The traditional catered lunch had been replaced with a new buffet: hardware startups. Sandwichbots, teabots, futuristic shower heads, and Internet-connected mattress covers lined the room’s perimeter inside Mountain View’s Computer History Museum.Y Combinator is known for software success stories like Dropbox, Stripe and Zenefits. But now it’s evolving to make the “real world” a *better* place, too. Last season’s batch had just 11 hardware starupts. 2014’s classes had just 8 and 9. This season, 20 of the 102 startups build hardware — a far bigger percentage than ever before. The include a weight scale that generates a virtual reality avatar of you that shows where you’re getting fat, and a full-service cafe on a bike. [Check out our “Top Startups From Demo Day 1,” or writeups of all 50.]Y Combinator president Sam Altman insists that Y Combinator’s investment thesis hasn’t fundamentally changed. “Anything that could be a $10 billion-plus business, we’ll fund.”
Source: Y Combinator Gets Hardcore About Hardware | TechCrunch