#How to gain more paid subscribers on Substack
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mehmetyildizmelbourne-blog · 2 months ago
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Introduction to Level 4 of Udemy Course From Zero to Substack Hero
Section 21: Mastery and Beyond on Substack Source link to the image For those who missed, I shared the scripts of 20 sections covering levels 1, 2, and 3 of this exciting course. Today, I will provide a quick intro to Level 4 of From Zero to Substack Hero, which will be available on Udemy soon, but I have already uploaded the videos to my publication on Substack for members. Level 4 of our…
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helenaheissner · 1 year ago
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Love During Robot Fighting Time: Chapter 5
Hello, lovelies! Hope y'all are doing well :) 
Don't forget you can read two chapters ahead on both this story and "Magical Girl Exorcist Squad", as well as twenty chapters ahead on "A Dream of Summer Rain", by becoming a paid subscriber on my Substack or my Patreon!
***
Keith
12 Months Earlier
“And that’s why you don’t mess with the future champ!” I screamed as I started doing a poorly choreographed victory dance. I’d just slayed a flipper called… Well, Flipper. It looked like a dolphin, and the bottlenose was used to… You get the idea. And it was piloted by these guys from San Diego who had been jeering at me the entirety of the match. 
It was my first match in the pros. I was surprised to have won. But not nearly as surprised as everyone else clearly was. So I danced like the uncoordinated idiot that I was, no partners in sight so I had to be content with my own (not-so) sick moves. 
Marty Weston pulled me aside into an interview. “So, Keith Calloway, how you feeling right now, kid?!”
“I’m feeling pretty great. I think I’ve provided everyone with a good demonstration of what’s gonna happen to them when they face me!” I said, the barely-earned confidence flooding out of my mouth with each screamed syllable. 
“Bold words,” Marty said. “You think you’re gonna live up to them?”
I grabbed the mic out of his hands and grinned maniacally. “I think there’s a new sheriff in town, and you best believe he’s gunning for the crown!”
Everyone went wild, and it was at that point I decided this would make a good angle for a pro career. 
Because I’m an idiot. 
***
“So, Keith,” Eric said, and it felt like I’d been slapped. What the hell was happening to me?
“Yes,” I said, hurriedly putting my hands under my rear while I sat in the uncomfortable plastic chair. 
Eric Gaines was the owner of Gaines Auto Body and Bodybuilding, south Los Angeles’ premier destination for car detailing and weightlifting. Eric was, quite simply put, a hulking specimen of testosterone. He looked like he didn’t have an ounce of fat anywhere on his body- just raw muscle as far as the eye could see. He’d been my sponsor the past year, and he’d been conciliatory when I’d lost the finals last year. The unspoken caveat was that I needed to turn it around next year. 
And so far… I was letting him down. 
His office was all white walls and hardwood floors with a dark brown finish, his desk made of pure glass. He sat on a workout ball, while his guests were made to sit in the most uncomfortable plastic chairs imaginable. Probably a business negotiation strategy- the man had a truly staggering number of books on the subject on shelves lining his walls. “Last night didn’t exactly go as planned.”
“No, sir, it didn’t.”
“Do you have anything to say for yourself?”
“Um… I mean, I could tell you about how my loss was a fluke, but it would probably just sound like an excuse,” I said. 
“You’re right, it would,” he said with a shockingly earnest smile. Was he being passive-aggressive? I could never tell.
“I’d like to say it won’t happen again-”
“But you can’t guarantee that, and that’s completely reasonable,” he said with a conciliatory shrug. 
“Uh… Yeah,” I said. 
“But you’ll do the best you can?”
“Yes! Absolutely.”
“That’s good. Because anything less than that… Any more of these ‘flukes’, and you and I might have to reconsider our arrangement,” Eric said. “Sponsoring a robot fighter like yourself is an eccentric rich man’s game, and I’m merely an eccentric middle class man running a small business. I have a bottom line. And a reputation. And given your… Antics, in the ring, if you keep losing, it might not be great for that reputation, or that bottom line. Do we understand each other?”
“Yes, sir!” I said. 
“That’s good to hear, Keith,” he said. 
Slap. Seriously, why did that keep happening today? Sure, taking off that dress last night had been one of the single most painful experiences of my life, but that didn’t MEAN anything. Definitely. Not one bit. Not even a tiny little sliver of anything. 
“The money for this month should have already been deposited in your account,” Eric continued. “Anything else you need for the time being?”
“No, sir,” I said. 
“Good. Let’s talk again next week.”
We shook hands, and I left and stepped out into the hot midsummer air of Culver City. That was one meeting down for today. That just left the second one… And probably the much more painful one. 
I’d called Underhill last night, against my instincts. He’d texted back saying if I wanted to resume our conversation from last night, we could meet for lunch the next day.
We met at a retro diner in Inglewood with old movie posters all over the walls and fifties music playing on the speakers and waitresses wearing old timey dresses as uniforms. I’d been here before, and I’d probably been able to ignore it before, but the uniforms were… Really, really freaking cute! They were pink with white polka dots, and they had red aprons over the front. The women all wore their hair up, and I pictured myself with long hair, down past my shoulders, and in the process of putting it up, spending an hour each morning brushing it and applying product and arranging it and… 
Oh boy. 
Boy?
Right, that’s what I was. That’s all I’d ever be. I wasn’t really tr… 
But I wasn’t exactly cis, now was I? Cis people don’t spend their downtime fantasizing about being the opposite gender. 
So what was I? A girl? Non-binary? Gender fluid? 
Did I even like being a boy?
I ordered a black coffee after being sat in a booth in the back corner of the oblong establishment, drumming my fingers on the table while staring into my drink. 
“Hi,” Underhill’s voice called out as he approached. I looked up- he wore a black and gray flannel button-down and jeans, his hair messy but still framing his face well, his stubble somewhat grown in compared to last night. His eyes were… Big and friendly and inviting, and I… 
No, no, bad! I chastised myself. “Hi.”
He sat down. “So, what did you want to talk about?”
I sipped my coffee, then exhaled deeply. “So. Before we go any further. I need you to promise me that this will remain confidential.”
“Sure thing. Scout’s honor,” he said, holding up the obligatory three fingers, smiling broadly with all his perfectly straight pearly whites. 
 “You were a Boy Scout?”
“Eagle Scout!” he said. 
“Of course you were,” I muttered. 
The waitress, a young black woman named Connie, came over and asked if we were ready to order, to which Underhill replied he just wanted a black coffee. 
“A fellow black coffee drinker, I see,” I said. “A man of culture. Duly noted.”
He chuckled. “You’re stalling.”
I gave a much more nervous chuckle. “Yeah. I am.”
I pulled out my phone, and showed him a photo of me from last night. After Mom had gotten done doing my hair. 
“Oh wow, look at you,” Underhill said with an approving smile. “You look pretty. Did you do your own makeup?”
I felt myself blush. “I’m not wearing makeup in that photo.”
“You’re not? Dang. Good for you.”
I chuckled again… Actually, no, that wasn’t quite accurate; I giggled. I freaking giggled- what the hell was wrong with me? “Thanks. My mom did my hair for me.”
“So she knows?”
“Both my parents do,” I said, stirring my coffee with a spoon. “They were… Completely supportive, and completely unsurprised.”
“So, you’re-”
“I don’t know,” I cut him off. “If you were about to say the ‘t word’ that is. I don’t know yet. But… There’s a chance that I am.”
Connie came back and asked if we wanted anything to eat. Simultaneously, Underhill and I both said, “A Denver omelet, side of hashed browns.”
Connie raised an eyebrow and smirked, then jotted it down on her pad. “Sounds good, kids.”
“A woman of culture,” Underhill smiled at me again, the kind of smile that you saw in dental commercials- seriously, killer smile. 
A burst of warmth ran through me at being called a woman- Gender Euphoria? The articles certainly would have called it that. Was this… This couldn’t just be my immature ass getting off on tricking people into thinking I was trans. That would be ridiculous- no cis person would ever be happy with something like that. 
“I try,” I said, tucking a strand of hair behind my ear. “I guess I just wanted to ask you- and I need you to be honest here- do you think I’m trans?”
He flinched. “Um… I’m not really sure it’s up to me whether or not you’re trans.”
“I know that, I know that, I just… My parents think I am, and I’m starting to think that maybe, MAYBE, I might be. What do you think?”
“I think that you shouldn’t be looking for someone else’s approval on this sort of thing.”
Dammit. That was a good point. 
“But at the same time, if you’re hoping I’ll say yes and tell you you’re trans-”
I scrunched up my face again, closing my eyes and nodding in spite of myself. Ugh, what is wrong with me?!
I felt a hand covering mine. I opened my eyes to find Underhill squeezing it. “Look,” he said, “I’m not an expert. Yes, my best friend is a trans girl, and I’ve learned a lot about this stuff from her. All I can really tell you is what I think she would say- which does slightly beg the question of why you wanna talk to me about this and not Faith.”
“Because she hates me,” I monotoned.
He opened and closed his mouth, then nodded. “Yeah, that’s a good point- she does. She REALLY does.”
“Not that I don’t deserve it,” I said from the corner of my mouth.
“Oh come on, don’t be like that-”
“I’m a total jerk whenever we’re both around each other.”
“Yeah, but you’re not when you’re out of the ring,” Underhill said. “You play the heel because our sport is populated mostly by weird nerds with questionable social skills- the audience likes a good douchebag. Yeah, you lay it on thick sometimes, but also Faith is terrible at reading social cues from people she doesn’t know super well.”
“Maybe I should dial it back,”  I said. “That whole schtick was one thing when I was on a winning streak. Right now… That ain’t me.”
“Heh. Maybe,” Underhill said. “Backtracking, though: if Faith were here, and she didn’t hate you, I’m sure she would tell you that wanting to be a girl and being a girl are the same thing, but that only you can decide what you want.”
“That’s good advice,” I said, trying to ignore the hollow feeling in my chest. Connie came back with our orders, as well as a single chocolate milkshake with two straws. “We didn’t order that,” I said. 
“Yeah, I put it in for you,” Connie said. “You two were being super cute, figured why not.”
“C-cute?!” I stammered. It was then that I looked down and realized Underhill’s hand was still covering mine. He seemed to realize the same thing, and slowly withdrew his hand, but still smiling that winning smile. 
“I mean, hey, we’re both real good lookin’,” he said. 
Connie gave him a thumbs-up as she walked away. I buried my face in my hands, the heat from my red cheeks burning my palms like a hot stove. 
“You wound me,” Underhill said with a laugh.
“Why?”
“Embarrassed to be assumed as my date? She wounds my fragile male ego.”
I smiled in spite of myself. “Shut up- aren’t you embarrassed? People might think you’re gay!”
“So?” Underhill shrugged. 
“So?!”
“So,” he said. “Not really a big deal to me. If it was the right guy, I could probably call myself hetero-flexible. And besides, you’re…”
“I’m…”
“A question mark,” he said. 
“Damn you.”
He rolled his eyes. “Besides, you do realize we live in southern California, yes? This is arguably the most queer friendly place on the whole of God’s green earth.”
“You… You raise an excellent point,” I acquiesced. He really did- if this, whatever it was, was a part of me I wanted to explore, I did live in one of the better places to do that in. And if I wanted to wear a dress outside my home, even if it were just to go down to the market for groceries, it wouldn’t be THAT abnormal in Venice Beach. 
He took a sip from the chocolate shake, and, on impulse, I went for a sip as well, our faces, our mouths very close together as we both sipped. It was his turn to blush, then, and I laughed in earnest and without embarrassment when he did. 
“I thought you said you didn’t mind,” I needled him.
“Lol, just caught me by surprise,” Underhill said. “Bold move, that was.”
“I’m a bold girl,” I said, the words tripping out of my mouth before I could stop them. I’d just called myself a girl without even meaning to, and it felt… It felt amazing. It felt like a hot bubble bath after a long walk, like dry socks on a damp afternoon, like the warm and soft comfort of my bed after a long day. 
Dammit. 
“That you are, ma’am,” he said. There was that smile again. 
Dammit. Dammit dammit dammit.
“You’re a good guy, Underhill,” I said. 
“Thanks. But call me Zeke.”
“You’re a good guy, Zeke,” I said, then finally took a bite of my omelet. Delicious!
“Thanks. Also, there’s actually something I wanted to ask you,” Underhill… Zeke said. 
“What’s that?” I said between bites. 
“What got you into the robot fighting game, anyway?” he asked. “For me it was just a fun thing to do with my engineering program buddies- I never expected to actually go anywhere with it.”
“... It’s a little embarrassing.”
“Calloway, we’re professional science nerds.”
“Fair point,” I said. “I, uh, always wanted to build my own Gundam, ever since I was a little kid.”
“Ayyy, I love me some Gundam.”
“You do?”
“Hell yeah! Never get to talk about it though because Faith hates it.”
“What the- she hates Gundam? She’s a robot fighter, and she hates giant robot anime?”
“Obviously she doesn’t hate giant robot anime- look what our bot is named!”
“Touche,” I said. 
“She’s strictly a super-robots girl,” Zeke said. 
“Ahhh, I see, I see,” I said. “That makes sense. No disrespect, they certainly have their place, but I lean more towards real robots.”
“Fair and valid.”
“I actually have a bunch of Gundam on Blue Ray,” I said, leaning forward in my seat. I never got to talk about Gundam with anyone, much to my chagrin, though the whole ‘no life outside of work’ thing probably contributed to that. “You wanna watch it together sometime?”
“Sure!” he said. “When works for you?”
“I’m free tonight,” I said. 
“Awesome!” he said. “Can’t wait.”
I smiled. “Me neither.”
***
Buy my books here!
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xpressluna · 2 months ago
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I Tried 6 Writing Platforms to Make Money – Here's What I Learned
I Tried 6 Writing Platforms to Make Money – Here's What I Learned
The idea of making money online through writing is both exciting and intimidating. As a freelance writer and content creator, I decided to test six popular platforms that promise writers an opportunity to earn. My goal was to assess ease of use, earning potential, and overall experience. Here's my honest breakdown of what I found after trying each one.
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Medium Partner Program
How it works: You earn money based on member reading time. The more engagement your story gets, the more you earn.
My experience: Medium is incredibly user-friendly and has a built-in audience. I published three articles that were SEO-optimized and shared on Twitter and Reddit. Within two weeks, I earned $23.50.
Pros:
Clean, distraction-free interface.
Great exposure if you're featured by publications.
Encourages good storytelling.
Cons:
Income depends heavily on algorithm visibility.
Need Medium membership to fully interact.
Verdict: Great for thought pieces and essays, but don’t expect fast cash unless you build a following.
Vocal Media
How it works: Writers earn money based on reads and can enter paid challenges.
My experience: I posted two articles and shared them on Facebook groups. The traffic wasn’t huge, and I made about $4.80 in the first month. Their bonus for top-performing stories helps, but competition is fierce.
Pros:
Low barrier to entry.
Frequent themed challenges.
Decent layout customization.
Cons:
Very low RPM (revenue per 1,000 views).
You need Vocal+ (paid membership) for maximum benefits.
Verdict: Use it if you're in it for the long game or enjoy niche communities.
Substack
How it works: It's a newsletter platform. You can earn by charging subscribers a monthly fee.
My experience: This one requires commitment. I started a free newsletter and after a month, gained 54 subscribers. I haven’t monetized yet, but the platform has major potential if you're consistent and deliver high-value content.
Pros:
Full control over your mailing list.
Great monetization if you have a niche.
Supports both free and paid tiers.
Cons:
Growth takes time.
You have to market yourself constantly.
Verdict: Best for writers building a personal brand or writing regularly on a topic.
Textbroker
How it works: Clients order content, and you fulfill it based on your star rating (which affects pay).
My experience: I was rated 4 stars after submitting a writing sample. I completed 5 short assignments and earned $37. It’s decent for quick cash, but the topics are dry.
Pros:
Immediate earning potential.
Flexible work schedule.
Cons:
Pay per word is low.
Quality of assignments varies widely.
Verdict: Good for making side cash, but not ideal for creative writers.
Fiverr
How it works: You set up writing “gigs” and get hired for specific tasks.
My experience: I set up a gig for blog writing at $25article. I got one order in my first month and made $20 after fees. Fiverr is saturated, so getting noticed takes smart SEO and patience.
Pros:
You set your own rates.
Wide range of writing services possible.
Cons:
High competition.
Fiverr takes a 20% cut.
Verdict: Best for freelancers who treat it like a business.
HubPages
How it works: You write informative articles and earn via ad revenue and affiliate links.
My experience: I repurposed an old blog post and published it. I made $1.25 in the first month. Traffic is slow without SEO, but passive income is possible over time.
Pros:
Long-term passive income.
Focus on informative, evergreen content.
Cons:
Earnings start slow.
Site design feels outdated.
Verdict: Ideal for evergreen content writers who know SEO basics.
Final Thoughts
Writing online for money isn’t a get-rich-quick scheme, but it’s entirely possible with the right strategy. Here’s a quick summary:
| Platform | Best For | My Earnings (1st Month) | | Medium | Thoughtful, viral content | $23.50 | | Vocal Media | Casual niche writers | $4.80 | | Substack | Newsletter creators | $0 (not monetized yet) | | Textbroker | Quick freelance tasks | $37 | | Fiverr | Client-based freelance work | $20 | | HubPages | Evergreen, SEO-driven content | $1.25 |
Total Earnings: $86.55
Each platform has its pros and cons, and success varies based on your style, niche, and effort. My advice? Start with one or two, test your comfort zone, and evolve from there.
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kristenbrady · 1 year ago
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Are Social Media Influencers Getting Rich or Barely Getting By?
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So the Wall Street Journal just put out an article entitled, “Social-Media Influencers Aren’t Getting Rich — They’re Barely Getting By.” They are basically saying that “platforms are paying less for popular posts, brands are pickier about partnerships and a possible TikTok ban looms.”
The article goes on to say that “Many people dream of becoming social-media stars like YouTube’s MrBeast or TikTok’s Charli D’Amelio. But for most who pursue careers as content creators, just making ends meet is a lofty goal.”
So, is this true?
Well, most of us are members here on Medium.com. Are your earnings decreasing? I’ve heard a mixed bag from different writers here on this platform. Some say they actually left the platform because of low earnings month after month, and I’ve heard some say that their earnings are only getting better month after month.
Speaking only for myself, last month I had my highest earning month on record on Medium. But this month, I seem to have hit a brick wall. No matter how much work I put into it, I can’t seem to get the numbers to move up significantly.
I have not been able to sell any eBooks on Gumroad and I lost 3 paid subscribers on Substack last week.
So, what’s going on? Is the competition for an audience growing fierce? Is the content creator industry getting oversaturated, so these platforms are deciding to pay less?
According to Forbes magazine, in 2021, the creator economy was valued at $104 billion, and it is projected to reach nearly half a trillion by 2027.
I don’t know about you, but I’m gonna stay on the content creator train and see how far it can take me. With that said, let’s go over 4 great places for content creators to hang out:
Heepsy
Heepsy is a social media influencer marketing solution made for agencies and brands. Users can gain access to millions of social influencers worldwide, in addition to the tools needed to discover the proper one for your campaigns on social media.
Not only will Heepsy provide the choice for brands to locate influencers, it’ll also introduce the choice of a Marketplace in which influencers may sift through campaigns that are published by brands. There, creators possess the flexibility to pick campaigns matching their interests that have features enabling them to filter based on the network for the promotion, the campaign’s location, the category being promoted, and much more. It ensures that social influencers are able to conveniently find campaigns aligning with their target audience’s preferences, as well as their own style of content creation.
Grin
Grin is a platform for creator management that helps e-commerce businesses construct more valuable brands using the power of content-creator partnerships.
Mention
Mention is a marketing platform that enables agencies and brands to recognize audience perception around social media and the Internet while additionally providing the capability of organizing their campaigns on social media.
By using this social media marketing platform, it’s easily possible to monitor what’s being said on the internet about a product or brand, gain analytics on their industry, as well as calculate the impact of your PR and marketing activities.
Current
Current is a platform for brands that want to maximize their influencer marketing, build their ambassador programs, as well as boost their revenue.
So, which is it for you? If you are a writer here on Medium, how’s your earnings going? Let me know in the comments section.
🍉Kristen is a contributor on Medium. Sign up here to catch every story when she publishes.
Continue reading on Medium
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stoweboyd · 6 years ago
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Work Futures Daily Minipost - Doublespeak
| Google's Shadow | Women and Air Conditioning | Is Holacracy Dead? | The Future of Work in Media | Mike Arauz |
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Beacon NY - 2019-05-28 --- Apparently I have been doing this newsletter thing wrong. A recent update from the folks at Substack lays out what the most successful newsletter writers do.
I am going to change how Work Futures Daily works, with the goal of creating a greater incentive for readers to become sponsors.
A month ago, I started to move the Work Futures Daily behind the paywall after 30 days. I have been creating a summarized version of the Daily called the Minipost, which is going out to Linkedin and Medium. Starting with this issue, free subscribers will only see the Minipost, while paid subscribers will receive both versions. My hope is that this may lead to more paid subscribers. We'll see. There may be more experimentation.
:::
This is a summary of a longer post at workfutures.substack.com. Feel free to share it with others.
Consider becoming a paid sponsor to support our work, and to receive in-depth investigative reporting and discounts to other events, reports, and activities.
And paid sponsors gain access to our new members community. Visit members.workfutures.org to request a trial membership.
:::
Our new publication, On The Horizon, is dedicated to help spread greater understanding of the economics, structure, and behavior of platform ecosystems, and the corresponding reordering of business operations and organization. Sign up for the OTH weekly newsletter to be notified about new articles, interviews, events, and other news from the exploding domain of platform ecosystems.
Stories
Google's Shadow Work Force: Temps Who Outnumber Full-Time Employees | Daisuke Wakabayashi adds more meat to the discussion about the rising level of contractors working at Google, and the tech world at large. Apparently, using a temp worker can save the company as much as $100,000 per year. There seems to be no other motivation than cost savings.
:::
'Battle of the Thermostat': Cold Rooms May Hurt Women's Productivity | Veronique Greenwood reports on new research on the negative impact of colder temperatures in the office on women's productivity.
:::
Is holacracy the future of work or a management cult? | Aimee Groth chronicles the life and times of Brian Robertson, the founder of HolacracyOne, and inventor of holacracy. A long, long read, but worth the work for anyone interested in a recap of Medium's flirtation with the system, why Google rejected it, and what ever happened to Zappo's embrace of holacracy.
:::
How the US Media Covers the Future of Work | Emily Boardman Ndulue reports on research that Media Cloud undertook for the Ford Foundation analyzing how the concept the future of work is discussed in US media.
Here's the top article measured by inlinks: "What the future of work will mean for jobs, skills, and wages," McKinseyQuarterly.com, 11/27/17
Quote of the Day
When we started, the relentless doublespeak made me feel like I was living in George Orwell's take on the modern workplace.
| Mike Arauz, My company adopted a Holacracy. It kind of sucked.
Elsewhere
Playing Both Ends Against The Middle | At On The Horizon, I explore some questions about Uber's long-term vision, which is not moving atoms around in the back seat of cars. Apropos of that, see The race to dominate $1.5 trillion business of moving stuffby Erica Pandey, and Amazon's press release about its new Delivery Service Partnerinitiative.
:::
Fast-Food Workers Have a New Job Perk: Finish a Shift, Get Cash to Go | Leslie Patton reveals the newest job benefit: getting paid at the end of a shift.
crossposted from workfutures.substack.com
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dalepwithchari · 7 years ago
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These are the 64 startups unveiled at Y Combinator W18 Demo Day 2
Buy some great High Tech products from WithCharity.org #All Profits go to Charity
Microbiome therapeutics, Photoshop for augmented reality, and cancer treatments were some of the ideas presented at Day 2 of startup accelerator Y Combinator’s Winter 2018 Demo Day. YC is increasingly using its massive class size (141 startups this time around) to fund especially risky frontier technology and biotech moonshots, while tempering the portfolio with more predictable enterprise companies.
Investors say that valuations for post-Demo Day raises have risen steeply recently. Some speculate that people who made a fortune on cryptocurrency are trying to invest their returns elsewhere, driving up demand for YC startups.
The accelerator still admits many international copycats of U.S. successes, and YC is also repeating itself a bit. The Podcast App pitched the exact same product and strategy as Breaker, which debuted at YC exactly a year ago. But there were plenty of ambitious and unique businesses unveiled today on the Mountain View Computer History Museum stage, and the room was — as always — packed with a who’s who of tech investors.
Check out our coverage of all 64 startups that launched on the record yesterday, plus our picks for the top 7 companies from yesterday. (Tomorrow morning we’ll have our favorites from today.)
Here are the 60+ startups that launched at YC’s Winter 2018 Demo Day 2:
Callisto
Callisto is a sexual misconduct reporting software built for victims.
The company’s product works by asking people who are looking to report a perpetrator to give certain unique identifiers, like a LinkedIn profile or phone number. If two victims name the same perpetrator, they are put in touch with each other and then with with an “options counselor,” a lawyer who can give them options on how to proceed in handling the situation. The company says that victims that visit Callisto’s website are 5x more likely to take action. They’ve started by rolling out their product on college campuses and are now taking donation from investors to roll out the service to the startup community.
Bump
Bump is a peer-to-peer streetwear marketplace.
It’s the “eBay for Generation Z.” They’ve been rapidly building an online community, and achieved $25,000 revenue on $430,000 GMV already in the month of March. They claim to be profitable and also have a user community that’s engaged. Bump says that 600,000 messages are sent be users for every week. They believe they can eventually move beyond streetwear.
Read more about Bump on TechCrunch here.
The One Health Company
One Health wants to improve the treatment of canine cancer, using genomic testing and gene sequence to improve diagnosis and the efficacy of treatments.
They are running currently 2 test pilots, where they’ve made $39,000 in about two weeks
Onederful
Onederful is an API for dental insurance.
Onederful says dentists offices lose $6B in revenue per year due to insurance claim problems, and spend $3 billion a year on high friction claim verification. Onederful’s API integrates with 240 insurance providers to rapidly and reliably verify a patient’s insurance and make sure the dentist gets paid.
Onederful doesn’t have to sell dentist by dentist, and instead is developing partnerships with the top dentist software suites for distribution. It’s currently in 120 offices.
Anjuna
Anjuna protects applications running in the public cloud.
The company says that right now about 30 percent of workloads are in the public cloud, and their goal is to help migrate the other 70 percent. The startup is using its memory encryption technologies to protect applications while in use, at rest and in transit. The company claims it can keep them protected even if someone nefarious has root access to the host.
BioRender.io
BioRender.io wants to standardize the “visual language of biology and the software to communicate it.”
They believe there’s a $11 billion market opportunity to eliminate “ugly science pictures. So far they’ve been working with 300 institutions, including SaaS businesses in the life science industries. Their work has also been featured in science journals.
Airship
Airship is building a feature flagging framework that lets small startups roll out products the same way the the big tech companies do.
While A/B testing startups generally tackle small content changes like different headlines, Airship is letting customers ship entirely different features to swaths of users so that companies are more informed about how their audiences will react to redesigns or updates.
Read more about Airship on TechCrunch here.
Gainful
Gainful makes personalized protein shakes.
Most protein shakes are designed for and marketed to male jocks and body builders. Gainful has customers take a five minute health quiz, then get personalized shakes delivered. 80K people have taken the quiz, building a huge health data archive for the startup. It has 2700 customers, with over half of whom buy a bottle. Gainful is growing 85 percent monthly with $40K in sales in February, and it’s profitable on each customer’s first purchase. Eventually, Gainful could expand into sports drinks, meal replacements, and personalized fitness plans utilizing the data its competitors aren’t collecting.
Quantierra
Quantierra sources real estate investments for developers.
It uses their database and algorithms to determine what can be built, its value, and the probability of it selling. Taking a 1.5% cut of any property they help sell, They’ve made $141,000 in revenue in 3 months, and say they have $310,000 in signed term sheets.
BloomJoy
BloomJoy wants to be the “associated press for lifestyle content.”
They create and syndicate the content that they claim is currently seeing five million weekly readers in just a few short weeks. So far, they work with 19,000 publishers and have been generating $25,000 per week in ad revenue. It’s a $5 billion market opportunity, they believe. The team has a media background and previously sold a startup for $18 million.
YouTeam
YouTeam lets you “rent” engineers who work at consulting firms but aren’t currently doing anything.
The company takes a 20% cut of each job. They say they’re currently making $55k in net revenue per month.
Substack
Substack is a subscription publishing platform.
Subscription payments free journalists from relying on clickbait and sensationalism to get clicks and ad views. Substack lets any publisher or individual instantly launch a subscription product. Substack has 7,000 subscribers paying an average of $70 per year, and it takes a 10 percent cut. Its top writer now earns $300K. Eventually Substack wants to turn subscriber bases into communities, and expand into podcasts and video. With Kik’s CTO and a former journalist on its founding team, Substack wants to bring back the journalism revenue that’s slipped away to the social networks.
For more on Substack, read TechCrunch’s coverage here.
HelloVerify
HelloVerify is doing online instant background checks in India where the the government has recently announced it will begin digitizing all personal records.
The startup has lined itself up to be among the first to take advantage of this legislation. The company currently has $3 million in annual revenue and has closed $1 million in orders in the past 60 days. The company’s early customers include Accenture, Infosys and Cognizant.
Look After My Bills
Look After My Bills is for people who want “lower bills with less hassle.”
The UK-based startup claims it can save users $320 per year by helping them manage energy, cell phones and broadband bills, by helping them switch providers and optimize for saving. They make $60 in commission every time a user switches businesses and have generated $84,000 so far this month from its 4000 users.
Station
Station wants to be the app store of software-as-a-service by becoming the web browser people use while at work.
It bakes workplace apps into a sidebar on the browser for easy access that doesn’t see you getting lost in endless tabs. It’s integrated 500 different SAAS applications, with users downloading an average of 12. Station now has 11K weekly active users who spend more than 4.5 hours a day in the app. Eventually it wants to sell opportunities for deeper integrations to the big SAAS companies, and promotional discovery of their apps.
Torch
Torch want to bring executive coaching to entire companies.
The startup uses video-based conferencing software to help coach managers on skills that can help that improve. Managers can log in, set goals and track progress in Torch’s analytics dashboard. Torch was founded by a former executive coach and a data scientist. The team says that the startup’s revenue has been growing 45 percent month-over-month.
Edwin
Edwin uses AI to teach English.
They say they can teach English in ⅓ of the time, at a ⅓ of the cost. You communicate with Edwin via Facebook Messenger or a voice assistant; on Facebook, for example, they have already obtained 757,000 users.
Meitre
Meitre aims to be “Opentable for the world’s top restaurants.”
Focusing on the “top 3%” of restaurants that don’t have trouble getting reservations, Meitre says that instead of paying Opentable, they’ve found 55 restaurants that will pay them to reduce no-shows, sell more tasting menus and move demand to off-peak hours. This can result in “hundreds of thousands of more revenue each year,” they claim. So far, they haven’t had any customers churn and hope to expand to the estimated 50,000 restaurants worldwide that need this.
Pathrise
Pathrise helps train students to get better jobs in exchange for a percentage of their future salary via an income sharing agreement.
University career counselors are outnumbered by students 2900 to 1 on average, and their offices are outdated. First it learns about the student and uses data to surface relevant job openings. Its training can improve students’ cold emailing of recruiters, resumes, interview skills, and salary negotiations. It expects to earn $5K per student it gets hired. Starting with the 750K software engineering students, Pathrise sees a $3.75 billion market, and plans to eventually expand into other job types. Students spend a ton on their education, they scramble to get a job to pay back loans. Path rise could help them better leverage their schooling and find the right job for them.  
TrapFi
TrapFi pays freelance developers for contributing to projects as soon as their pull request is approved, rather than waiting for a monthly check.
They charge 1.5% of earnings made on the platform; in 2 weeks, they say they’ve picked up 500 users and generated $25,000 in transactions.
Sixfold Bioscience
Sixfold designs nanoparticles for treating cancer and other diseases.
They claim to be able to deliver gene editing drugs developed in CRISPR in a way that targets diseased cells without impacting healthy cells. They’re currently testing their nanoparticles in mice.
Jido Maps
Jido Maps is an AR startup that’s approaching the problem of persistence, or getting digital objects to stay affixed to the real world environment even when the sensors aren’t there to observe them.
The company calls itself a “save button” for AR, allowing users to place objects, save them and share that information with other users. After one month of beta, 59 companies are using the startup’s API and will soon deploy it to their combined 300k monthly active users.
Atrium
Justin Kan, formerly of Justin.TV and Twitch, announced a “tech-enabled law firm for startups.” called Atrium.
He said that through his experience co-founding and investing in startups, he had “become an involuntary power user of corporate legal services.” Estimating that there is a $158 billion market for outside spend on law firms, Kan believes that Atrium’s software will help turn legal documents into data. He says that his services are being used to save clients from hourly billing fees for contracts, M&A, blockchain and other paperwork. Atrium “makes legal services fast, transparent with upfront pricing.”
LUS Brands
LUS makes haircare products for curly hair.
After decades of media pressure for people to straighten their hair, the public is now embracing curly hair. But managing it can require tons of expensive products and time. LUS makes products for specific curliness levels for a range of ethnicities. It bootstrapped its way to $1 million in sales a year selling $17 products. Gross profit is 70 percent, and the company has $400K in the bank. Now it wants capital to scale up to dominate the $50 billion a year curly hair product market with a brand that stands for “Love Ur Self”.
Read more about LUS Brands on TechCrunch here.
ZBiotics
ZBiotics has made a genetically engineered drink that it says can prevent your hangovers.
The startup’s engineered probiotics break down acetaldehyde, one of the chief byproducts of alcohol metabolization that is thought to cause hangovers. Zbiotics says that when its product goes on sale at $5 per dose it will be the world’s first genetically engineered probiotic on the market.
Shogun
Shogun helps companies quickly set up storefronts.
Small businesses looking to get off the ground and get their products online might be paralyzed by the sheer volume of stuff that needs to get done before a click-to-buy button even appears. Shogun wants to create a simpler workflow for a page editor to set up an online store on platforms like Shopify. The service is specifically designed with nontechnical people in mind.
Read more about Shogun on TechCrunch here.
DearBrightly
DearBrightly offers personalized skincare prescriptions online.
Their primary product is a “retinoid”, which are used to help treat acne, psoriasis, and other inflammatory skin disorders. You send images of your skin to one of their partner dermatologists, you helps you establish a skin care regimen and get the necessary prescriptions.
Read more about DearBrightly on TechCrunch here.
Sketchbox
Sketchbox is photoshop for AR and VR.
They believe that someday there will be just as many AR/VR designers as there are web and graphic designers today. So far, they’ve worked with over 2000 designers and found that the “power users” are spending an average of 3.5 hours per week on the platform. Companies like Microsoft, Oculus and Eon Reality have tested out Sketchbox. It’s a $6 billion market opportunity, Sketchbox believes.
Read more about Sketchbox on TechCrunch here.
EnvKey
EnvKey wants to be the LastPass of API keys.
As companies get bigger and bigger, the complex network of tools and APIs they have to access might start to get out of hand really quickly. EnvKey is there to try to keep track of all those keys and secrets and make sure they get updated properly. EnvKey also has tools in place to make sure only the right people have access to them internally.
Read more about EnvKey on TechCrunch here.
Tradewind Bioscience
Tradewind Bioscience is working on drugs that block the spread of cancer.
Its two founders both independently identified a cancer protein that occurs during the metastasization of cancer and chose to team up to tackle the problem. They’re focusing first on ovarian cancer, though they say that their therapies will work with “most” cancers.
Read more about Tradewind Bioscience on TechCrunch here.
Arrow
Arrow wants to build Instagram for augmented reality.
Its app lets users attach text and emojis to real world objects and share videos of their AR creations. Its Autoemoji identifies common objects and facial expressions, and fills the screen with related emoji. The startup expects the number of modern AR-enabled phones to grow to 500 million in 2019, expanding its potential user base. Arrow’s public beta has seen 25K videos shared in 2 months. Building a new social content feed will be very difficult in the face of Instagram and Snapchat, but the autoemoji feature is innovative.
Wing It
Wing It is a Facebook Messenger bot that tries to get you out of the house on a weekend trip.
It recommends AirBNBs, local hikes, and other activities based on your preferences — things like distance from home, cost per person, etc. They’re currently seeing 70% weekly engagement from their existing users.
Read more about WingIt on TechCrunch here.
Tipe
Tipe is a tool for developers that takes needless text out of their lives.
The startup makes it easier for developers to navigate code without have to constantly make content edits on the behalf of marketing, by enabling non-developers to make these changes quickly and easily.
Swayable
As our own Jon Shieber wrote here, “Swayable was founded by three former physicists to help craft political messages that actually inform and persuade rather than simply incite and propagandize.”
They aim to help political groups a/b test their messaging to determine what messaging works best, while only sharing information that is accurate. They currently have $100k in monthly books, with customers including the DNC, and the ACLU
Read more about Swayable on TechCrunch here.
Quantstamp
Quantstamp automatically checks smart contract security.
The new popularity of the blockchain has led to more enterprises using smart contracts. But manually checking their security is time consuming and expensive. Last year $300 million was compromised due to smart contract hacks. Quantstamp has developed an automated process that scans smart contracts for vulnerabilities.
It’s already earned $2.4 million in revenue doing six enterprise smart contract audits, and it has 50 customers in the pipeline who’ll pay $500K per audit. Quantstamp could take smart contracts mainstream by making enterprises confident they won’t get hijacked.
Glimpse K12
Glimpse is trying to cut ineffective spending at schools.
The company meshes education institutions’ accounting systems with student achievement data to help education institutions understand what they’re pumping money into and see where they’re getting the best return on investment when it comes to positive student outcomes. The team’s ultimate goal is to “fundamentally changing the way $800B is spend in education each year.”
ClearBrain
ClearBrain helps companies target ads at the users most likely to sign up for a subscription, buy a product, or cancel their account (for example).
It pulls data from the tools that businesses are already using (like Segment, Optimizely and Heap), then deploys artificial intelligence to analyze and group users based on how likely they are to perform a specific action. The ultimate goal, according to CEO Bilal Mahmood, is “to democratize AI for marketers.”
Read more about ClearBrain on TechCrunch here.
Players’ Lounge
Players’ Lounge is an online platform where gamers can compete for cash.
Players can deposit money into their account and then search for other players who are willing to throw down a few bucks over a game of FIFA or Fortnite. The startup’s rating system lets gamers know if they’re taking on someone with a similar skill set or are out of their league.The company takes 10 percent of wagers and says they are growing 25 percent week-over-week.
Memora Health
Memora Health is “building a virtual nurse for patient follow-up.”
It turns out that every time someone leaves a doctor’s office, nurses are getting paid to follow up with the patient about treatments. Memora aims to automate that interaction using artificial intelligence. So far they’ve achieved $70,000 in monthly recurring revenue and have $3.8 million secured in LOIs. They say they’ve “built the infrastructure to follow up with every single patient in the United States.”
Treasury Prime
Treasury Prime makes APIs for banks.
Most banks still run on old mainframe computers and manual changes, leading to delays for banking services. Treasury Prime says its can accelerate the process of opening a bank account from 3 days to 3 minutes. The startup is building APIs for checking balances and transaction history, sending and receiving money by ACH and wire, and more.
It now has a live integration with a bank that’s issuing real bank accounts with Treasury Prime’s API. With a team that built APIs for Silicon Valley Bank and Stripe, and who sold a previous company for $200 million, Treasury Prime wants to modernize banking.
Hunter2
The moment a massive breach happens, Hunter2 hopes to already have a lab demo online for engineers to practice on.
Hunter2 serves as a tool to train engineers to better handle web app security through a soft-touch approach, giving employees semi-regular reminders of what skills the need and then having exercises build around real-world experience like the Equifax hack.
Read more about Hunter2 on TechCrunch here.
Slite
Slite is trying to reimagine collaborative tools for teams.
Imagine if Google Docs were developed by someone at Slack. Google Docs is already a pretty simplistic experience, but Slite aims to create a set of collaboration tools around a traditional notes application. The goal is to create a kind of hub where teams can come in and drop notes, ending up with something similar to an internal wiki.
Read more about Slite on TechCrunch here.
The Podcast App
The Podcast App wants to be the Netflix for…podcasts.
With 500,000 shows and 30 million episodes out there, The Podcast App helps people listen to spoken audio content, but eventually wants to move into discover and exclusive content subscriptions. The company expects there to be 500 million monthly podcasts listeners in five years, and wants to get 10 percent of them to pay $10 per month for exclusive access to top creators. The Podcast App has grown 50 percent month over month for a year, and now has 40,000 daily active users. But it will have to rise above a legion of other podcast apps, including previous YC startup Breaker which has the same strategy.
Read TechCrunch’s full coverage for more on The Podcast App
Groww
Groww wants to be the Robinhood for India.
The company says that while there are 250 million people in the middle class in India, only about 10 million of them are investing online. The startup is beginning its efforts with mutual funds, earning a 1 percent commision on transactions. Next the company is looking to take on stocks, bonds and cryptocurrencies.
Persephone Biome
Persephone Biome is trying to retune the gut microbiome to help cancer drugs work. They’re making a pill that contains gut bacteria.
They expect to go into clinical trials in 2019.
Biobot Analytics
Biobot Analytics analyzes city sewage “to estimate opioid consumption.”
Currently, “the best data is counting people who die,” which isn’t enough to help cities make predictions. The MIT-experienced founders said they are “passionate about using our skills to tackle the biggest drug crisis in American history.” So far they’ve received 17 letters of interest and believe this is a $1.5 billion per year market opportunity in the U.S. and Canada alone. In addition to drug use, they hope to also measure pharmaceuticals, infections disease and food consumption. This is “data that companies would pay billions for.”
Nectome
Nectome aims to preserve people’s brains, for when and if scientists ever develop a method to upload your memories to a computer.
The catch (as explained by co-founder Robert McIntyre) is that the method is “100 percent fatal” — the company’s plans involve terminally ill patients, under anesthesia, to a heart lung machine that will pump embalming chemicals into their arteries.
Read more about Nectome on TechCrunch here.
Promise
Promise is a bail reform startup, offering counties and local governments an alternative to holding low-risk people behind bars simply because they can’t afford bail.
For each participant, Promise provides counties with a comprehensive intake procedure and then sets up each participant with a care plan specific to them. Promise will then monitor and support participants by helping them ensure they know when they’re supposed to appear in court, and remind them of obligations like drug testing or substance abuse treatment needed. The app also provides participants with job training, housing, counseling and referrals.
Read more about Promise on TechCrunch here.
Beanstalk
Beanstalk is an indoor farming startup that can grows produce at the cost of outdoor farming.
The company simplifies operations while reducing cost with its own custom machinery that takes on some of the high-cost areas for outdoor farming. Beanstalk holds some advantages, namely they don’t have to worry about weather and don’t need pesticides. They’re focusing on heirloom greens like spinach to grow to start and are focused on customers within 100 miles of where they’re growing.
Nutrigene
Nutrigene makes personalized supplements based on your own health data.
Users upload their 23andme (or similar) data, and they try to create tailored supplements accordingly. Eventually, they intend to move into personalized medicine.  They’ve say they’ve made $17,328 in revenue since launching 2.5 months ago, with a margin of 50% per order.
Read more about Nutrigene on TechCrunch here.
Precious
Precious is an iPhone app that uses AI to curate your baby photos.
It “scans that mess and finds the meaningful moments,” they said on stage. So far they’ve gotten 54,000 paying monthly subscribers and “create and update the perfect album for every child as they grow.” Using specialized AI, it determines what it thinks are the best photos and sends them to customers regularly. So far they say they have $180,000 in monthly recurring revenue and are profitable. They believe this is a $20 billion market opportunity.
Zyper
Zyper wants to “re-create social networks for brands”.
It identifies a brand’s most engaging users, and offers them rewards relevant to the brand’s products (not money) in exchange for posting content about that brand. The company says they’ve made $1m in revenue since launching 9 months ago.
Cognition IP
Cognition IP is a tech-enabled patent law firm focused on getting the job done quicker and cheaper.
The startup claims they charge half the price of traditional law firms and that they file patents in 14 days while larger firms spend as much as 30 days getting patents filed. The company did this by building automation tools, like a smart search engine that takes a patent application and finds similar ones. They’ve also automated formatting, and built software that fills out forms for users. The company launched three months ago and is profitable with $200k in revenue.
Mirror AI
Mirror AI takes a photo and creates “thousands” of emoji that look like you. A few weeks after launching, they’ve got 300,000 installs.
Tarjimly
Tarjimly connects refugees and immigrants with native speakers of their language for help navigating difficult situations, from paperwork to disaster response.
It’s anonymous, free, and works entirely within Facebook Messenger, with more platforms on the way. Read more about Tarjimly on TechCrunch here.
OurMenu
OurMenu replaces ordering from a waiter with ordering from a website.
Labor costs are huge for restaurants. OurMenu wants to let you order from your phone at your table instead of talking to a waiter, and without downloading an app. You scan a QR code on the table, choose your food, order and pay, and then the food is brought to you.  OurMenu plans to charge restaurants $300 per month for the tech, and will aggregate the menu choice data to sell back to them.
Archform
Archform is teeth aligner software startup that lets orthodontists create, design and 3D print aligners within their own offices.
The idea is to provide orthodontists with a way to better compete against some direct-to-consumer teeth aligner startups and cut down on the cost of Invisalign.
Read more about ArchForm on TechCrunch here.
Ropeo
Ropeo wants to be the Stitch Fix of Latin America.
The company offers a monthly clothing subscription service with some features optimized for its particular market. The company allows users to try before they buy and takes cash on pickup because credit card use is so low in LatAm. The company believes that they’ll be able to negotiate better deals with partners as they scale and that after clothing, they’ll be able to grow to sourcing different types of apparel.
Pulse
Pulse is trying to crowdsource research and advisory reports by tapping a community of IT execs.
They currently have 3,000+ IT executives on the platform, and say they’re growing by over 100 companies per week. Its reports are free, instead aiming to make money buy connecting IT buyers and vendors.
Read more about Pulse on TechCrunch here.
Playbook
Playbook is for college students who want to hang out.
It’s an app with 240 beta users at Harvard, 30% of whom use it daily. In March, they organized 101 get togethers and “most the people that hung out and had a great time didn’t know each other beforehand.” It’s available on both iOS and Android.
Read more about Playbook on TechCrunch here.
Delphia
Delphia works with publishers to create applications that help their readers make decisions — think of them as BuzzFeed quizzes, but for complex decisions, and with real data science on the backend. The company’s first application was called Vote Compass, which told users how their political views line up with election candidates. Now it’s expanding beyond politics. Read more about Delphia on TechCrunch here.
Dana Cita
Dana Cita offers student loans in Indonesia.
Previously, there were no loans in the 260 million-person country where 76 percent of people are unbanked. Dana Cita believes student loans can be the start of an adult’s financial life, and a way to recruit long-time customers for other financial services. It’s originated $100K in loans to 52 borrowers so far. The question is whether after seeing the student loan debt crisis in America, Indonesians will want to take money from a startup.
Tributi
Tributi wants to build a TurboTax for Latin America.
The startup says that the vast majority of people in Latin America have their taxes prepped by individual accountants rather than using software products. The company says upcoming tax reform across the continent will drive even more traffic to solutions like theirs. The startup says it is growing 25 percent week over week since launch.
EasyEmail
EasyEmail is a Chrome plugin that analyzes your emails finds your most common phrases and autocompletes sentences for you.
So much of the emails that we send feel like they’re being written on autopilot. Wouldn’t it be great if they actually were? For users sending a lot of repetitive sales or PR emails, the service offers a system that will keep you from copy-pasting up a storm and let you intelligently blaze through your emails.
Read more about EasyEmail on TechCrunch Here.
Ben
Ben aims to be a unified platform for learning about, buying, selling, and storing cryptocurrency.
With the hundreds of wallets and exchanges floating around in the blockchain ether, it’s easy for novices to get lost in the fray. Ben’s mobile app distinguishes itself from other wallet exchanges by integrating crypto education, using the platform to also deliver news about currencies and offer Q&As related to crypto investing.
Medumo
Medumo aims to reduce day-of medical procedure cancellations.
Last minute schedule changes can be costly for both the patients and the medical facilities.
But a lot of these cancellations aren’t by choice, but rather because patients forgot to fast or avoid certain foods before a procedure. Medumo offers support over text and email, providing instructions so that the patient is ready when they need to be. For its customers, they say it’s resulted in a 30% reduction in no shows.
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These are the 64 startups unveiled at Y Combinator W18 Demo Day 2
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sheminecrafts · 7 years ago
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These are the 64 startups unveiled at Y Combinator W18 Demo Day 2
Microbiome therapeutics, Photoshop for augmented reality, and cancer treatments were some of the ideas presented at Day 2 of startup accelerator Y Combinator’s Winter 2018 Demo Day. YC is increasingly using its massive class size (141 startups this time around) to fund especially risky frontier technology and biotech moonshots, while tempering the portfolio with more predictable enterprise companies.
Investors say that valuations for post-Demo Day raises have risen steeply recently. Some speculate that people who made a fortune on cryptocurrency are trying to invest their returns elsewhere, driving up demand for YC startups.
The accelerator still admits many international copycats of U.S. successes, and YC is also repeating itself a bit. The Podcast App pitched the exact same product and strategy as Breaker, which debuted at YC exactly a year ago. But there were plenty of ambitious and unique businesses unveiled today on the Mountain View Computer History Museum stage, and the room was — as always — packed with a who’s who of tech investors.
Check out our coverage of all 64 startups that launched on the record yesterday, plus our picks for the top 7 companies from yesterday. (Tomorrow morning we’ll have our favorites from today.)
Here are the 60+ startups that launched at YC’s Winter 2018 Demo Day 2:
Callisto
Callisto is a sexual misconduct reporting software built for victims.
The company’s product works by asking people who are looking to report a perpetrator to give certain unique identifiers, like a LinkedIn profile or phone number. If two victims name the same perpetrator, they are put in touch with each other and then with with an “options counselor,” a lawyer who can give them options on how to proceed in handling the situation. The company says that victims that visit Callisto’s website are 5x more likely to take action. They’ve started by rolling out their product on college campuses and are now taking donation from investors to roll out the service to the startup community.
Bump
Bump is a peer-to-peer streetwear marketplace.
It’s the “eBay for Generation Z.” They’ve been rapidly building an online community, and achieved $25,000 revenue on $430,000 GMV already in the month of March. They claim to be profitable and also have a user community that’s engaged. Bump says that 600,000 messages are sent be users for every week. They believe they can eventually move beyond streetwear.
Read more about Bump on TechCrunch here.
The One Health Company
One Health wants to improve the treatment of canine cancer, using genomic testing and gene sequence to improve diagnosis and the efficacy of treatments.
They are running currently 2 test pilots, where they’ve made $39,000 in about two weeks
Onederful
Onederful is an API for dental insurance.
Onederful says dentists offices lose $6B in revenue per year due to insurance claim problems, and spend $3 billion a year on high friction claim verification. Onederful’s API integrates with 240 insurance providers to rapidly and reliably verify a patient’s insurance and make sure the dentist gets paid.
Onederful doesn’t have to sell dentist by dentist, and instead is developing partnerships with the top dentist software suites for distribution. It’s currently in 120 offices.
Anjuna
Anjuna protects applications running in the public cloud.
The company says that right now about 30 percent of workloads are in the public cloud, and their goal is to help migrate the other 70 percent. The startup is using its memory encryption technologies to protect applications while in use, at rest and in transit. The company claims it can keep them protected even if someone nefarious has root access to the host.
BioRender.io
BioRender.io wants to standardize the “visual language of biology and the software to communicate it.”
They believe there’s a $11 billion market opportunity to eliminate “ugly science pictures. So far they’ve been working with 300 institutions, including SaaS businesses in the life science industries. Their work has also been featured in science journals.
Airship
Airship is building a feature flagging framework that lets small startups roll out products the same way the the big tech companies do.
While A/B testing startups generally tackle small content changes like different headlines, Airship is letting customers ship entirely different features to swaths of users so that companies are more informed about how their audiences will react to redesigns or updates.
Read more about Airship on TechCrunch here.
Gainful
Gainful makes personalized protein shakes.
Most protein shakes are designed for and marketed to male jocks and body builders. Gainful has customers take a five minute health quiz, then get personalized shakes delivered. 80K people have taken the quiz, building a huge health data archive for the startup. It has 2700 customers, with over half of whom buy a bottle. Gainful is growing 85 percent monthly with $40K in sales in February, and it’s profitable on each customer’s first purchase. Eventually, Gainful could expand into sports drinks, meal replacements, and personalized fitness plans utilizing the data its competitors aren’t collecting.
Quantierra
Quantierra sources real estate investments for developers.
It uses their database and algorithms to determine what can be built, its value, and the probability of it selling. Taking a 1.5% cut of any property they help sell, They’ve made $141,000 in revenue in 3 months, and say they have $310,000 in signed term sheets.
BloomJoy
BloomJoy wants to be the “associated press for lifestyle content.”
They create and syndicate the content that they claim is currently seeing five million weekly readers in just a few short weeks. So far, they work with 19,000 publishers and have been generating $25,000 per week in ad revenue. It’s a $5 billion market opportunity, they believe. The team has a media background and previously sold a startup for $18 million.
YouTeam
YouTeam lets you “rent” engineers who work at consulting firms but aren’t currently doing anything.
The company takes a 20% cut of each job. They say they’re currently making $55k in net revenue per month.
Substack
Substack is a subscription publishing platform.
Subscription payments free journalists from relying on clickbait and sensationalism to get clicks and ad views. Substack lets any publisher or individual instantly launch a subscription product. Substack has 7,000 subscribers paying an average of $70 per year, and it takes a 10 percent cut. Its top writer now earns $300K. Eventually Substack wants to turn subscriber bases into communities, and expand into podcasts and video. With Kik’s CTO and a former journalist on its founding team, Substack wants to bring back the journalism revenue that’s slipped away to the social networks.
For more on Substack, read TechCrunch’s coverage here.
HelloVerify
HelloVerify is doing online instant background checks in India where the the government has recently announced it will begin digitizing all personal records.
The startup has lined itself up to be among the first to take advantage of this legislation. The company currently has $3 million in annual revenue and has closed $1 million in orders in the past 60 days. The company’s early customers include Accenture, Infosys and Cognizant.
Look After My Bills
Look After My Bills is for people who want “lower bills with less hassle.”
The UK-based startup claims it can save users $320 per year by helping them manage energy, cell phones and broadband bills, by helping them switch providers and optimize for saving. They make $60 in commission every time a user switches businesses and have generated $84,000 so far this month from its 4000 users.
Station
Station wants to be the app store of software-as-a-service by becoming the web browser people use while at work.
It bakes workplace apps into a sidebar on the browser for easy access that doesn’t see you getting lost in endless tabs. It’s integrated 500 different SAAS applications, with users downloading an average of 12. Station now has 11K weekly active users who spend more than 4.5 hours a day in the app. Eventually it wants to sell opportunities for deeper integrations to the big SAAS companies, and promotional discovery of their apps.
Torch
Torch want to bring executive coaching to entire companies.
The startup uses video-based conferencing software to help coach managers on skills that can help that improve. Managers can log in, set goals and track progress in Torch’s analytics dashboard. Torch was founded by a former executive coach and a data scientist. The team says that the startup’s revenue has been growing 45 percent month-over-month.
Edwin
Edwin uses AI to teach English.
They say they can teach English in ⅓ of the time, at a ⅓ of the cost. You communicate with Edwin via Facebook Messenger or a voice assistant; on Facebook, for example, they have already obtained 757,000 users.
Meitre
Meitre aims to be “Opentable for the world’s top restaurants.”
Focusing on the “top 3%” of restaurants that don’t have trouble getting reservations, Meitre says that instead of paying Opentable, they’ve found 55 restaurants that will pay them to reduce no-shows, sell more tasting menus and move demand to off-peak hours. This can result in “hundreds of thousands of more revenue each year,” they claim. So far, they haven’t had any customers churn and hope to expand to the estimated 50,000 restaurants worldwide that need this.
Pathrise
Pathrise helps train students to get better jobs in exchange for a percentage of their future salary via an income sharing agreement.
University career counselors are outnumbered by students 2900 to 1 on average, and their offices are outdated. First it learns about the student and uses data to surface relevant job openings. Its training can improve students’ cold emailing of recruiters, resumes, interview skills, and salary negotiations. It expects to earn $5K per student it gets hired. Starting with the 750K software engineering students, Pathrise sees a $3.75 billion market, and plans to eventually expand into other job types. Students spend a ton on their education, they scramble to get a job to pay back loans. Path rise could help them better leverage their schooling and find the right job for them.  
TrapFi
TrapFi pays freelance developers for contributing to projects as soon as their pull request is approved, rather than waiting for a monthly check.
They charge 1.5% of earnings made on the platform; in 2 weeks, they say they’ve picked up 500 users and generated $25,000 in transactions.
Sixfold Bioscience
Sixfold designs nanoparticles for treating cancer and other diseases.
They claim to be able to deliver gene editing drugs developed in CRISPR in a way that targets diseased cells without impacting healthy cells. They’re currently testing their nanoparticles in mice.
Jido Maps
Jido Maps is an AR startup that’s approaching the problem of persistence, or getting digital objects to stay affixed to the real world environment even when the sensors aren’t there to observe them.
The company calls itself a “save button” for AR, allowing users to place objects, save them and share that information with other users. After one month of beta, 59 companies are using the startup’s API and will soon deploy it to their combined 300k monthly active users.
Atrium
Justin Kan, formerly of Justin.TV and Twitch, announced a “tech-enabled law firm for startups.” called Atrium.
He said that through his experience co-founding and investing in startups, he had “become an involuntary power user of corporate legal services.” Estimating that there is a $158 billion market for outside spend on law firms, Kan believes that Atrium’s software will help turn legal documents into data. He says that his services are being used to save clients from hourly billing fees for contracts, M&A, blockchain and other paperwork. Atrium “makes legal services fast, transparent with upfront pricing.”
LUS Brands
LUS makes haircare products for curly hair.
After decades of media pressure for people to straighten their hair, the public is now embracing curly hair. But managing it can require tons of expensive products and time. LUS makes products for specific curliness levels for a range of ethnicities. It bootstrapped its way to $1 million in sales a year selling $17 products. Gross profit is 70 percent, and the company has $400K in the bank. Now it wants capital to scale up to dominate the $50 billion a year curly hair product market with a brand that stands for “Love Ur Self”.
Read more about LUS Brands on TechCrunch here.
ZBiotics
ZBiotics has made a genetically engineered drink that it says can prevent your hangovers.
The startup’s engineered probiotics break down acetaldehyde, one of the chief byproducts of alcohol metabolization that is thought to cause hangovers. Zbiotics says that when its product goes on sale at $5 per dose it will be the world’s first genetically engineered probiotic on the market.
Shogun
Shogun helps companies quickly set up storefronts.
Small businesses looking to get off the ground and get their products online might be paralyzed by the sheer volume of stuff that needs to get done before a click-to-buy button even appears. Shogun wants to create a simpler workflow for a page editor to set up an online store on platforms like Shopify. The service is specifically designed with nontechnical people in mind.
Read more about Shogun on TechCrunch here.
DearBrightly
DearBrightly offers personalized skincare prescriptions online.
Their primary product is a “retinoid”, which are used to help treat acne, psoriasis, and other inflammatory skin disorders. You send images of your skin to one of their partner dermatologists, you helps you establish a skin care regimen and get the necessary prescriptions.
Read more about DearBrightly on TechCrunch here.
Sketchbox
Sketchbox is photoshop for AR and VR.
They believe that someday there will be just as many AR/VR designers as there are web and graphic designers today. So far, they’ve worked with over 2000 designers and found that the “power users” are spending an average of 3.5 hours per week on the platform. Companies like Microsoft, Oculus and Eon Reality have tested out Sketchbox. It’s a $6 billion market opportunity, Sketchbox believes.
Read more about Sketchbox on TechCrunch here.
EnvKey
EnvKey wants to be the LastPass of API keys.
As companies get bigger and bigger, the complex network of tools and APIs they have to access might start to get out of hand really quickly. EnvKey is there to try to keep track of all those keys and secrets and make sure they get updated properly. EnvKey also has tools in place to make sure only the right people have access to them internally.
Read more about EnvKey on TechCrunch here.
Tradewind Bioscience
Tradewind Bioscience is working on drugs that block the spread of cancer.
Its two founders both independently identified a cancer protein that occurs during the metastasization of cancer and chose to team up to tackle the problem. They’re focusing first on ovarian cancer, though they say that their therapies will work with “most” cancers.
Read more about Tradewind Bioscience on TechCrunch here.
Arrow
Arrow wants to build Instagram for augmented reality.
Its app lets users attach text and emojis to real world objects and share videos of their AR creations. Its Autoemoji identifies common objects and facial expressions, and fills the screen with related emoji. The startup expects the number of modern AR-enabled phones to grow to 500 million in 2019, expanding its potential user base. Arrow’s public beta has seen 25K videos shared in 2 months. Building a new social content feed will be very difficult in the face of Instagram and Snapchat, but the autoemoji feature is innovative.
Wing It
Wing It is a Facebook Messenger bot that tries to get you out of the house on a weekend trip.
It recommends AirBNBs, local hikes, and other activities based on your preferences — things like distance from home, cost per person, etc. They’re currently seeing 70% weekly engagement from their existing users.
Read more about WingIt on TechCrunch here.
Tipe
Tipe is a tool for developers that takes needless text out of their lives.
The startup makes it easier for developers to navigate code without have to constantly make content edits on the behalf of marketing, by enabling non-developers to make these changes quickly and easily.
Swayable
As our own Jon Shieber wrote here, “Swayable was founded by three former physicists to help craft political messages that actually inform and persuade rather than simply incite and propagandize.”
They aim to help political groups a/b test their messaging to determine what messaging works best, while only sharing information that is accurate. They currently have $100k in monthly books, with customers including the DNC, and the ACLU
Read more about Swayable on TechCrunch here.
Quantstamp
Quantstamp automatically checks smart contract security.
The new popularity of the blockchain has led to more enterprises using smart contracts. But manually checking their security is time consuming and expensive. Last year $300 million was compromised due to smart contract hacks. Quantstamp has developed an automated process that scans smart contracts for vulnerabilities.
It’s already earned $2.4 million in revenue doing six enterprise smart contract audits, and it has 50 customers in the pipeline who’ll pay $500K per audit. Quantstamp could take smart contracts mainstream by making enterprises confident they won’t get hijacked.
Glimpse K12
Glimpse is trying to cut ineffective spending at schools.
The company meshes education institutions’ accounting systems with student achievement data to help education institutions understand what they’re pumping money into and see where they’re getting the best return on investment when it comes to positive student outcomes. The team’s ultimate goal is to “fundamentally changing the way $800B is spend in education each year.”
ClearBrain
ClearBrain helps companies target ads at the users most likely to sign up for a subscription, buy a product, or cancel their account (for example).
It pulls data from the tools that businesses are already using (like Segment, Optimizely and Heap), then deploys artificial intelligence to analyze and group users based on how likely they are to perform a specific action. The ultimate goal, according to CEO Bilal Mahmood, is “to democratize AI for marketers.”
Read more about ClearBrain on TechCrunch here.
Players’ Lounge
Players’ Lounge is an online platform where gamers can compete for cash.
Players can deposit money into their account and then search for other players who are willing to throw down a few bucks over a game of FIFA or Fortnite. The startup’s rating system lets gamers know if they’re taking on someone with a similar skill set or are out of their league.The company takes 10 percent of wagers and says they are growing 25 percent week-over-week.
Memora Health
Memora Health is “building a virtual nurse for patient follow-up.”
It turns out that every time someone leaves a doctor’s office, nurses are getting paid to follow up with the patient about treatments. Memora aims to automate that interaction using artificial intelligence. So far they’ve achieved $70,000 in monthly recurring revenue and have $3.8 million secured in LOIs. They say they’ve “built the infrastructure to follow up with every single patient in the United States.”
Treasury Prime
Treasury Prime makes APIs for banks.
Most banks still run on old mainframe computers and manual changes, leading to delays for banking services. Treasury Prime says its can accelerate the process of opening a bank account from 3 days to 3 minutes. The startup is building APIs for checking balances and transaction history, sending and receiving money by ACH and wire, and more.
It now has a live integration with a bank that’s issuing real bank accounts with Treasury Prime’s API. With a team that built APIs for Silicon Valley Bank and Stripe, and who sold a previous company for $200 million, Treasury Prime wants to modernize banking.
Hunter2
The moment a massive breach happens, Hunter2 hopes to already have a lab demo online for engineers to practice on.
Hunter2 serves as a tool to train engineers to better handle web app security through a soft-touch approach, giving employees semi-regular reminders of what skills the need and then having exercises build around real-world experience like the Equifax hack.
Read more about Hunter2 on TechCrunch here.
Slite
Slite is trying to reimagine collaborative tools for teams.
Imagine if Google Docs were developed by someone at Slack. Google Docs is already a pretty simplistic experience, but Slite aims to create a set of collaboration tools around a traditional notes application. The goal is to create a kind of hub where teams can come in and drop notes, ending up with something similar to an internal wiki.
Read more about Slite on TechCrunch here.
The Podcast App
The Podcast App wants to be the Netflix for…podcasts.
With 500,000 shows and 30 million episodes out there, The Podcast App helps people listen to spoken audio content, but eventually wants to move into discover and exclusive content subscriptions. The company expects there to be 500 million monthly podcasts listeners in five years, and wants to get 10 percent of them to pay $10 per month for exclusive access to top creators. The Podcast App has grown 50 percent month over month for a year, and now has 40,000 daily active users. But it will have to rise above a legion of other podcast apps, including previous YC startup Breaker which has the same strategy.
Read TechCrunch’s full coverage for more on The Podcast App
Groww
Groww wants to be the Robinhood for India.
The company says that while there are 250 million people in the middle class in India, only about 10 million of them are investing online. The startup is beginning its efforts with mutual funds, earning a 1 percent commision on transactions. Next the company is looking to take on stocks, bonds and cryptocurrencies.
Persephone Biome
Persephone Biome is trying to retune the gut microbiome to help cancer drugs work. They’re making a pill that contains gut bacteria.
They expect to go into clinical trials in 2019.
Biobot Analytics
Biobot Analytics analyzes city sewage “to estimate opioid consumption.”
Currently, “the best data is counting people who die,” which isn’t enough to help cities make predictions. The MIT-experienced founders said they are “passionate about using our skills to tackle the biggest drug crisis in American history.” So far they’ve received 17 letters of interest and believe this is a $1.5 billion per year market opportunity in the U.S. and Canada alone. In addition to drug use, they hope to also measure pharmaceuticals, infections disease and food consumption. This is “data that companies would pay billions for.”
Nectome
Nectome aims to preserve people’s brains, for when and if scientists ever develop a method to upload your memories to a computer.
The catch (as explained by co-founder Robert McIntyre) is that the method is “100 percent fatal” — the company’s plans involve terminally ill patients, under anesthesia, to a heart lung machine that will pump embalming chemicals into their arteries.
Read more about Nectome on TechCrunch here.
Promise
Promise is a bail reform startup, offering counties and local governments an alternative to holding low-risk people behind bars simply because they can’t afford bail.
For each participant, Promise provides counties with a comprehensive intake procedure and then sets up each participant with a care plan specific to them. Promise will then monitor and support participants by helping them ensure they know when they’re supposed to appear in court, and remind them of obligations like drug testing or substance abuse treatment needed. The app also provides participants with job training, housing, counseling and referrals.
Read more about Promise on TechCrunch here.
Beanstalk
Beanstalk is an indoor farming startup that can grows produce at the cost of outdoor farming.
The company simplifies operations while reducing cost with its own custom machinery that takes on some of the high-cost areas for outdoor farming. Beanstalk holds some advantages, namely they don’t have to worry about weather and don’t need pesticides. They’re focusing on heirloom greens like spinach to grow to start and are focused on customers within 100 miles of where they’re growing.
Nutrigene
Nutrigene makes personalized supplements based on your own health data.
Users upload their 23andme (or similar) data, and they try to create tailored supplements accordingly. Eventually, they intend to move into personalized medicine.  They’ve say they’ve made $17,328 in revenue since launching 2.5 months ago, with a margin of 50% per order.
Read more about Nutrigene on TechCrunch here.
Precious
Precious is an iPhone app that uses AI to curate your baby photos.
It “scans that mess and finds the meaningful moments,” they said on stage. So far they’ve gotten 54,000 paying monthly subscribers and “create and update the perfect album for every child as they grow.” Using specialized AI, it determines what it thinks are the best photos and sends them to customers regularly. So far they say they have $180,000 in monthly recurring revenue and are profitable. They believe this is a $20 billion market opportunity.
Zyper
Zyper wants to “re-create social networks for brands”.
It identifies a brand’s most engaging users, and offers them rewards relevant to the brand’s products (not money) in exchange for posting content about that brand. The company says they’ve made $1m in revenue since launching 9 months ago.
Cognition IP
Cognition IP is a tech-enabled patent law firm focused on getting the job done quicker and cheaper.
The startup claims they charge half the price of traditional law firms and that they file patents in 14 days while larger firms spend as much as 30 days getting patents filed. The company did this by building automation tools, like a smart search engine that takes a patent application and finds similar ones. They’ve also automated formatting, and built software that fills out forms for users. The company launched three months ago and is profitable with $200k in revenue.
Mirror AI
Mirror AI takes a photo and creates “thousands” of emoji that look like you. A few weeks after launching, they’ve got 300,000 installs.
Tarjimly
Tarjimly connects refugees and immigrants with native speakers of their language for help navigating difficult situations, from paperwork to disaster response.
It’s anonymous, free, and works entirely within Facebook Messenger, with more platforms on the way. Read more about Tarjimly on TechCrunch here.
OurMenu
OurMenu replaces ordering from a waiter with ordering from a website.
Labor costs are huge for restaurants. OurMenu wants to let you order from your phone at your table instead of talking to a waiter, and without downloading an app. You scan a QR code on the table, choose your food, order and pay, and then the food is brought to you.  OurMenu plans to charge restaurants $300 per month for the tech, and will aggregate the menu choice data to sell back to them.
Archform
Archform is teeth aligner software startup that lets orthodontists create, design and 3D print aligners within their own offices.
The idea is to provide orthodontists with a way to better compete against some direct-to-consumer teeth aligner startups and cut down on the cost of Invisalign.
Read more about ArchForm on TechCrunch here.
Ropeo
Ropeo wants to be the Stitch Fix of Latin America.
The company offers a monthly clothing subscription service with some features optimized for its particular market. The company allows users to try before they buy and takes cash on pickup because credit card use is so low in LatAm. The company believes that they’ll be able to negotiate better deals with partners as they scale and that after clothing, they’ll be able to grow to sourcing different types of apparel.
Pulse
Pulse is trying to crowdsource research and advisory reports by tapping a community of IT execs.
They currently have 3,000+ IT executives on the platform, and say they’re growing by over 100 companies per week. Its reports are free, instead aiming to make money buy connecting IT buyers and vendors.
Read more about Pulse on TechCrunch here.
Playbook
Playbook is for college students who want to hang out.
It’s an app with 240 beta users at Harvard, 30% of whom use it daily. In March, they organized 101 get togethers and “most the people that hung out and had a great time didn’t know each other beforehand.” It’s available on both iOS and Android.
Read more about Playbook on TechCrunch here.
Delphia
Delphia works with publishers to create applications that help their readers make decisions — think of them as BuzzFeed quizzes, but for complex decisions, and with real data science on the backend. The company’s first application was called Vote Compass, which told users how their political views line up with election candidates. Now it’s expanding beyond politics. Read more about Delphia on TechCrunch here.
Dana Cita
Dana Cita offers student loans in Indonesia.
Previously, there were no loans in the 260 million-person country where 76 percent of people are unbanked. Dana Cita believes student loans can be the start of an adult’s financial life, and a way to recruit long-time customers for other financial services. It’s originated $100K in loans to 52 borrowers so far. The question is whether after seeing the student loan debt crisis in America, Indonesians will want to take money from a startup.
Tributi
Tributi wants to build a TurboTax for Latin America.
The startup says that the vast majority of people in Latin America have their taxes prepped by individual accountants rather than using software products. The company says upcoming tax reform across the continent will drive even more traffic to solutions like theirs. The startup says it is growing 25 percent week over week since launch.
EasyEmail
EasyEmail is a Chrome plugin that analyzes your emails finds your most common phrases and autocompletes sentences for you.
So much of the emails that we send feel like they’re being written on autopilot. Wouldn’t it be great if they actually were? For users sending a lot of repetitive sales or PR emails, the service offers a system that will keep you from copy-pasting up a storm and let you intelligently blaze through your emails.
Read more about EasyEmail on TechCrunch Here.
Ben
Ben aims to be a unified platform for learning about, buying, selling, and storing cryptocurrency.
With the hundreds of wallets and exchanges floating around in the blockchain ether, it’s easy for novices to get lost in the fray. Ben’s mobile app distinguishes itself from other wallet exchanges by integrating crypto education, using the platform to also deliver news about currencies and offer Q&As related to crypto investing.
Medumo
Medumo aims to reduce day-of medical procedure cancellations.
Last minute schedule changes can be costly for both the patients and the medical facilities.
But a lot of these cancellations aren’t by choice, but rather because patients forgot to fast or avoid certain foods before a procedure. Medumo offers support over text and email, providing instructions so that the patient is ready when they need to be. For its customers, they say it’s resulted in a 30% reduction in no shows.
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helenaheissner · 1 year ago
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Love During Robot Fighting Time: Chapter 13
Hello, lovelies! Hope y'all are doing well :)
Don't forget you can read three chapters ahead on this story, twenty chapters ahead on "A Dream of Summer Rain", and two chapters ahead on "Magical Girl Exorcist Squad", by becoming a paid subscriber on my Substack or my Patreon!
***
Kate
“So, you’re going by Kate now, and say that you’re trans?” Dr. Chopra, my general practitioner, said. She was a stout middle-aged with a happy face and black hair threaded with gray and worn in a long braid. I’d called to make an appointment as soon as I’d gotten home from the fight on Friday, and miraculously, an opening was there for Monday morning. 
“Yes, ma’am, that’s right,” I said, nodding happily. I wore a short-sleeved light blue blouse and a knee-length red skirt and a face full of makeup, my strappy-sandal clad feet dangling on the side of the patient platform. 
“Would you like me to refer you to an endocrinologist, then? We have one here at the clinic who specializes in gender affirming care. Should be covered by your insurance.”
“Yes please!”
“Sounds good! Let’s get your bloodwork done today, make sure everything is on the up and up, and the endocrinologist should be able to prescribe you Estradiol and Spironolactone so long as everything comes back okay. You should also give some thought to freezing some sperm, if you want to have biological kids someday.”
“Hm, alright then,” I said. “Makes sense.”
“Anything else I can do for you today?”
“No, that’s everything. Thank you so much!” 
With the easy appointment done, it was time to move onto the hard one: the meeting with my sponsor. 
 Mr. Gaines did a double-take when I walked into his office an hour later. “What’s, uh, what’s going on here, Calloway?”
“I’m trans,” I said simply. 
“Hm.”
“Hm?”
“Hm. You’re trans. So you didn’t lose a bet?”
“... No,” I said, an ugly, icy feeling coating my esophagus. 
“This isn’t a bit?”
“No,” I said, redirecting my eyes to the floor as I sat down on the uncomfortable plastic chair. 
“You’re trans?”
“I’m trans,” I said, trying to swallow the guilt and shame that was saturating my being. 
“Hm.”
“What… What does that mean? In this context, what does ‘hm’ mean?”
“Well, to be blunt, it means I’m ambivalent about all this.”
“Oh?” I said, my voice dropping into a lower octave. I had to stop myself from clamping my hand over my mouth. 
“On the one hand, supporting you will be seen as supporting trans rights, which may alienate some of my clientele,” Gaines said flatly. 
“Oh.”
“On the other hand,” Gaines continued, “It could open up new markets for me with more socially progressive types. Given I’m hoping to expand into NorCal, that might not be a bad thing.”
“Oh,” I said. Where was he going with this…?
“Hm, well, I suppose the only way out is through,” Gaines said.
“Meaning?”
“Meaning I’ll need your help to sell this.”
“What is ‘this?’”
He gestured at all of me and said, “This. This whole… Gimmick.”
“It’s not a gimmick, it’s my identity,” I said, eyes narrowing.
“Right, yeah,” Gaines said. “How would you feel about becoming our spokesperson, maybe doing a photoshoot for our social media page?”
“Uh… I…,” did not like where this was going.
“I would also need you to write up a mission statement for all this that I can use to promote you as my client, make it clear that I stand with you, that my gym/garage doesn’t tolerate discrimination on the basis of sex, yada yada yada, all that touchy-feely woke bullshit. The hippies in this town will eat it up.”
I blinked. “What?”
“Just something to think about,” he said. “Look, I’m taking a risk by holding onto you as a client. I need you to work with me.”
“That… That makes sense,” I said, ignoring the weird feeling of being treated like an object. Was this gonna be a thing from now on? 
“I’m gonna put you in touch with my social media guru, Nadine; she’ll help you with this whole… Image adjustment you’re going through.”
“You know you can just say ‘transition’, right?” I said, groaning internally as it slipped out. 
“Yeah, but that’s personal- right now we’re talking business, kid,” Gaines said. 
“Right,” I said in monotone. 
The meeting wrapped up, and I left the place with an uncomfortable feeling of being used sitting in my gut like a rock. He wasn’t wrong per se, I did have my career to consider, and as a businessman, he had a right to view things that way. And he was my sponsor, not my friend- it made sense for him to think about what our professional relationship would be going forward. 
Still. He didn’t have to be so damn blunt about it. 
I hopped in my truck and drove myself home for my final appointment of the day. When I pulled into the driveway, Faith was already there leaning against her SUV, an old antique of a car painted red and blue with white stars on the doors. It had a bumper sticker on it labeled ‘Star Rocket Racer.’ She leaned against the hood, wearing a plaid miniskirt, wedge-heeled black boots, and a v-neck light blue t-shirt with the comic book character Stargirl on it. Her long black hair was worn loosely about her shoulders, her makeup immaculate, silver hoop earrings dangling from her ears. A necklace dangled above her cleavage, which… Oh wow, cleavage. 
It was, uh… 
I’d been so busy fawning over Zeke lately I’d barely noticed how pretty Faith had gotten. And she’d gotten really freaking pretty- the kind of pretty I wished (probably in vain) that I might be after a year on HRT. 
“Hey, girl,” she said. It made my heart sing, just hearing that. She was a girl and I was a girl- we were both trans girls and that was lovely. It was like she was telling me personally ‘you’re valid and you’re trans and you’re not a pervert with a fetish.’ Honestly, after that business meeting, I needed it. 
“Hey,” I smiled, going in for the hug. She stiffened briefly, but then patted my back and returned the hug. 
“How’d the appointment go?” she asked as I led her into the back door and up the stairs to my family’s apartment.  
“It was good! I’ll hopefully be able to start on E and Spiro by the end of the week!”
“Fantastic!”
“Did it go this fast for you?”
“Eh, sorta? My parents are in the Army… Kinda, anyway. So I had to go through the government. The waitlist was a couple months but once I actually got in for the appointment they gave me the pills that day.”
“Hm, interesting. I didn’t know that about you,” I said as we walked into the kitchen, a small alcove in the apartment, wooden floors and a round wooden table punctuating the end of the cramped space where the stove and the refrigerator were all bunched together. The fridge was a mass of family photos, or at least it used to be- Mom had taken down the ones with the old me in them after Friday night, and then attached a picture of me en femme with a clip-magnet. ‘The first of many’ as she’d put it. Right now it was just Mom and Dad’s wedding photos and a few baby pictures of me group around the thus-far only physical snapshot of Kate, but given how many selfies I’d taken in the past week, that was sure to change rapidly. “Are you an Army brat then?”
“Like I said, kinda,” Faith answered. “They’re in the Engineering Corps- my dad is enlisted but my mom is technically a civilian contractor- so we moved around a lot when I was growing up. But when I was in high school they both got steady positions teaching at Westpoint, so I wound up mostly just living there. I didn’t come to LA until college- my parents seemed kinda upset I didn’t wanna go to Westpoint, but they were still glad I wanted to be an engineer.”
“I see, I see,” I said, reaching into the fridge and pulling out a pitcher of ice water and putting it on the table. I retrieved two cylindrical glasses from the cupboard and set them down too, then poured us each a tall glass of water. “Clink,” I said, tapping my glass against hers. 
She chuckled, then clinked me back and took a long sip. “So you and your folks live and work here? Like in Bob’s Burgers?”
“Lol, I guess,” I said, tucking an errant strand of hair behind my ears. “My folks started this shop together using the money they got from their wedding. I came around a year later, so this is just all I’ve ever known.”
“Huh, interesting. There’s a lot we don’t know about each other, huh?”
I shrugged, then sipped my water. 
“Anyway,” Faith said, “You ready?”
I smiled, then nodded eagerly. 
Faith said, “Okay, so the key is to talk using the top of your throat. Start by saying something, draw out the syllables, and concentrate on making it so you’re speaking from your mouth instead of your chest. Don’t try to just pitch up, but focus on where the intonation is coming from. Try to hold it in your mouth and then release the words. If it helps, try speaking as you breathe out. Start slow, get the basics down, then work on speaking at a rate that’s more natural to you.”
I nodded, then drew in a deep breath and hummed a low note. I let it work its way up into my throat, and tried to make it come from my mouth instead of my chest. 
“Good,” Faith said, sitting down in her chair. “Now try saying ‘who are you?’ Remember to go slowly.”
“Whoooo… Are… Youuuu?” I said, the words coming out breathy and a bit higher than they had before. I smiled, my eyes going wide as I shimmied in my seat. 
Faith chuckled again. “Not bad. So. Who are you?”
“I’m… Katherine… Miranda… Calloway,” I said, liking the way it sounded. “Kate for short.” My words dipped lower again at the last sentence, and I realized I said it too quickly after inhaling, not letting it flow out with my breath like last time. My face scrunched up, and my hands bunched together.
“Hey, it’s okay,” Faith said, putting a hand on my elbow, her palm soft and her fingers delicate and beautifully manicured. “Just keep going, it’s okay.”
I nodded, feeling warmer at her touch, uncurling my fingers and opening my eyes. “Kate for shooorrttt,” I said, drawing out the final word so I could appreciate how it sounded. 
“Not Katie?” Faith asked.
“I… Like… Being called Katie… By people who I love, and who love me. Like my… Parents,” I said, slowly and carefully speaking as I exhaled and then giving myself time to draw in a new breath. 
“I’ve noticed Zeke call you that too,” Faith said, withdrawing her hand from my arm and breaking off eye contact. “Does that mean you love him?”
I felt myself blush as a mental image of Zeke bridal-carrying me while I wore a white gown echoed through my mind. A dreamy sigh escaped my lips, and I smiled, but I shook my head. Best not to get ahead of myself. “I… Wouldn’t… Go that far.”
“But you do like him, right?” Faith asked. 
“I… I do,” I said, my voice going extra high as I said it, the proverbial butterflies in my stomach flapping their wings once again.  
“I’m guessing that was what you two were talking about the other night,” Faith said, looking at the floor. “Good for you guys, though. Seriously.”
“What do… You mean?”
“... You’re dating now, right?”
“No, no, nothing like that,” I said hurriedly, waving my hands about, my voice dropping lower again. Faith looked at me again, and gestured for me to keep going. I drew in a deep breath, let it sit in my chest a moment, and focused on keeping my words at the top of my throat. “I… We just cuddled in the back of my truck. I told him I’m starting to crush on him. That’s it.”
“And what did he say?” Faith said, leaning forward expectantly. 
“He said… He’s starting to catch feelings too,” I replied. “That’s it. Nothing else has… Has come of it yet. We’re still talking a lot and texting a lot, but yeah.”
“That’s it?” Faith said. “Hold up, hold up, hold up- a handsome, intelligent, charming, thoughtful, gentlemanly guy who likes basically all the same nerdy shit as you told you that he’s crushing on you, and you haven’t locked it down yet?”
I squinted. That was a lot of adjectives she’d used just now. A questionable amount of adjectives for someone to use when describing a platonic friend. “I mean… I wanted to kiss him, but he said it wouldn’t be appropriate because I’d just been having a panic attack.”
“God, that’s just like him,” Faith said, rolling her eyes. “He’s just so freaking… Upstanding and polite about everything.”
“He really is,” I said, smiling. “He’s always thinking about what will make me comfortable and happy- it’s like he never spares a thought for himself.”
“Accommodating to a fault, that’s definitely him,” she said. 
“Has he always been like that?”
“Always,” Faith nodded. “He’s always been a gentleman.”
“Has he always been a foxy nerd?”
“Oh, absolutely. Though, uh, that’s definitely been amplified of late. He’s  started working out more in the past year- he’s got these sweet abs now, and a really cute butt-”
“Oh, I’ve noticed his butt. And his smile. And the-”
“The gun show?” Faith giggled. “He’s got those big, broad, hunky shoulders now. Makes for a great viewing experience, lemme tell you.”
I tilted my head to the side. I’d already figured out that Zeke was into Faith- it was honestly part of my reluctance to treat what he and I had as anything serious- I didn’t wanna feel like a replacement for the girl he couldn’t have. But that had been me assuming that Faith was a lesbian. If she wasn’t… Then why the hell weren’t they together? What was stopping it? Me? 
On the other hand, if I was what was stopping it, did that mean that Zeke didn’t see me as the second-choice? That he actually liked me… For me?
I had to know. What did Zeke actually look for in a partner? And if it was just ‘Faith, or someone like Faith’, and she liked him back, then why was he even bothering with me? And hell, if she liked him back, why was she tolerating any of this in the first place?
“Hey, uh,” I started, “Historically, what kinda girls has Zeke gone for?”
“Oh, uh, back during college it was just any girl who gave him the time of day,” Faith said. “Led to him getting stood up a lot, honestly. And getting into some toxic relationships. He’s into all types of girls- tomboys, girly girls, tall girls, short girls, whatever you can imagine. Nothing ever worked out, though… It was kinda hard to watch, you know? This sweet, intelligent, talented, witty guy-”
“With a hot body,” I said. 
“With a very hot body,” Faith purred in agreement. Then she paused, her eyes bulging wider than dinner plates. “Uh… Objectively speaking, as a friend of his. I can say that.”
“Uh-huh,” I said, letting my voice go flat and masculine again for maximum effect. This certainly… Complicated things. “Sure, sure, sure.”
“I… Um…”
I stared at her while taking a long sip of my water. 
“It’s not what you think,” Faith said. 
“I didn’t say anything,” I said with a wry grin and half-opened eyes. 
Faith drew in a deep breath through her nose. “So anyway, back to your lessons-”
I grabbed her hand. I heard her gulp. “You like him.”
Faith opened her mouth. All that came out was a high-pitched squeak. 
“Ohhh, wowwww,” I said, turning it into a vocal exercise. “You REALLY like him.”
“I-I-I-”
“I mean… It makes sense. He’s hot, nerdy, polite, funny-”
“He’s a great engineer, too,” Faith finally added. 
“Indeed,” I said. “Does he know?”
“No,” Faith answered, drinking a large gulp of water. 
“I see,” I said. A sinking feeling went through me. “Well, I should probably back off then.”
“What? Why?”
“Because you two clearly like each other, and I’m just a janie-come-lately,” I said, offering a sad smile. 
“No, no, he… I mean-”
“I’ve seen how he looks at you,” I said. “I’m just the silver medal in this competition.” Same as always. 
“And I’ve seen the way he looks at you,” Faith said. “Trust me, you’re nobody’s second prize. He’s into you. He’s a romantic type- he’s probably gotten really swept up in the whole thing, just like you have. And I… Waited too long. I had a million opportunities to tell him how I felt, and I just didn’t capitalize on any of them because my stupid pride wanted to be on the receiving end of the courtship.”
“What are you saying?” I asked, putting my hands on her shoulders.
She gulped, then blushed. It made her look even cuter, which I didn’t think was possible. “You’re… So close right now.”
“Oh, sorry,” I said, pulling back. 
“It’s, uh, it’s fine,” she said, tossing her hair back. 
“So… Where does this leave us?”
“I think it’s pretty obvious,” Faith said. “I’m gonna back off. Zeke and I shouldn’t be compromising our professional relationship with romantic feelings anyway. And besides, you went for it, and he likes you back. I won’t get in the way.”
My head was spinning. This was almost too perfect- she was literally giving me everything I wanted out of a conversation I hadn’t even been planning to have. But at the same time… Faith’s slumped shoulders and downtrodden glance and practiced air of contentment told a story, and it was hard not to feel sad about that. “But that’s not fair to you,” I said. 
She sighed again. “Kate… We’re already rivals at the tournament. Do you really wanna be romantic rivals, too? Because that feels like it could get ugly real fast.”
“I…,” I trailed off. What did I want? Well, I wanted to date Zeke, or at least go on a date with him and see where it led us. But I also didn’t want to do anything to hurt Faith; she’d been through enough already, and I’d been responsible for some of that. She was accustomed to me being a jerk, and what could be a bigger jerk move then stealing the boy she liked? “I mean, I’d be dating the competition if Zeke and I went out.”
“Yeah. So?” Faith asked. “We aren’t Olympic athletes or anything- the stakes aren’t actually that high. If anything, there’s a greater risk of us getting toxic again if we’re competing over Zeke while competing in the tournament, and I… I like not hating you.”
A swell of emotion, equal parts happy and sad, pulsed through me. “I like not hating you too.”
She smiled again. “Good. So like I said- I’m gonna let whatever happens with you and Zeke happen without my interfering with it. It’s gonna hurt to watch, I’ll be totally honest with you, but… I want to be the bigger woman here. Genuinely, I do. And I want him to be happy. If you make him happy, then that’s… That’s good enough for me.”
I didn’t entirely believe her, but… I found myself nodding along. She was amazing, willing to just… Accept a situation like this while still wanting to be around me, still wanting to help me. Warm affection flowed through me with each beat of my fragile heart as I looked deep into her kind brown eyes. “Thank you. Seriously, thank you. That’s very mature of you, and I really appreciate it a lot.”
 “Of course,” Faith said. “Anything for a friend.”
“Friends?” I said, leaning forward and smiling with my teeth.
“Friends,” she smiled back. 
“Friends!” I said, fist-pumping. Then I leaned forward and wrapped my arms around her, shimmying more as I hugged her. 
She gave a tired laugh as she hugged me back. 
“Hey there, girls,” my dad said as he wandered up the stairs and pulled half a pastrami sandwich on a plate out of the fridge. “Whatcha up to?”
“Oh, you know, girl talk,” I said happily. “Boys, robots, that kinda thing.”
“Glad to hear it,” Dad said. “Katie, your mom and I are going out tonight with some friends of ours from college, so I trust you can take care of your own dinner?”
“Not a problem!” I said. 
“If you wanna have Zeke over, that’s fine, just no drinking any of my beer- this house believes in bringing your own booze.”
I laughed. “Sure thing, Dad.”
“Good. Glad we could have this talk. You look lovely, by the way,” he said, giving me an affectionate pat on the head. 
“Hmmm,” I intoned jovially. 
Dad stepped out with his sandwich in hand. 
That was when my phone went off, the gleeful twang of Kacey Musgraves emanating from the speakers. “Speak of the devil,” I said as I saw Zeke’s name on the caller ID. I answered the phone and said, “Hey, you.”
“Hey, Katie,” he said. I loved it when he called me that. “You busy tonight?”
“No, no plans at the moment,” I said. Faith watched with fascination, and mouthed, ‘go for it.’ “Why? Are you asking me on a date, Mr. Underhill?”
“That is, in fact, exactly what I’m doing, Ms. Calloway,” he said. 
The butterflies flapping their wings in my stomach conjured a tornado. “Oh?”
“Dinner sound good?”
“Yeah, yeah that sounds amazing,” I said, hoping my smile conveyed through the phone, working extra hard to talk in a feminine register. 
Faith gave me the thumbs-up. 
“7 PM good?” he asked. 
“Perfect.”
“Awesome! Would you mind picking me up? Faith has the car today and she never remembers to fill the tank back up on her way home.”
“Heh, yeah, I can do that. I’ll see you at seven.”
“Looking forward to it. See you then, pretty lady.”
I hung up, and I giggled and bounced up and down in my chair. “Eeeeeee!!!!”
Faith stood up and sighed wistfully. “Good for you, Katie.”
“Hey, watch it with the ‘Katie’ or I’ll think you’re in love with me as well,” I poked her cheek.  
“Pfft, don’t flatter yourself, you’ll get a swell head,” she said, pushing my finger away. “Come on, let’s pick an outfit for your date.”
 “Faith… You don’t have to do that. I appreciate you being chill about all this, but-”
“I want to,” Faith said. “Like I said, I want him to be happy, and that means you need to look as hot as humanly possible for tonight. And besides, I’d prefer you stay like this then go back to being all grumpy and hammy- you’re much cuter this way.”
She extended me a hand up, and I took it, rising and looking this wonderful, mature, helpful, pretty girl in her big brown eyes as she led me into my room to help me coordinate an outfit from the handful of dresses my mom had gifted me, wondering if she noticed I was blushing because of her initiating the physical contact for the first time in our brief friendship. 
All of this was a lot, everything that had happened today was a lot, and it still wasn’t over, but… I was okay with that. I could navigate the rest of the day happily knowing I had people in my corner. 
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