Request for startups // YC
Government + Public Safety, Manufacturing, Chips + Engineering, Stablecoins, New Jobs
a few takeaways for me after reading the YC request for startups list
1/The $1.8 trillion deficit might actually be good for government software startups. There’s never been more pressure to automate and cut costs.
2/Good enterprise software could solve more crimes than better policing. License plate cameras already solve 10% of US crimes — simple technology deployed at scale.
3/Industrial automation is about to have its iPhone moment. The cost of robots is falling just as US manufacturing becomes strategic again.
4/YC is betting that automation, not efficiency, is how we fix government. They want founders to build LLMs that replace paperwork entirely, not just digitize it.
5/The smartest AI companies in 2025 might be the ones building for government agencies. While everyone chases consumer AI, there’s a trillion dollar customer desperate for basic automation.
6/YC’s space thesis isn’t just about rockets — it’s about what happens when launching satellites becomes as routine as shipping containers.
7/The next wave of engineering tools won’t be built by engineers. They’ll be built by founders who understand how to make complex tools accessible.
8/No one wants to sell to government because it’s hard (honestly, fair). That’s exactly why Palantir became a $125B company.
9/YC thinks the real magic of AI won’t be replacing workers — it’ll be helping small local businesses compete with big corporations.
10/The most interesting stablecoin companies won’t be consumer-facing. They’ll be building the boring infrastructure that lets banks and businesses adopt digital currencies.
11/ YC’s betting that AI’s killer app will be democratizing complex technical work — making PhD-level tools accessible to regular engineers, government workers, and small business owners. Not a bad bet tbh. Similar bet with social. Social was democratized to anyone who wanted to share anything. No longer need to code html/css to share a thought
12/Urban manufacturing is about to have a renaissance, but the new factories won’t look anything like the old ones. They’ll be small, automated, and clean enough to operate in city centers. Probably some real estate opportunities here.
