape of the P is a tough thing to balance. This logo does have the awkward side effect of putting a recognizable P right before the P in perfect, so you end up with PPerfect Recall. It happens a lot, but still something to watch out for.

Furmacy

Another logo actually informed by the company’s purpose, this one combined with the logotype could do with a little more work (the tail curve bothers me, the plus is too much, and the Dr Mario player in me wants a solid lower capsule half) — but it’s immediately recognizable and adequately communicates what the company does wordlessly, a rare quality. Got to hand it to them for the name, too.

Routine

It’s a bold decision to leave off half the “o” in any situation, since it can quickly become another letter or symbol if you don’t do it right. In this case using it as a rising sun works really well, also suggesting the purpose of the app. Having an uppercase R the same size as the lowercase letters normally something that would really bother me, and might have gone badly, but it works here because of the white space left by the o. Not perfect but surprisingly palatable.

Dashlabs.ai

I liked the idea of this one, but the graphic needs simplification. The proportions are off with the eyepiece, lens barrel, and plate, and the dial is one element too many. I like the slotted D, but there’s something off about it. Maybe it’s an optical illusion but some of the stripes look thicker than the others. Actually, now that I look closely it’s super obvious someone left an extra pixel on the bottom layer. The geometric type is solid too, but lose the .ai, it’s small and weird. Just… Dashlabs.

Mendel

This one truly seems to have no connection whatsoever to the company, or even the famed geneticist, but I just love the M-mountain. It would have been legendary if Mendel made hiking boots or camping gear (not too late for a pivot). This kind of letter-art is surprisingly rare to find done well, and this is really just on the charming side of primitive, but you can see the thought that went into it. The type isn’t great, though, can’t stand those billowy d’s.

Nuntius Therapeutics

DNA’s double helix structure (tied in with Nuntius’s gene therapy) can be used to create lots of forms, but this capital N is really a nice one. The stylized bases aren’t exactly biologically accurate, but they work well and the sinuous curve of the helix flows beautifully into the circle.

Aspen Cloud

The muted rainbow has been used to death, but apparently they just didn’t mute it enough. Aspen Cloud goes all the way into pastels, but they’re harmonious enough that they suggest CMYK rather than other polychromatic logos. The leaf-tree combo is simple and memorable, they avoid weight and symmetry problems, and the colors are nicely arranged. On a white background it recedes harmlessly and on a black one it pops. Can’t say the same about the type, though. Can’t really say anything at all.

PingPong

I hate this high-visibility color when it’s on the stupid Uber bikes that litter my neighborhood, but I have to say, it makes for a great dot. The full logotype is nothing to write home about (any logotype for a company called “ping pong” that doesn’t utilize some kind of symmetrical or two-sided motif is a waste), but what I assume is the app logo is great. The darker grey tone does a lot of work — it establishes a sort of “off-camera light” that casts a shadow, and because it’s ever so slightly narrower than the dot/ball, it gives an illusion of depth as well. I suppose it could be interpreted as being the flight line of the ball (i.e. it is zooming up and to the left) but I like my way better. It also might be a little too close to the flag of Japan.

MagicBell

I don’t know why this works, but it does. The bell combined with the chicken takes two “alarms” and makes them one cute item that screams (or rather crows) “notifications.” Or possibly “Peeps.” Let’s just hope Nintendo doesn’t sue them for infringement of a bunch of the bird-type characters in Animal Crossing (especially Knox).

Good work to all these companies and the many more I only didn’t list because I got tired. Design is important, not just for catching the user’s eye, but because it indicates attention to detail and an approach beyond the purely functional — something startups often struggle with.

When AWS CEO Andy Jassy announced in an email to employees yesterday that Tableau CEO Adam Selipsky was returning to run AWS, it was probably not the choice most considered. But to the industry watchers we spoke to over the last couple of days, it was a move that made absolute sense once you thought about it.

Gartner analyst Ed Anderson says that the cultural fit was probably too good for Jassy to pass up. Selipsky spent 11 years helping build the division. It was someone he knew well and had worked side by side with for over a decade. He could slide into the new role and be trusted to continue building the lucrative division.

Anderson says that even though the size and scope of AWS has changed dramatically since Selipsky left in 2016 when the company closed the year on $16 billion run rate, he says that the organization’s cultural dynamics haven’t changed all that much.

“Success in this role requires a deep understanding of the Amazon/AWS culture in addition to a vision for AWS’s future growth. Adam already knows the AWS culture from his previous time at AWS. Yes, AWS was a smaller business when he left, but the fundamental structure and strategy was in place and the culture hasn’t notably evolved since then,” Anderson told me.

Matt McIlwain, managing director at Madrona Venture Group says the experience Selipsky had after he left AWS will prove invaluable when he returns.

“Adam transformed Tableau from a desktop, licensed software company to a cloud, subscription software company that thrived. As the leader of AWS, Adam is returning to a culture he helped grow as the sales and marketing leader that brought AWS to prominence and broke through from startup customers to become the leading enterprise solution for public cloud,” he said.

Holger Mueller, an analyst with Constellation Research says that Selipsky’s business experience gave him the edge over other candidates. “His business acumen won out over [internal candidates] Matt Garmin and Peter DeSantis. Insight on how Salesforce works may be helpful and valued as well,” Mueller pointed out.

As for leaving Tableau and with it Salesforce, the company that purchased it for $15.7 billion in 2019, Brent Leary, founder and principal analyst at CRM Essentials believes that it was only a matter of time before some of these acquired company CEOs left to do other things. In fact, he’s surprised it didn’t happen sooner.

“Given Salesforce’s growing stable of top notch CEOs accumulated by way of a slew of high profile acquisitions, you really can’t expect them all to stay forever, and given Adam Selipsky’s tenure at AWS before becoming Tableau’s CEO, this move makes a whole lot of sense. Amazon brings back one of their own, and he is also a wildly successful CEO in his own right,” Leary said.

While the consensus is that Selipsky is a good choice, he is going to have awfully big shoes to fill.  The fact is that division is continuing to grow like a large company currently on a run rate of over $50 billion. With a track record like that to follow, and Jassy still close at hand, Selipsky has to simply continue letting the unit do its thing while putting his own unique stamp on it.

Any kind of change is disconcerting though, and it will be up to him to put customers and employees at ease and plow ahead into the future. Same mission. New boss.

Medical and biotech had a strong showing at Y Combinator’s latest demo day, with nearly a dozen companies in the space catching my eye. The things a startup can accomplish in this space are astonishing these days, so don’t be surprised if a few of these companies are headline news in the next year.

Startups take on big pharma

Atom Bioworks has one of the shortest timelines and highest potential impacts; as I wrote in our second set of favorites from demo day, the company seems to be fairly close to one of the holy grails of biochemistry, a programmable DNA machine. These tools can essentially “code” a molecule so that it reliably sticks to a specific substance or cell type, which allows a variety of follow-up actions to be taken.

For instance, a DNA machine could lock onto COVID-19 viruses and then release a chemical signal indicating infection before killing the virus. The same principle applies to a cancer cell. Or a bacterium. You get the picture.

Atom’s founders have published the details of their techniques in Nature Chemistry, and says it’s working on a COVID-19 test as well as therapies for the virus and other conditions. It expects sales in the 9-figure range.

Another company along these lines is LiliumX. This company is going after “biospecific antibodies,” which are kind of like prefab DNA machines. Our own antibodies learn to target various pathogens, waste, and other items the body doesn’t want, and customized, injected antibodies can do the same for cancer cells.

LiliumX is taking the algorithmic approach to generating potential antibody stuctures that could be effective, as many AI-informed biotech companies have before it. But the company is also using a robotic testing setup to thin the herd and get in vitro results for its more promising candidates. Going beyond lead generation is a difficult step but one that makes the company that much more valuable.

Entelexo is one step further down the line, having committed to developing a promising class of therapeutics called exosomes that could help treat autoimmune diseases. These tiny vesicles (think packages for inter-cell commerce) can carry all kinds of materials, including customized mRNA that can modify another cell’s behavior.

Modifying cell behavior systematically could help mitigate conditions like multiple sclerosis, though the company did not elaborate on the exact mechanism — probably not something that can be explained in under a minute. They’re already into animal testing, which is surprising for a startup.

One step further, at least mechanically, is Nuntius Therapeutics, which is working on ways to deliver cell-specific (i.e. to skeletal muscle, kidney cells, etc) DNA, RNA, and CRISPR-based therapies. This is an issue for cutting-edge treatments: while they can be sure of taking the correct action once in contact with the target cell type, they can’t be sure that the therapeutic agent will ever reach those cells. Like ambulance drivers without an address, they can’t do their jobs if they can’t get there.

Nuntius claims to have created a reliable way to deliver genetic therapy payloads to a variety of target cells, beyond what major pharma companies like Moderna have accomplished. The company also develops and licenses its own drugs, so it’s practically a one-stop shop for genetic therapies if its techniques pan out for human use.

Beyond providing therapeutics, there is the evolving field of artificial organs. These are still highly experimental, partly due to the risk of rejection even when using biocompatible materials. Trestle Biotherapeutics is taking on a specific problem — kidney failure — with implantable lab-grown kidney tissue that can help get these patients off dialysis.

While the plan is to eventually create full kidney replacements, the truth is that for people with this condition, every week and month counts. Not only does it improve their chances of finding a donor or moving up the list, but regular dialysis is a horrible process by all accounts. Anything that reduces the need to rely on it would be welcomed by millions.

This Yale-Harvard tie-up comes from a team with quite a bit of experience in stem cell science and tissue engineering, including 3D printing human tissues — which no doubt is part of the approach.

Beyond therapy

Moving beyond actual techniques for fighting various conditions, the YC batch had quite a few dedicated to improving the process of researching and understanding those conditions and techniques.

Many industries rely on cloud-based document platforms like Google Docs for sharing and collaboration, but while copywriters and sales folks probably find the standard office suite sufficient, that’s not necessarily the case for scientists whose disciplines demand special documentation and formatting.

Curvenote is a shared document platform built with these folks in mind; it integrates with Jupyter, SaturnCloud, and Sagemaker, supports lots of import and export options, integrates visualization plug-ins like Plotly, and versions through Git. Now you just have to convince the head of your department it’s worth paying for.

Image Credits: Curvenote

A more specialized cloud tool can be found in Pipe|bio, which does hosted bioinformatics for developing antibody drugs like LiliumX. It’s hard to get into details here beyond that the computational and database needs of companies in biotech can be very specific and not everyone has a bioinformatics specialist on staff.

Having a tool you can just pay for instead getting a data science grad student to moonlight for your lab is almost always preferable. (Also preferable is not using special characters in your company name — just saying, it’s going to come up.)

Special tools can be found on the benchtop as well as the laptop, though, and the remaining companies are firmly in meatspace.

Forcyte is another company I highlighted in our favorite demo day companies roundups: It’s less about chemistry and molecular biology than the actual physical phenomena experienced by cells. This is a difficult thing to observe systematically, but important for many reasons.

The company uses a micropatterned surface to observe individual cells and watch specifically for contraction and other shape changes. Physical constriction or relaxation of cells is at the heart of several major diseases and their treatments, so being able to see and track it will be extremely helpful for researchers.

The company has positioned itself as a way to test drugs at scale that affect these properties and claims to have already found promising compounds for lung fibrosis. Forcyte’s team is published in Nature, and received a $2.5 million SBIR award from the NIH, a pretty rare endorsement.

Image Credits: Kilobaser

Kilobaser is taking aim at the growing DNA synthesizing space; companies often contract with dedicated synthesizing labs to create batches of custom DNA molecules, but at a small scale this might be better done in-house.

Kilobaser’s benchtop machine makes the process as simple as using a copier, letting people with no technical know-how. As long as it has some argon, a reagent supply and microfluidic chip (sold by the company, naturally), it can replicate DNA you submit digitally in under two hours. This could accelerate testing in many a small lab that’s held back by its reliance on a separate facility. The company has already sold 15 machines at €15,000 each — but like razor blades, the real money is in the refills.

Image Credits: Reshape Biotech

Reshape Biotech is perhaps the most straightforward of the bunch. Its approach to automating common lab tasks is to create custom robots for each one. That’s it! Of course, that’s easier said than done, but given the similarity of many lab layouts and equipment, a custom robotic sampler or autoclave could be adopted by thousands as (again) an alternative to hiring another part time grad student.

There were several other companies in the biotech and medical space worth looking at in the batch, but not enough space here to highlight them individually. Suffice it to say that the space is increasingly welcoming to startups as advances in tech and software are brought to bear where insuperable barriers to entry once left such possibilities remote.

Polycystic ovary syndrome, or PCOS, is a common disorder that can cause irregular periods, infertility or gestational diabetes in women. And the condition is far from rare: PCOS impacts one in 10 women, meaning there’s a big market of people out there that want better support and risk-screening to navigate the symptoms.

That’s where Veera Health comes in. The startup is an online clinic aimed at helping women in India navigate PCOS through risk-screening, mental health support and answers about effects such as acne and weight gain. If the startup does its job right, it can help bring earlier diagnosis to women around the world.

“The big issue around polycystic ovary syndrome is that there [are] a lot of different symptoms, and very often women take a long time to actually get diagnosed in the right manner,” CEO and co-founder Shashwata Narain said. “We want to provide a higher level and quality of guidance so she can have open eyes experience as she goes through her treatment process.”

Veera Health’s subscription-based program takes the medical history of a patient to better understand symptoms and any existing reports. About 60% to 70% of the patients that Veera Health has worked with so far are pre-diagnosed and are looking for a solution, so the startup then starts to pick apart potential risk factors and suggests a holistic treatment plan. The startup has a team of specialists, from clinical nutritionists to dermatologists and gynecologists, that it works with on a contractual basis to approve any plan given to a patient. The startup has employed a number of care managers, which is basically an employee in charge of handling weekly and daily communication with the patient about these plans.

The company uses published research on assessment and management of PCOS as a framework for its suggestions.

Veera Health officially launched three months ago and already has made $10,000 in revenue, growing at 300% month over month in paid customers.

Veera Health isn’t covered by insurance, so patients pay out of pocket for the services. In India, Narain says, outpatient care is “almost entirely an out-of-pocket market” and insurance is largely focused on hospitalization expenses. By using Veera Health, the co-founder estimates that by aggregating all these services into one spot, Veera Health can stop customers from spending “thousands and thousands of rupees” and playing specialist hopscotch.

In fact, one study shows that PCOS clinics have had a high retention in patients compared to other single-care providers.

The co-founder says the biggest challenge for Veera Health is educating women about how to prioritize their own health and get past the stigma of PCOS.

“It’s a challenge because you want to get as much information out there and make sure women are paying attention to their health, yet at the same time there’s a lot of stigma on [PCOS] and around women’s health to begin with.”

We know of at least one investor that thinks the conversation is ready to be had, anyway. Veera Health recently graduated from Y Combinator’s Winter 2021 cohort as one of the 39 companies based in India, the highest concentration from the accelerator yet.

Narain says that Veera Health is uniquely positioned to help women during the pandemic. Her sister and co-founder, Shobhita, was diagnosed with PCOS so experienced firsthand the confusing path to diagnosis.

“Because of the pandemic, there’s a lot more openness to online solutions,” she said. “People are at home, not able to exercise and are much more stressed out. This had a ramp up in the level of awareness on [PCOS] and the search for solutions.”

Here’s another edition of “Dear Sophie,” the advice column that answers immigration-related questions about working at technology companies.

“Your questions are vital to the spread of knowledge that allows people all over the world to rise above borders and pursue their dreams,” says Sophie Alcorn, a Silicon Valley immigration attorney. “Whether you’re in people ops, a founder or seeking a job in Silicon Valley, I would love to answer your questions in my next column.”

Extra Crunch members receive access to weekly “Dear Sophie” columns; use promo code ALCORN to purchase a one- or two-year subscription for 50% off.

Dear Sophie:

I’m a startup founder looking to expand in the U.S. I was originally looking at opening an office in Silicon Valley to be close to software engineers and investors, but then… COVID-19 :)

A lot has changed over the last year – can I still come?

— Hopeful in Hungary

Dear Hopeful:

How and where work is getting done in Silicon Valley (as well as in much of the world)  shifted during the COVID-19 pandemic. That said, yes, it can still make business sense for many to join the Silicon Valley ecosystem.

According to a recent report from PitchBook, Silicon Valley will continue to be the center for VC investment and high-tech talent, even though several large tech companies relocated out of Silicon Valley and implemented full-time work-from-home policies — and many predicted that “the Bay Area tech scene as we know it would be lost, and VC would find a new home.”

Clearly, while the pandemic’s impact on the venture industry will be felt in years to come, VC will continue to be centered in Silicon Valley. In a recent episode of my podcast, I discussed work trends and how to use immigration to support company priorities as well as attract and retain talent in the United States.

The PitchBook report points out that Silicon Valley “has kept a tight hold on fundraising in the U.S., closing on commitments exceeding $151 billion over the past five years, more than the rest of the U.S. ecosystems combined. LPs have continued to funnel capital to area VCs because of the region’s track record of success, which includes 17 of the 22 U.S. companies to ever receive a private valuation of $10 billion or more.”

Image Credits: Joanna Buniak / Sophie Alcorn (opens in a new window)

So while VCs will likely return to the old ways of networking and funding post-pandemic, we’ll see a hybrid of online and in-person meetings because there are so many benefits to in-person networking and exchanging ideas.