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The 10 YC Companies (W21) I’d Invest In


It’s Demo Day (again)!

But first, here are my past YC posts if you want to check how my older picks have done. If you want to skip to the bottom, you can also see my own evaluation of my past picks for S20, W20, S19, W19, S18, W18, and S17.

The 10 YC Companies (S20) I’d Invest In
India, Pakistan, and SE Asia are startup economies to watch closely over the next few years. Author: Alex Mitchellmedium.com

The 10 YC Companies (W20) I’d Invest In
The most promising startups from YCombinator’s Winter 2020 class that I’d invest in. Author: Alex Mitchellblog.usejournal.com

The 10 YC Companies (S19) I’d Invest In
The 10 YC Companies (S19) I’d Invest In and how my past YC picks have performed! Author: Alex Mitchellblog.usejournal.com

The 10 YC Companies (W19) I’d Invest In
…and for the first time, a few I actually did invest in! Author: Alex Mitchellblog.usejournal.com

The 10 YC Companies (S18) I’d Invest In
Here are the 10 YC S18 companies I’d invest in (out of the 132 who demoed). Author: Alex Mitchellmedium.com

The 10 YC Companies (W18) I’d Invest In
YC had 128 companies in the Winter class. Here are the 10 I would invest in. Author: Alex Mitchellmedium.com

My Top 10 YC Companies (S17)
Here are the 10 YC S17 companies I’d invest in (out of the 124 who demoed). Author: Alex Mitchellmedium.com

YC’s Winter 2021 class set a new record for HUGE!

319 startups, representing 41 (!) different countries, pitched virtually on 3/23/21. 

Quick Diversity Stats on W21:

Top YC W21 Categories:

More stats here

This was another non-traditional demo day and a non-traditional startup batch, to say the least, but let’s get to it, I’m excited to share my favorites!

The Top 10 Companies I’d Invest In

  1. VendEase — Instacart for Restaurants in Africa

TechCrunch Description: For small and mid-sized restaurants in Nigeria and most of Africa, food procurement can be a complex process to manage. The system is such that a business can easily run out of money or have considerable savings. Most restaurants don’t have access to deal directly with farms to get better deals because they lack the staffing to chase them. Besides, they also don’t have the aggregation pull as single entities to directly get good value from the farms.

Nigerian startup VendEase solves this problem by building a marketplace that allows restaurants to buy directly from farms and food manufacturers.

Why I Would Invest: African tech is (finally) having a moment and it’s very exciting! VendEase is attacking a similar root problem as another startup I’ve written about before: Tajir

In this case, Nigerian (and African restaurants in general) have to deal with unreliable delivery, poor selection, a general lack of transparency and little access to credit. VendEase is stepping in at the right time here to offer that transparency, consistency, clarity, and credit and I’m confident they’ll be able to scale quickly in Nigeria before expanding throughout Africa.

2. KrediRocket Mortgage for LATAM

TechCrunch Description: Kredi operates as a marketplace for Mexicans looking for credit loans to assist with home buying and mortgages. The platform presents clients with a range of credit offers. They can then select the one that best fits their needs.

Why I Did Invest: It can take 6 months to buy a house in LATAM, and 4 months of that is the mortgage process (!)

Traditional banks in LATAM require reams of documentation and multiple calls or in-person visits to get a home mortgage. This is a LOT of work for the borrower and creates liquidity problems for sellers. The average time to close a mortgage in Mexico is 16 weeks. 

Kredi’s fully online process can get an applicant pre-qualified in a few minutes and a mortgage completed in 4 weeks. Kredi has a major opportunity in Mexico before taking their model throughout LATAM.

3. SnazzySmileDirectClub for India

TechCrunch Description: Snazzy says it sells clear aligners that are 70% cheaper than those sold by dentists.

Why I Did Invest: SmileDirectClub went from idea to IPO in 5 years and has a current market cap of $4.1B. Market leader Invisalign is valued at over $20B. 

Snazzy plans to disrupt the braces market in India at a similar price point with a much better D2C customer experience. 

I’m cheering for both Snazzy and LATAM/YC twin Moons as I believe they can both dramatically lower the cost of clear aligners and share those economies with other markets around the world.

4. AtratoOffline/Online Affirm for LATAM

TechCrunch Description: Atrato takes the Affirm-style buy now, pay later (BNPL) model to Latin America. Given the growth that Affirm, Klarna and others have managed, there’s real demand for their products. 

Why I Would Invest: Affirm has been incredibly successful in the United States and is currently trading at an $18B valuation(!) Atrato provides customers with 3–24 month loans on high AOV items (computers, bikes, furniture) and has already realized some strong traction.

If Atrato can keep up their growth and keep down their non-performing loans, they could be an attractive acquisition target for Affirm as that company looks to expand geographically.

5. Treinta — Khatabook (Digital Ledger App) for Latin America

TechCrunch Description: Treinta is a digital ledger app for Latin American microbusinesses. Through Treinta, users can easily record transactions by assigning products from their inventory and see how their business metrics evolve in real time. The app helps owners save up to 30 minutes a day in bookkeeping related tasks and improve efficiency by over 30%. Out of the 50 million microbusinesses in LATAM, 90% still track their sales and expenses by using pen and paper today.

According to co-founder Lluís Cañadell, Treinta grew its monthly active users by 400% for a few months after launching on August 31, 2020. The company expected 300% growth in January. Cañadell also told TechCrunch that his company expects to keep expanding at a pace of around 100% month-over-month for a few more months. 

Why I Did Invest: Another digital ledger app, Alex?! Yes! 

I’m incredibly bullish on digital ledger apps (and Treinta too) because they provide such valuable financial digital information that is completely locked up in pen, paper, and the business owner’s mind today. 

Additionally, once you have that information about transactions, it’s a small step to banking, credit, and POS services, and much much more. Build the usage/retention behaviors and deliver value with the free app and then monetize in many different ways soon after that.

6. GimBooks— Mobile Invoicing and Bookkeeping in India

TechCrunch Description: GimBooks is attempting to solve a similar problem as CashBook, though from a different angle. The startup says it offers industry-based invoicing and bookkeeping with integrated banking and payments. Its app has been downloaded more than 1.4 million times, amassed over 11,000 paying customers and clocked revenues of over $450,000.

Why I Did Invest: GimBooks is driving some serious traction (1.4MM downloads) and meaningful revenue ($450k) for it’s simple mobile-first invoicing and accounting tools for Indian SMBs.

Did I mention they bootstrapped their way to these metrics? I’m completely fired up by these and other growth metrics the company has shared. The TAM is HUGE here.

7. Moonshot Brands — Buy + Grow Profitable eCommerce Companies

TechCrunch Description: Moonshot Brands is building the world’s largest — next-generation CPG (Consumer Product Goods) e-commerce company. They look for profitable e-commerce companies on Amazon or selling DTC on Shopify, purchase them from the founders giving them liquidity for their biggest asset, then turbocharge the growth with our proprietary data-driven technology platform and team.

Why I Would Invest: Moonshot Brands takes the idea introduced by Thrasio (An acquirer of successful Amazon Merchants) and amplifies it. 

Moonshot searches for eComm companies in the $4–$30MM/year revenue band and helps get them to $100MM. The founders are uniquely positioned to solve this challenge as they’ve done this exact thing throughout their careers. 

They plan to buy 20 businesses in 2021 and reach a $1B valuation by 2022. It sounds crazy, but given their skillset, if they can find the right targets and succeed in growing them, I think they just may pull it off! 

8. Benga— Creidt Risk as a Service

TechCrunch Description: Benga helps companies quickly assess the creditworthiness of their customers and monitor it over time. They do this by providing the modular components needed to quickly build a complete credit-risk infrastructure.

Why I Would Invest: I don’t know about you, but I shudder when I hear “credit risk infrastructure” and I quickly imagine months and months of challenging development work. Benga is designed exactly for this use case. 

While the company’s landing page doesn’t offer much information about the exact integrations and data they plan to offer, the problem they are focusing on is the right one and I, for one, am hoping they succeed!

9. DjamoChallenger Bank for Consumers in French-Speaking Africa

TechCrunch Description: Djamo, a financial super app for consumers in Francophone Africa, is the first startup from Ivory Coast to get backing from Y Combinator. While there has been a huge profusion of financial services that have emerged in recent years in Africa, Djamo’s mission is to try to plug one specific and very underserved gap in Francophone Africa.

In the region, less than 25% of adults have bank accounts, as the focus for banks remains the top 10–20% wealthiest customers. The rest, which is a huge segment of the market of about 120 million people, is not perceived as profitable. But as banks slacked, mobile money from the region’s telcos filled in the gap. In the last 10 years, their wallets have reached more than 60% of the population — proof of how many millions of French-speaking natives were hungry for financial services.

Why I Would Invest: The need for easy-to-use, simple, and accessible financial services in Africa is hard to overstate. 

Djamo is attacking this problem with a similar playbook used by challenger banks around the world: a simple no-fee product, debit card, and easy to use mobile-first experience. 

Why fix what isn’t broken? It’s currently a land grab for financial apps in Africa. Who will dominate the market? Only time will tell.

10. Bimaplan — Affordable Insurance for the Next Billion Indians

TechCrunch Description: Bimaplan is an affordable insurance platform for the next billion Indians. This is an $8 billion addressable market. They launched in February 2021, and went live with one insurance underwriting partner. Bimaplan is attempting to replace insurance agents with an app and reach users by a referral network.

They are on track to sell 1,000 policies in March 2021.

Why I Would Invest: The average insurance premium in India today is $500 annually, which only the top 10% can afford. The next 150M Indian households could afford a $50 annual premium, opening up a $7.5B market in India alone. 

As the middle class continues to grow in India, insurance is an incredibly attractive startup sector and Bimaplan is poised to be an insuretech that captures a significant amount of that value. It’s still very early days for the company, but I’m bullish on their D2C approach and the massive size of the market opportunity.

Honorable Mentions


How Have My Picks from Past YC Classes Done?

S20

Too soon to report on the good, the misses, and the ?’s from the S20 YC class! Check back in a few months.

W20

The Good

The Misses

The ?’s

S19

The Good

The Misses

The ?’s

W19

The Good

The Misses

The ?’s

S18

The Good

The Misses

W18

The Good

The Misses

The ?’s

S17

The Good

The Misses