Y Combinator Posthaven

"Anyone who has worked a retail job knows what a pain it is to take time off. You usually have to find someone to cover your shift and, unless you’ve managed to arrange your schedule in advance, that often entails panicked texts and phone calls to co-workers. A new startup called Shift Messenger wants to make the process less painful.

Backed by Y Combinator, Shift Messenger was founded by Austin Vedder and Matt Tognetti. Former Redbeacon employees, the two got a look at the scheduling problems faced by retail workers after the home services marketplace was acquired by Home Depot."

Read the full story on TechCrunch

"When launching a new consumer application, especially those in the social space, many developers today rely on an invite mechanism that has the app’s initial user base reaching out and recommending the app to their friends. But today, these invite systems are often fairly basic – they connect to a phone’s address book and then force the user to sift through their hundreds of contacts for those they think would be interested in joining the new app, too.

A Y Combinator-backed startup called YesGraph wants to make these invite and referral systems more intelligent, with a tool for developers that puts the best contacts – meaning those who are most likely to accept an invite – at the top of the list provided to users.

The company has also now raised a $1 million seed round led by Bloomberg Beta to fund the service’s further development."

Top Stories from the YC World - 2/20/15-2/26/15
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