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I got well-known in niche tech circles for being a good startup scout. Through my podcast, Forward Thinking Founders, I’ve interviewed hundreds of legendary founders before anyone knew they were legendary. I can say this because I almost always interview founders when they are pre-Series A. Early guests on my podcast include the Founder/CEO of Deel, Praxis, Mercury, Circle, Turing, DoNotPay, Sendspark, Makerpad, Roboflow, Pipedream, OpenPhone, AirGarage, Hyperwright, Eight Sleep, Levels, Autio, Spline, Rilla, and so many more. In other words, I can scout, which means I can filter.

I thought it would be fun to apply the same way I pick podcast guests to the YC batches. Essentially, that means browsing through every company and, based on several variables, picking the handful I personally think are interesting and have a good chance to succeed. So that’s what I did. Below, you will find 16 companies I think are cool and could get big from Y Combinator’s most recent batch, Summer 2024. I share why I like them, and then I share the risks associated with each one. I am fully open to being wrong about every company, but I thought it could be interesting to open-source how I decide to lean in vs. not.

Some Caveats:

With that said, let’s get into the top 16 companies of the YC S24 batch.

XTraffic 

One Liner - Technology for cities to automate and manage their traffic lights.

What I Like

This is such a strange problem to solve, yet one that impacts billions of people around the world. If this company can make traffic lights even 5% more efficient, the gains worldwide would be massive, even though no one would consciously notice it. Because it’s such a random but large problem to solve, I feel like there aren’t going to be a lot of SV competitors going after it.

Unknowns

These founders don’t appear to have any experience in this industry, which is fine, but they are also quite young. I wonder if they picked this problem because it simply sounded interesting and there wasn’t a lot of competition, not because they truly cared about solving this problem for customers. Will they have the wherewithal to continue 5+ years into this venture? Do they have the connections to sell into cities? Only time will tell! I predict this will either get very big or fail within two years because the founders give up on it.

OrgOrg 

One Liner - OrgOrg is a suite of apps that keeps teams productive and healthy as your organization grows from 2 to 500+

Pros

I like OrgOrg because the founder has been directly and indirectly building in this space for his whole career. According to the YC website, “Wayne spent 10 years at Google building GSuite, Sign-In with Google, Google+, Applied Machine Intelligence, and more. In 2016, Wayne founded Humu, a company focused on making work better by using software and behavioral change. Humu was acquired by Perceptyx in 2023.” Clearly, this guy is the most qualified person on the planet to build this company, so let’s see what he can do.

Unknowns 

Hasn’t this market already run its course? Are people still dealing with these problems in 2024? And if so, are there enough of them to make this a very big company? I think the primary issue here is that most people will assume this problem is already handled, making it harder to raise.

Arva

One Liner - AI agents for instant business verification

What I Like:

This feels like a no-brainer agent opportunity. KYC (Know Your Customer) is a known process, and many systems rely on it. It doesn’t change much from system to system, making it easier for an agent to come in and do 80% of the work, with a human in the loop at the end as necessary. The need is there, and this could clearly save companies money by reducing labor in the KYC process, allowing them to charge a premium.

Unknowns:

At the same time, is an agent needed for this? Can’t KYC be automated with software, and isn’t it already? I feel like I never interfaced with a human when signing up for my last bank account. So I have conflicting thoughts on whether this is needed. In addition, I worry competition will be very high and too many people will think their current solution is good enough.

Hey Revia

One Liner - Voice AI to automate complex phone calls for healthcare providers

What I Like:

I love the very specific use case. Oftentimes, healthcare can be emotionally charged. Loved ones may be hurt, and we may be pondering future scenarios for our lives, but all of that gets in the way of simple data collection and proper routing. This is an AI voice system built specifically for the healthcare system. Taking a very useful concept and applying it to a single persona makes me think we have a winner here. AIs don’t have emotions, so they can stay cool, communicate the facts, and gather the necessary data.

Unknowns:

This is another case of “will the founders stick it out, or will they give up in two years?” It appears neither founder has experience in healthcare prior to this company, and we all know selling into this industry is painful and takes a very long time. Will the founders be able to figure it out, or will they be stuck with a great product they can’t get anyone to adopt?

Vera Health

One Liner - AI-powered clinical guidance at the point of care

What I Like

There is evidence everywhere that doctors make mistakes all the time. How could they not? No one is perfect, but in their role, making a mistake could cost someone else their life. Vera Health knows this and is building AI that allows doctors to ensure they have the most updated info on a specific treatment, method, or disease. Armed with this tool, knowledge goes up, mistakes go down, and more patients are happier and healthier at the end of the day.

Unknowns

Is this product going to be specific enough to compete with general LLMs like Claude and ChatGPT? I’m sure ChatGPT could help a doctor make better decisions now than before it existed. So how much better will Vera be than the general LLMs? Or is it not a question of being “better,” but rather having the correct access and authorizations for a doctor or healthcare provider to use? I think these are important questions to figure out on their end.

AISell

One Liner - AI Sales Associate for Ecommerce

What I Like:

I want to not like this, but I think it’s a smart play. AI agents that sell to consumers is a hard model. But this company is almost like Mixpanel combined with Intercom. It notices when someone should be sold to, then initiates a conversation to get them across the line. And they ONLY focus on Shopify stores where both founders have extensive experience. I like the idea that small business owners can’t sell to every person who expresses interest in their products, but AI can. I think there’s something here.

Unknowns:

I just feel like there are so many products out there making sales a painful process because they take the human out of the loop. It creates a ton more noise for consumers, and I wonder if, in 10 years, we will revert to humans selling because AI is so inefficient.

Bucket Robotics

One Liner - Defect detection for manufacturing built from CAD and synthetic data.

What I Like:

I like the timing here. It seems like humanoids are about to appear in the next 5-10 years, and I think things will get built that we can’t imagine yet. Will companies all build vision in-house, or will they outsource to a reliable third party? I think some of them will, and maybe that third party will be Bucket Robotics. I also like this because it is software that enables hardware, and I think hardware will have quite a boom in the next decade or two as a result of AI commoditizing software.

Unknowns:

There is a risk that the market is too small for this product. Any company that would want to build this tech into their robots might want to develop it in-house, leaving a small market and making it hard for this company to grow. With that said, I know practically nothing about the market, so I’ll leave that up to the founders to decide.

Oway

One Liner - Ridesharing freight with ML to cut SMB shipping costs by 50%

What I Like:

I like that this makes it easier to ship faster, allowing businesses to compete with the instant gratification that my generation and Gen Z have come to expect. Because of Amazon, we all expect our items to arrive within 24-48 hours, and failing to do this is a liability for the business. Oway makes it easier for smaller businesses to keep up with the shipping and logistics giants, and I think that’s a formula to build a big company.

Unknowns:

I don’t think there’s anything I don’t like. The founder seems sharp, and the market seems big. Feels like a no-brainer. There’s no world where this isn’t needed in a massive way.

Prohost

One Liner - AI Property Manager for Airbnb & Short-Term Rental Hosts

What I Like:

I think this is actually very smart. When renting an Airbnb, I don’t want to deal with someone. I don’t really want a personal tour of the house, nor do I want to stay in touch unless I initiate it. I generally want fast answers when I have questions. Humans can’t provide this level of service as efficiently, but AI can. I have no desire to have an actual relationship with a property manager, so I don’t feel weird going through an AI to get what I need. Great idea here.

Unknowns:

I think the competition will be high. It feels like there’s a low barrier to entry. Why will they win? I think the co-founders’ experience at large scale-ups gives them insights into how to grow big, and they can apply that knowledge to their own company this time.

Terra 

One Liner - Connect with suppliers, expedite sampling, and track production in real-time, removing the uncertainties of overseas manufacturing.

What I Like:

I’m not going to lie, I don’t know much about supply chains or overseas manufacturing. That said, I do know this: it’s the backbone of millions of businesses, and with AI growing in popularity, I have a small thesis that IRL product creation will rise as online creation gets commoditized. Additionally, this is the perfect team for the job. Both founders have extensive experience working with supply chains, running factories, etc. Feels like a fantastic opportunity.

Unknowns:

Because I don’t understand the industry well, I can’t identify if there are already sufficient competitors or if their approach is flawed.

Spaceium 

One Liner - In-Space Refueling

What I Like:

Hell, if I didn’t pick one space company out of the batch, I’d regret it. I don’t know much about the space industry, but their pitch simply makes sense. If we are trying to explore space, we need places to refuel up there. This allows us to go farther and deeper into space. In addition, the founders are total space nerds in the best possible way. They seem like the type of people to build this and make it big and successful.

Unknowns:

I don’t know anything about competition, timing, market size, or anything else. All I know is that humanity is going to space, and this seems like a worthy player building something useful.

Helium

One Liner - Helium is building self-improving software — AI that continuously experiments on key moments in the user funnel to boost revenue.

What I Like:

This is another analytics tool, but it skips the time-consuming steps of reviewing data and focuses on the most important metric—revenue. It helps improve revenue without requiring any work on the user’s end. The whole reason we use tools like Mixpanel or Hotjar is to get better business outcomes. This tool cuts straight to the results. If it works, it’s a brilliant idea.

Unknowns:

Does it actually work? There’s no way I could put this on any site and expect it to grow the conversion rate. Does the site need to have a minimum number of traffic hits per month to be effective? Can it guarantee that it works? If yes, this thing is already worth $10B, and we just don’t know it yet—Marty McFly does though.

Cartage 

One Liner - Autonomous freight coordination

What I Like:

I live in Phoenix, AZ, where Waymo is thriving. It’s dead obvious to me that robots will be driving at least 50% of cars within the next 15 years. Anyone building towards this future is a winner in my book. The team has good experience, although not 100% relevant to this space, but they’ve been working together for a while, which is important.

Unknowns:

I wonder if this is already built. Are they too late? Or perhaps too early? I just don’t have a clear read on the competition or whether it’s the right time to be working on this.

Exa Laboratories

One Liner - Energy efficient chips for AI

What I Like:

I’m not smart enough to understand 99% of what this company does, but I am smart enough to know that when two smart founders are trying to build a better and more energy-efficient GPU for people building AI, I should shut up and put them in my top YC S24 companies list. I feel like this will be an important company for the world in 15 years.

Unknowns:

I am not smart enough to even know what I don’t like about this company.

NetworkOcean

One Liner: They build & operate Underwater Data Centers

What I Like:

Sometimes it feels like humanity knows more about what’s going on above our skies than what’s happening beneath our feet. In other words, I love that this is a sea exploration company in some ways, figuring out how to use resources on this planet to create value. It’s so obvious since it’s right beneath us, but in some ways, it’s far less obvious than going to space. Plus, staying on our planet reduces energy usage by 30%. Truly an innovative climate tech company for Team Earth.

Unknowns:

The founders seem very young. Is this just an idea that sounded cool and got funded, or can they actually pull it off? I’ve got my popcorn out and am truly rooting for them.

VideoGen 

 One Liner - AI that can create and edit professional videos

What I Like:

When I saw this, I made an account and tried to make a video, and I was pretty impressed. As a free user, it wasn’t incredible or mind-blowing, but it was functional. It worked quickly, and I can see many reasons to use this in daily life. I’m sure many companies like this will exist, but since this is in the YC network, I’m guessing YC companies will use it, baking in some growth.

Unknowns:

Will Sora kill it? I feel like Sora is like Adobe, and this is like Canva, but I could be dead wrong. Time will tell.

That’s it for me! What great companies did I miss? Disagree with any of my choices? Lay it on me. With all of that said, hope you got value out of this post, and I hope you all have a great weekend.

Cartage is the future of freight coordination. Transparent, tech-driven and eliminating the need for human coordinators.