First of all, congratulations to Koduco, this looks great, and I mean absolutely no offense to them or YC by this post.
But... this is really getting old. It seems like EVERY SINGLE YC startup is being featured on Techcrunch. How many iPhone/iPad games companies are there? Thousands. Besides bringing some level of innovation in there, I don't see anything special about this one, besides being a YC company. Yes, the games look cool.. but in the end, it's just another company doing games.
I'm trying really hard to find another reason this got featured on Techrunch besides being a YC company, and I can't. Would they get featured on TC if they weren't funded by YC? I think that's a resounding "no". It's impossible to take TC seriously anymore.
>But... this is really getting old. It seems like EVERY SINGLE YC startup is being featured on Techcrunch.
Being a YC funded company is notable in the same way that being funded by any top tier angel or VC would be. It is the same reason why every publicly launched company invested in by Chris Sacca, Jeff Clavier, Ron Conway, Dave McClure, etc is covered on TechCrunch and other tech blogs. TC also routinely covers companies coming out of Techstars and other well known early stage investment programs.
It may seem like YC gets more coverage, but I think it is roughly proportional to the number of companies that YC funds. YC has funded something like 60 companies in 2010.
Why worry about who gets covered on TC? There are almost certainly more productive things you can do for your business. (I originally meant "than worrying" then realized this could get read as "than being covered on TC", not that I disagree with that reading.)
The collaborative, physical style of gameplay seemed unique to me. I think it's an innovation in this space that is definitely worth a writeup on TC, YC-funded or not.
I don't think it is that unique, it seemed like a stretch, almost as if they were trying to prove to themselves that this was worth writing about. It is only used in a tiny portion of the game.
There's often a lot more under the surface of what goes on at a YC company. Sure it's just a few more iPad games, but the unique aspects of them were not accidental.
If you think about it being funded by YC is tech news. Techcrunch is about tech news. Now they cannot just write about the startup being funded and close it. They must tell you about their product.
Actually I am a lot happier to read about startups like Koduco (although I did not read the article), than to read about another Facebook/Twitter/Google article.
But... this is really getting old. It seems like EVERY SINGLE YC startup is being featured on Techcrunch. How many iPhone/iPad games companies are there? Thousands. Besides bringing some level of innovation in there, I don't see anything special about this one, besides being a YC company. Yes, the games look cool.. but in the end, it's just another company doing games.
I'm trying really hard to find another reason this got featured on Techrunch besides being a YC company, and I can't. Would they get featured on TC if they weren't funded by YC? I think that's a resounding "no". It's impossible to take TC seriously anymore.