The video discusses various startups and initiatives aimed at creating more efficient markets for job salaries, reducing food waste, simplifying expense splitting, and addressing climate change.

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  00:00

  Salary Fairy helps users determine their value in the job market through crowd-sourced salary predictions, with a goal of creating an efficient market for job salaries.

  • Gary Tan and a partner meet with startups for 25 minutes each to give advice about their problems during Y.C.
  • Salary Fairy is a platform that helps users learn their value in the job market through crowd-sourced salary predictions, with 40% of American professionals using it out of curiosity or to determine if they are underpaid, and currently has 9000 users with a weekly growth rate of 10%.
  • The aim is to create an efficient market for job markets, pricing salaries accurately and getting one step closer to a stock market for jobs, with users already benefiting from salary predictions to boost their courage to ask for more money.
  • Focus on one tight little thing, make something that employees really love and track how many employees come to your site to ensure they're getting a fair offer and market comp before expanding to other areas.
  • Startups should focus on building something that a small number of users really love and become dependent on, rather than trying to appeal to a lot of users, and retention metrics are important to measure success.
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  05:17

  Salary Fairy allows users to check in their results or make predictions for accurate salary predictions, but validation can only be done by finding a job at that price point.

  • Users can either check in their results or make more predictions to get better scores, and 40% of users find their predictions fair while 30% say it's low and 30% say it's high.
  • The platform aims to divide people into companies, years of experience, and industries to provide accurate salary predictions, but the only way to validate these predictions is to find a job at that price point.
  • To initially attract users, Salary Fairy is using Hacro News, Reddits, Productant, and Hyper Reporter, but they need to focus on making their site 10 times better than competitors and finding ways to build growth into the product.
  • Build growth into your product at an early stage to avoid it being an afterthought.
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  08:52

  Pare Up is building a marketplace for businesses to donate excess food inventory and for users to buy discounted excess inventory, with plans to launch a mobile app in the near future.

  • Believer in crowd prediction.
  • Pare Up is an app that helps businesses with excess food inventory find a place to donate it, as traditional food banks are often not able to pick up smaller quantities.
  • A marketplace is being built to allow vendors to sell excess inventory at a discount to users, similar to Hotel Tonight's model for selling excess hotel rooms.
  • An e-mail proof concept was launched to test if people would go into the store and open rates were at about 48%.
  • Location and type of food sold were key factors in determining the success of a bakery, with sandwiches and croissants selling well and a bakery with a consistent product in a residential area not doing as well.
  • The company is building a web app to test live listings and location-based searches for food, with plans to develop a mobile app in the next two to three weeks, but should focus on hyper-specific areas and verticals and prioritize the mobile app for accurate data.
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  14:25

  The food waste reduction app offers low-cost, high-quality food with an average discount rate of 50% and aims to provide feedback to vendors and users on how much they have saved and made through their platform.

  • The success of the product depends on the type of vendors and their location, ensuring a good user experience for the first thousand users is worth the effort, and the founders are currently building relationships with stores and receiving recommendations from food waste consultants and potential partners.
  • The app offers low-cost, high-quality food and aims to reduce waste and environmental impact.
  • The company aims to provide feedback to vendors and users on how much they have saved and made through their platform, with an average discount rate of 50% and a range of 25 to 75%.
  • The highest listed percentage was 60% and the lowest was 30%, and the speaker expressed interest in trying it out.
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  17:27

  An app is being developed to simplify expense splitting for couples by syncing with card transactions and avoiding mental tabs and spreadsheets.

  • Create a concise TLDR in one sentence.
  • An app is being built to make it easier for couples to split expenses by syncing with credit or debit card transactions and avoiding the issues of mental tabs, spreadsheets, and Venmo.
  • You can enter IOUs and sync your credit and debit card transactions to create a feed where you can choose which ones to share.
  • The app is designed for couples to easily track and settle shared expenses, with a focus on simplicity and personal privacy.
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  20:58

  Discipline and focus are key to creating a successful product, like simplifying bill splitting by pulling transaction streams.

  • The app lacked focus during beta testing and the company learned from a Y.C. company that grew despite a lack of inherent virality.
  • Talking to friends about expenses can help couples find better ways to manage their finances.
  • Discipline is key when creating a new product and it's important to focus on what makes it unique and why it will succeed, such as the idea of pulling transaction streams to simplify bill splitting.
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  23:40

  Acquiring users for a new product is difficult, but a viral distribution strategy or invite flow can help gain traction.

  • Acquiring users for a new product is difficult and requires a viral distribution strategy or invite flow to gain traction.
  • Getting enough users for your product from your friends in the first few weeks is crucial, and calling them every week for feedback is a good way to improve.
  • The speaker suggests that while getting on the app stores may not be the most important thing for early stage startups, it could make the process smoother and easier, but don't expect a lot of traction.
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  26:10

  Create a concise TLDR in one sentence.