YC startups are often technology companies; I'd argue Justin.tv, where we wrote our own video server software from scratch, would count. The ones who file patents tend to be slow burn, and are still under the radar.
Thanks for explaining the slow-burn/patent correlation.
I'm looking at Justin.tv, and I've never seen smooth live video online before. It's consistently smooth (though minor freeze-frames every so often). Your implementation is a better method for live video.
Is this because your implementation is coded better - tighter, more efficient, cleverer - or is there a fundamental new insight behind it, that makes it faster?
It's just better coded, for the most part. It was actually better before we started growing a lot; now we have scaling problems. We're working on smoothing everything out now.
Of course, there have also been insights that I think may be fundamental, but they aren't patentable as far as we know.
Whenever clever people work on new problem-spaces (ie. not yet mined-out), they have good chances of being the ones to have the fundamentally new insights; so your odds are good.
But the two kinds of technology-based businesses make me think of Google's technology: server implementation (fast results) and pagerank (relevant results).
I'm looking at Justin.tv, and I've never seen smooth live video online before. It's consistently smooth (though minor freeze-frames every so often). Your implementation is a better method for live video.
Is this because your implementation is coded better - tighter, more efficient, cleverer - or is there a fundamental new insight behind it, that makes it faster?