Y Combinator 2018 - Findings

The companies presenting at Y Combinator Demo Day in San Francisco have been in the past an indicator of the hottest tech trend in Silicon Valley and what to expected coming in Europe for the next 12 months.

Sharing economy, subscription business and mobile wallets are some of the trends anticipated in the past by the Y Combinator participants.

Below you can find my findings after attending the Y Combinator Demo Day (Virtual method) in the last couple of days:

• founders are going after smaller, less explored sectors to stake out ground;

• Voice controlled games are starting to gain traction thanks to the strong adoption of Alexa;

• Everything is driverless is cool. At Y Combinator companies presented technology about:

• Driverless tractor;

• Driverless ship;

• Driverless cruise;

• Driverless plane.

• The majority of the companies have strong tractions and several of them are already profitable.

Several sectors have been completely absenting at the Demo Day:

• No Fintech companies;

• No e-commerce companies;

• No Ad-Tech/Ed-tech;

• No subscription services.

With Google, Facebook, Amazon and others continuing to aggregate power and resources, the challenges facing young startups have mounted. Become the next Unicorn is still the dream of all the 140 companies presenting but I suspect several of them are just shooting for

smaller targets.