Entrepreneurship
Alexis Ohanian Created the HipMunk ChipMunk and RentHop Wally Mascots
Updated 5 days ago
HipMunk just announced they will be shutting down next week. Back in 2010 when they
first launched, they were by far the best site for searching for
flights. They also had the chipmunk mascot - who people have told
us strongly resembles RentHop's Wally the Wallaby.
Turns out they are brothers…
Two Sigma Ventures to Grand Central Tech
Updated 1 month ago
Last time we discussed the very early days. From mid-2008 to
2010, RentHop used co-founder Lawrence Zhou's
apartment to write code on nights and weekends, while the
founders held day jobs at Traxis Partners, D. E. Shaw & Co., and
Two Sigma Investments. The doormen must have assumed we were…
RentHop BitCoin Appreciation Exceeds Boston and Chicago Profits
Updated 1 month ago
In December 2013, RentHop.com began accepting BitCoin as a form
of payment for landlords and real estate brokers to advertise
apartment listings. The company initial l y offered a 60% discount off the prevailing USD to BTC
exchange rate to encourage adoption of the new technology, and
RentHop…
Craig Releases New App!
Updated 1 month ago
Speak of the devil, we just mentioned the former massive network effects from old sites,
in particular the NYC loved and hated Craigslist. Researches and
professors at the Harvard Business School have
studied the phenomenon at length - or at least they wrote a case
study about Lawrence Zhou and…
ZipRealty: Early Pioneer turned Zombie Company?
Updated 1 month ago
Does anyone remember ZipRealty? Back in the Dotcom 1.0 era, they
were among the first widespread discount real estate brokerage
companies with a reasonably strong presence in the west coast. I
have fond memories of using their saved search features to track
listings prices through the 2004-2010…
High Resolution Pricing: Agents and Broker Edition
Updated 1 month ago
One of our Y Combinator batch mates way back in Summer 2009 was
a company called InstantQ, founded by Dana Levine and Jeff Shi.
They were an early version of Groupon, allowing restaurants to fine
tune pricing specific to certain customers, day of week, time of
day, etc.
At the time, Paul…
Demo Day: Why hundreds of Y Combinator alums keep coming back
Updated 65 months ago
Twice a year, Y Combinator holds Demo Day to officially debut and
graduate a batch of startups presenting to investors and press. An
event called Alum Demo Day takes place the night before. It's the
last chance for the startups to practice and rehearse their
presentations to a field of YC alums…
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