Pod Insights Y Combinator Podcast Cursor Head of Design Reviews Startup Websites About this episode Cursor Head of Design Ryo Lu has spent his career at the intersection of design and engineering—from building fan sites as a kid to designing products at Stripe, Asana, and Notion. Now he's rethinking how software itself gets made.
On this episode of Design Review, Ryo joins YC's Aaron Epstein to break down how great product websites communicate what a company does. They walk through sites from early-stage startups, calling out the small choices in structure, clarity, and brand that help users understand a product instantly — and the ones that get in the way.
Transcript 0:00 Speaker 00 Today, I'm excited to welcome Rio Liu. He's the head of design at Cursor, the leading AI coding tool used by more than a million people worldwide. Before that, he was a founding designer at Notion and a product designer at Stripe and Asana. Today, we're going to review a bunch of user-submitted websites, all built in Cursor. And Rio is not going to hold back. Oh, we got the purple gradients. They're here.
0:25 Speaker 01 Scary. What is this? What is that? Oh, wow, this chart. Sad. Oh, whoa, whoa, whoa. Whoa, whoa, whoa. It's like distracting. Oh, yeah, it is very jargon-y.
0:35 Speaker 00 Yeah.
0:35 Speaker 01 Let's kill all of this.
0:37 Speaker 00 Welcome to another episode of Design Review.
0:47 Speaker 00 Rio, welcome to Design Review.
0:49 Speaker 01 Thank you.
0:49 Speaker 00 Yeah, thanks so much for joining. These are all user-submitted websites from YC founders in the YC community, and they were all, at least, fully or partially built with Cursor.
0:59 Speaker 01 Nice.
1:00 Speaker 00 So let's take a look. First one we've got is "Crunched."
1:03 Speaker 01 Logo looks like a rep.
1:05 Speaker 00 It does, yeah. Okay, so AI reimagined for Excel, yet started enterprise.
1:11 Speaker 01 Why is there like a New York City thingy?
1:13 Speaker 00 I don't know. I guess there's a lot of finance people in New York.
1:15 Speaker 01 I see, I see. Oh, maybe that's why. Set the scene for the finance people.
1:19 Speaker 00 Yeah. Oh, some buttons jumped out.
1:21 Speaker 01 Oh, maybe you should do that after these things go over.
1:24 Speaker 00 Yeah.
1:25 Speaker 01 Yeah. Too, too early for that.
1:27 Speaker 00 Too early. It got my attention, though.
1:29 Speaker 01 It does. But not at, not in the right time.
1:32 Speaker 00 Yes. But it is interesting. Like, that's a good use case for motion, is it can steal your attention.
1:38 Speaker 01 Yeah.
1:38 Speaker 00 And it can be either distracting or it can be helpful.
1:41 Speaker 01 Yeah. Not sure what I'm getting from the hero at all.
1:45 Speaker 00 Yeah. And there's tiny text here that says, "Excel-native AI analyst."
1:52 Speaker 01 Not sure what that means.
1:53 Speaker 00 Okay, "used by professionals at."
1:56 Speaker 01 Okay.
1:57 Speaker 00 Recognized BCG. There was a Harvard there, NCIAD. Okay, so it's like consulting and universities.
2:05 Speaker 01 Did you notice, like, when you hover, the logos are not, like, showing the right highlight?
2:10 Speaker 00 Oh, yeah, you're right.
2:10 Speaker 01 And then when it goes to, like, 100%, it snaps. Like the right way to do it is like you're like slotting more things up.
2:19 Speaker 00 Right, right. It should just be a continuous stream, right? Okay, so they're trying to build some credibility around who uses it.
2:26 Speaker 01 Does your work? What's the work?
2:28 Speaker 00 Transform your workflow with autonomous Excel.
2:31 Speaker 01 What does it mean? What is the workflow? What is this?
2:34 Speaker 00 I guess something financial analysts do. This is moving too fast. I can't tell what's happening here.
2:43 Speaker 00 Okay, it can build anything. DCFs, discounted cash flows, market models and more.
2:47 Speaker 01 Wow, I didn't know what DCF mean.
2:51 Speaker 00 Well, these are things where like they're probably speaking to their user and here you see it again, build a full DCF. So their users will probably understand, but we are not their target. There's tabs here that just because we happen to be here, I noticed them. Otherwise, I don't think I would have.
3:06 Speaker 01 Yeah, I have not noticed them at all.
3:08 Speaker 00 Yeah. Okay, let's see. They had a question that they sent in. So they said, "Looking for input on overall quality of messaging and course sections should appeal to high-end investment banks, investors and consultants." And the site was built using Cursor and vibe-coded by the non-tech parts of the team.
3:23 Speaker 01 Interesting. Maybe that's why the hovers didn't work.
3:27 Speaker 01 So messaging wise, I'm just not getting the message.
3:31 Speaker 00 And maybe that's just because we're not the target.
3:33 Speaker 01 They should talk to the target more and not less like in this vague high level.
3:39 Speaker 00 Yeah, I mean, a common pattern is like a sub-headline under here that, you know, sometimes people have like a cute kind of marketing headline. But then if you do that, you should have like a literal sub-headline that explains exactly what the thing is.
3:52 Speaker 01 And you should talk to the people you want to talk to.
3:55 Speaker 00 Yes. Otherwise, like, I don't know, it seems professional enough.
3:59 Speaker 01 It's not that horrible.
4:00 Speaker 00 Yeah.
4:01 Speaker 01 I would say like the styles and stuff is a little off sometimes. Say like, you see like here versus here. And they all, they do still feel a little sloppy.
4:13 Speaker 00 Yeah.
4:14 Speaker 01 Like the icons that are used, maybe like this is like the, what is it? Like one of the most popular like AI, like AI would just pick that one.
4:22 Speaker 00 Yeah, yeah.
4:23 Speaker 01 Tight Hovetica.
4:24 Speaker 00 How do you break out of that? You know, the AI has a lot of default styles that it likes to go to. And especially for people that are, you know, not as well-versed in design. How do they create something that doesn't feel like it's been vibe-coded?
4:36 Speaker 01 Right. I think one of the key things is to avoid using like sloppy styles where.
4:44 Speaker 01 Like the core tokens of your designs. You should probably think about it a little bit. If you're not sure, actually go go safe. Say like you just use system fonts. You let others decide for you instead of like you deciding. You want to avoid, say, all the typical AI slop. Say, like massive shadows, purple gradients.
5:07 Speaker 00 Purple gradients, yeah.
5:07 Speaker 01 Bad bad typography.
5:09 Speaker 00 Yeah.
5:10 Speaker 01 Um, just clean the the basics up then. With like a really robust, like foundational set of tokens and components. AI is able to compose them pretty well.
5:22 Speaker 00 Cool. Well, thank you, Crunch. All right, next up, we've got Velvet. Velvet dot video. Create detailed brand videos with AI.
5:31 Speaker 01 Interesting logo choice. It's like a little face. You can't really see it.
5:34 Speaker 00 I can't even see it from here. So obviously, like the model changing here gets my attention.
5:39 Speaker 01 Mm hmm.
5:40 Speaker 00 Which I guess makes me think like, oh, this must be made with AI.
5:43 Speaker 01 What do you think about like, what do brand video mean?
5:46 Speaker 00 I just assume like brand marketing type videos that are not trying to like convert you like buy now, but more trying to like set a tone, establish a brand feeling.
5:56 Speaker 01 Mm hmm.
5:57 Speaker 00 Maybe, you know, some of what you were going for with the cursor website.
6:00 Speaker 01 Hmm, like I'm not sure what I'm looking at. What is this for? Is it for like a e-commerce thing? Is it for like a ad? And the guy changes his face as they like the the hat lifts up. Kind of weird.
6:12 Speaker 00 Yeah, this one's being choppy for some reason, but yeah, it seems like either people are changing.
6:18 Speaker 01 Yeah.
6:18 Speaker 00 Or a background is changing.
6:20 Speaker 01 Yeah.
6:20 Speaker 00 Seems to be the common pattern.
6:21 Speaker 01 Like different variants of the same thing.
6:23 Speaker 00 Yeah, here the clothes are changing.
6:25 Speaker 01 What is this? How is it different from other video models?
6:29 Speaker 00 Yeah.
6:30 Speaker 01 I'm not sure.
6:30 Speaker 00 It is true, like they don't give a lot of information up here. Um, they try to let the videos do the talking. The videos are striking.
6:37 Speaker 01 Yes.
6:38 Speaker 00 They seem like high quality.
6:40 Speaker 01 Pretty good.
6:40 Speaker 00 Yeah, but it's not clear what's exactly happening. And like, what what if this is their product? And what if this is somebody shot a video?
6:48 Speaker 01 Yeah, like I want to know like what's special about it? What's different from your video thing versus say like Sora? Like what what kind of brand videos can I do just here versus other places?
7:01 Speaker 00 Yeah, and then their their book a demo button, which I assume is the main call to action is below the fold here.
7:07 Speaker 01 Click on it, see what happens.
7:08 Speaker 00 Let's see.
7:09 Speaker 01 I don't hate it. It's like, kinda cute.
7:12 Speaker 00 Yeah, but even here, you know.
7:14 Speaker 01 No detail.
7:15 Speaker 00 Yeah, there's no information about like what's gonna happen or who you're gonna talk to or anything like that.
7:21 Speaker 01 It's very like obscure.
7:22 Speaker 00 Yep, okay.
7:23 Speaker 01 And now you're asking for money.
7:24 Speaker 00 Yeah, and I'm not even sure what it is yet. Yeah, so I think my biggest takeaway here is there's not enough information here to understand what this is.
7:33 Speaker 01 Yeah.
7:33 Speaker 00 I almost thought like this was YC because that's the more prominent logo than their logo, which is tiny and off.
7:39 Speaker 01 Yeah, yeah, yeah. They should probably like make a better logo slash just use like a word mark.
7:45 Speaker 00 Yeah, or at least make it bigger. Make the logo bigger. Nobody's ever heard that.
7:49 Speaker 01 Oh, yeah.
7:50 Speaker 00 All right, so main takeaways.
7:53 Speaker 01 What is this?
7:54 Speaker 00 What is it? Do a better job of explaining what it is.
7:56 Speaker 01 Yes.
7:56 Speaker 00 More content.
7:58 Speaker 01 Why is it different from the other AI?
8:00 Speaker 00 Why is it different? And be a little more clear around who is it for. A lot of times when people hit a site, you know, they're asking themselves the question, what is this?
8:08 Speaker 01 Yep.
8:08 Speaker 00 Is it for me?
8:09 Speaker 01 Yep.
8:09 Speaker 00 Does it work?
8:10 Speaker 01 Yep.
8:11 Speaker 00 Is it credible? And I have to work pretty hard to figure out the answers to those questions.
8:16 Speaker 01 Yes, and don't scare them with like money too quickly.
8:20 Speaker 00 Yeah, let's go to their question here. Let's see what they had to say. I would like to make sure that the words put on the website correctly emphasize the value of the product.
8:27 Speaker 01 I'm not sure. I'm sorry.
8:29 Speaker 00 Yeah, seems like that was our main focus is that now.
8:32 Speaker 01 I guess the keywords are detailed brand videos. What is brand videos? What is detailed? What is it?
8:39 Speaker 00 And there's literally only six words on the page that describe what you do. Everything else is about sign up.
8:46 Speaker 01 There is some hints in the quotes.
8:47 Speaker 00 Yeah, exactly. But yeah, you don't want people to have to work that hard to figure that out. Actually, those quotes are from artists. Awesome. Add more content, Velvet, and that will improve.
8:57 Speaker 01 More words.
8:58 Speaker 00 Next up, we've got Clavis AI.
9:02 Speaker 01 Why is it introducing Strada?
9:03 Speaker 00 Yeah, I thought this was Clavis.
9:04 Speaker 01 Why is there two names when you're just starting? Like, why?
9:09 Speaker 00 Okay, so my first impression here is that this looks like a template.
9:12 Speaker 01 Yes.
9:13 Speaker 00 It almost looks like old school Bootstrap or something like that. And then there's a lot of things that look like buttons.
9:19 Speaker 01 Yes.
9:19 Speaker 00 Join our Discord, check out GitHub, Back by Y C, product of the day, start free, documentation, signup button up here. There's a lot of things.
9:29 Speaker 01 Yeah.
9:30 Speaker 00 So.
9:31 Speaker 01 Kill all the distractions. Make sure that like every single scroll, there is only one main CTA. There's always like a priority. Your main message, what the hell is it? The CTAs and then it's like the proof. Or like, I want to see what the hell is this like gray box here?
9:49 Speaker 00 Right, it's just a gray box.
9:51 Speaker 01 I'm not sure what it is. What, why is there a gray box and I can't see it?
9:55 Speaker 00 Yeah, what's gonna happen, right? Okay, so one MCP server for AI agents to use tools reliably at any scale. And it seems like maybe this started as an open source project. And now this is their productized version of it. I have seen that sometimes where the open source thing is maybe called Clavis AI. And then their productized version that they're trying to get people to pay for, they give it a different name.
10:22 Speaker 01 Ah, maybe, maybe.
10:24 Speaker 00 I'm gonna click through here and see.
10:25 Speaker 01 It is called Clavis. Oh, man.
10:28 Speaker 00 So I've seen this before and I think it just probably adds confusion.
10:32 Speaker 01 Yeah.
10:32 Speaker 00 They should probably just call it the same.
10:34 Speaker 01 Just Clavis.
10:35 Speaker 00 Okay, and so here we've got a video.
10:36 Speaker 01 Oh, it does an autoplay.
10:38 Speaker 00 Tells us tap to play.
10:40 Speaker 02 AI agents struggle with too many tools, leading to wrong API calls, context overload, higher costs and limited tool coverage. Meet Strata by Clavis AI.
10:51 Speaker 01 This music gives me like an old like TV.
10:54 Speaker 00 Yes, yeah, it's like we just watched an 80s sitcom.
10:56 Speaker 01 Yeah.
10:57 Speaker 00 Okay, so powering experiences from next gen startups.
11:00 Speaker 01 I actually don't know any of these companies.
11:03 Speaker 00 Connect any AI tools on modern MCP infra. Okay, so they integrate with a bunch of these.
11:08 Speaker 01 Maybe this is more important.
11:09 Speaker 00 Yeah.
11:10 Speaker 01 Maybe you just show all of them like up there.
11:12 Speaker 00 Hey, there's cursor.
11:12 Speaker 01 Yeah, I feel like you might actually want like a more stable way to see these things.
11:17 Speaker 00 Yeah.
11:17 Speaker 01 Maybe you just show them all and then there's like quick filters. Maybe you actually show them all like here, here, you know?
11:23 Speaker 00 Yeah.
11:24 Speaker 01 Then you can get a sense of what you can do.
11:26 Speaker 00 How Strata works. Progressive discovery, smart navigation, precise execution.
11:31 Speaker 01 Not sure what they mean.
11:32 Speaker 00 That explains it all, right?
11:33 Speaker 01 What are the problems?
11:35 Speaker 00 I don't know, but here's why Strata is better.
11:37 Speaker 01 Better than what? Like using individual MCPs?
11:41 Speaker 00 I assume, yeah.
11:43 Speaker 01 Then maybe show that, like the old world, the new world, what are the problems? How do you solve the problems? The thing I hate for like a lot of companies, what they do is like, they love talking in their own words. And with their own concepts that they came up, that nobody else understands.
11:59 Speaker 00 Right.
11:59 Speaker 01 Like you just throw these like big words there, but then they don't really mean anything to me.
12:04 Speaker 00 Yeah, the best way is to talk to your users and use the words that they understand.
12:07 Speaker 01 Yeah, you you talk in their language, in their problems. The world they are used to now and the new thing, how is it different?
12:16 Speaker 00 Yeah.
12:16 Speaker 01 What are the problems that you solved?
12:18 Speaker 00 Yeah, so if users are like, I need a tool for progressive discovery, then like, great.
12:23 Speaker 01 But nobody is gonna say that.
12:24 Speaker 00 Yeah, I've never heard anybody say that.
12:26 Speaker 01 It's more like, I have so many MCPs, I don't know how to manage them. We're like, I don't even know what's there that can help me integrate my agent to other things.
12:33 Speaker 00 Yeah.
12:34 Speaker 01 Oh, wow, those charts.
12:37 Speaker 00 This looks like a screenshot from Excel or something like that.
12:40 Speaker 01 Yeah, sad.
12:42 Speaker 00 Some dashboard.
12:44 Speaker 01 Whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa.
12:49 Speaker 00 Everything's kind of moving.
12:50 Speaker 01 Yeah, I don't like moving things when I'm not moving.
12:53 Speaker 00 And when you're trying to read.
12:54 Speaker 01 Yeah, it's like distracting.
12:58 Speaker 01 I also don't like lines when you don't need lines, like this one.
13:01 Speaker 00 Yeah. And, you know, headlines.
13:05 Speaker 01 Yeah.
13:05 Speaker 00 What most people do is they come down and they're gonna read the headlines. They're gonna say, okay, what are our customers say? Compliance, investors, choose your plan. Like, you you gotta be explicit and assume people are not gonna read the sub-headline. They're only gonna read the sub-headline if they're intrigued by the headline and they wanna.
13:22 Speaker 01 Why is that even there?
13:25 Speaker 01 Doesn't make sense.
13:26 Speaker 00 Trying to build credibility, I assume, but yeah, it's it's not clear why you.
13:31 Speaker 01 More like us money upfront patterns. Is it too early for that? Probably.
13:37 Speaker 00 Yeah.
13:38 Speaker 01 You should get them to to sign up and start trialing.
13:42 Speaker 00 Okay, let's see what their question was. Does our homepage above the full hero section headline sub headline?
13:48 Speaker 01 Yeah.
13:49 Speaker 00 Clearly explain our value proposition in five seconds. We're worried it's too jargony.
13:52 Speaker 01 Oh, yeah, it is very jargony.
13:54 Speaker 00 Yeah.
13:54 Speaker 01 Let's kill all of this.
13:56 Speaker 00 Yeah.
13:56 Speaker 01 Kill the video, just show all the MCPs you can connect that is just one thing.
14:01 Speaker 00 Yeah, and that's probably pretty easy to show that visually, right? Just kind of all them coming into like one strata logo or something.
14:07 Speaker 01 Yep. And then maybe like you can actually like keep the little filters there. And then you can filter between different sets of tools, then you can kind of find the thing.
14:15 Speaker 00 Mm hmm. Yep. But I think this sub headline helped. I think we read this and we understood what they do.
14:22 Speaker 01 Yeah, maybe make this like the the only headline.
14:25 Speaker 00 Yeah, yeah.
14:26 Speaker 01 And then kill your name in confusion. Just pick one. Pick one, pick one name. That's it.
14:31 Speaker 00 Yep. Thank you, Clavis. All right, code crafters.
14:36 Speaker 00 Oh, we got the purple gradients. They're here.
14:38 Speaker 01 Scary.
14:40 Speaker 00 Become a better software engineer. Stop following tutorials designed for beginners. Start working on projects that actually challenge you. Become a better engineer through deliberate practice.
14:49 Speaker 01 Interesting.
14:50 Speaker 00 They don't have the name of the company up here. And I said it, but then I forgot it already. And I was looking for like, what is the name of this company again? And I couldn't find it anywhere on the page.
14:58 Speaker 01 Yeah, logo is also very generic.
15:01 Speaker 00 Mm hmm.
15:02 Speaker 01 Doesn't tell me anything.
15:03 Speaker 00 Yeah, this was a lot to get through here. And it was, it started out with the negative, stop doing this thing. So instead of saying what they do in the positive, it started out with, don't do this.
15:15 Speaker 01 Yeah.
15:15 Speaker 00 Which is not informative for for what they actually.
15:17 Speaker 01 Yeah. I do like keeping things a little like aspirational.
15:23 Speaker 00 Mm hmm.
15:23 Speaker 01 But you do want to communicate clearly what the hell is this?
15:26 Speaker 00 Yeah.
15:27 Speaker 01 I still don't get it.
15:28 Speaker 00 Yeah, it seems like learning, it's a bunch of practice projects to become a better engineer.
15:35 Speaker 01 Ah, I see.
15:36 Speaker 00 So I guess if you don't have side projects you want to work on, you would use this. And this gives you a bunch of projects to build.
15:42 Speaker 01 I see, I see.
15:44 Speaker 00 That's my guess here.
15:45 Speaker 01 Maybe. There's a pick a challenge.
15:48 Speaker 00 Okay.
15:48 Speaker 01 Let's see what happens.
15:49 Speaker 00 Pick a challenge.
15:50 Speaker 01 Oh, I see.
15:53 Speaker 01 That's cool.
15:54 Speaker 00 The whole website changed when we clicked through to this too.
15:57 Speaker 01 There's like no continuity from the marketing page to those things.
16:00 Speaker 00 Yeah, and like if I got a pricing, if I got a roadmap.
16:03 Speaker 01 Like even all the colors? Yeah. Like the green?
16:06 Speaker 00 Yeah.
16:07 Speaker 01 And then the other one is what, like purple, purply purple everywhere? Do they actually work with these companies?
16:15 Speaker 00 Enjoyed by developers.
16:16 Speaker 01 Oh, really? Is that true?
16:17 Speaker 00 I don't know. I guess we'll take their word for it.
16:21 Speaker 01 Oh, wow. This clipping thing is kind of crazy.
16:24 Speaker 00 Backed by incredible engineers. Okay, so I guess these are some of their investors.
16:28 Speaker 01 Wait, wait, wait, wait. These are actual... Wow, he's at Anthropic now, right?
16:33 Speaker 00 Yep. Right, so that is not a date.
16:36 Speaker 01 I would not like modify other people's pictures like this. It feels like kind of intrusive.
16:41 Speaker 00 Yeah.
16:41 Speaker 01 Yeah.
16:42 Speaker 00 And they're all kind of a different style.
16:43 Speaker 01 Right.
16:44 Speaker 00 This one's like a professional hedge shot. This one's like a phone photo or something like that, probably.
16:49 Speaker 01 One trick you can do is like, maybe like you knock down all their backgrounds, but keep them like white. Maybe you add a filter so that they're all like black and white. Then it kind of standardizes the thing without like butchering the picture too much.
17:03 Speaker 00 Yeah. Hear it from our members. Engineers and top teams love this.
17:11 Speaker 01 Okay.
17:12 Speaker 00 Right now. Projects that go way beyond the basics. Be in a company of prolific developers. Use your favorite tools to code, no limits. The world's best got better by doing. Okay, and try now.
17:27 Speaker 01 Okay.
17:29 Speaker 00 I'm curious if I click on other links through here, does it go... That goes to the YC site.
17:34 Speaker 01 Okay.
17:36 Speaker 00 Change log.
17:37 Speaker 01 Whoa.
17:38 Speaker 00 Okay, it goes to their...
17:39 Speaker 01 Look, they don't use their name.
17:42 Speaker 00 Yeah, build your own X.
17:44 Speaker 01 Why is that?
17:45 Speaker 00 I don't know. I guess because people can make a Twitter X kind of thing.
17:49 Speaker 01 The X means like anything.
17:51 Speaker 00 I think the X means like build your own like X, like build your own Twitter.
17:55 Speaker 01 Your own Reddit, your own good.
17:58 Speaker 00 Yeah, I was wondering if they're saying build your own X because it's people on X and maybe, I don't know.
18:03 Speaker 01 Maybe, maybe. Maybe one of the projects is Rebuild X.
18:07 Speaker 00 Okay, so here perks looks like the homepage. How about about?
18:12 Speaker 01 Wait, what is perks? Is that like another product or something?
18:17 Speaker 00 Their members get priority access and preferential pricing on learning.
18:23 Speaker 01 Interesting.
18:24 Speaker 00 So this is like a learning subscription rather than a tool, maybe. Makes me think it's more like a community or something.
18:31 Speaker 01 Where's the community? How do I talk to other?
18:33 Speaker 00 Oh, and this pricing one takes me to this page, like in this design.
18:39 Speaker 01 Oh, you, you, you, you.
18:40 Speaker 00 Oh, and this just changed too. Now we're in like black and white.
18:43 Speaker 01 What is this? Are they like doing their own like expense card?
18:48 Speaker 00 Yeah, is this a credit card company?
18:52 Speaker 00 I think it's some kind of like learning thing to do projects. That's like, that's what I've come up with after spending a few minutes looking at all of this. And I can't tell.
19:01 Speaker 01 But there's the perks thing.
19:03 Speaker 00 Yeah, that makes me think it's a community to do something. Okay, so be more clear around literally what this is, because it's not clear right now.
19:10 Speaker 01 Yeah.
19:12 Speaker 01 Less purple gradient.
19:13 Speaker 00 Yes, this looks vibe coded. It's got all the hallmarks of it. So something that feels a little more custom, I think would be great.
19:21 Speaker 01 Yeah.
19:22 Speaker 00 We somehow kept getting to different versions of the site that all looked wildly different. So I think consolidating all of that would be good.
19:28 Speaker 01 Yeah.
19:28 Speaker 00 And then, you know, like a main thing is like the about page. And it links off to their YC launch, which is a little bit jarring. It feels like, you know, talking about who's behind this product is something you should have a dedicated page on your site about.
19:43 Speaker 01 Right.
19:43 Speaker 00 Otherwise, it makes me seem like this company is so early, they haven't even had time to like build their own.
19:48 Speaker 01 Yeah, one thing I noticed is like, I think a lot of them pride on being backed on YC. But that is actually not the main thing you're doing.
19:56 Speaker 00 Yes.
19:56 Speaker 01 Like make people focus on what the hell is the thing?
19:59 Speaker 00 Yes.
19:59 Speaker 01 Yeah.
20:00 Speaker 00 Yep.
20:00 Speaker 01 Less about the backing.
20:02 Speaker 00 Right. Number one is what is this? Number two is, is it for me? Three, you can focus on the social proof and credibility and things like that. But yeah, a lot of people are kind of putting it right up front.
20:11 Speaker 01 Yeah.
20:12 Speaker 00 To the point where you look at it quickly and the YC logo looks like their logo.
20:15 Speaker 01 Yeah.
20:16 Speaker 00 Thanks, CodeCrafters.
20:18 Speaker 03 YC's next batch is now taking applications. Got a startup in you? Apply at ycombinator.com/apply. It's never too early and filling out the app will level up your idea. Okay, back to the video.
20:31 Speaker 00 Okay, for this next one, let's do more of a lightning round and do some initial impressions.
20:36 Speaker 01 Let's do it.
20:37 Speaker 00 When we first pull it up here.
20:39 Speaker 01 Slashy.
20:40 Speaker 00 So this is slashy.
20:41 Speaker 01 Oh, it's so slow. Also, it looks like Notion mail.
20:45 Speaker 00 Yeah. Okay, you obviously have a lot of experience with Notion and Cursor. What's your initial impression here?
20:51 Speaker 01 A lot of details are not there.
20:54 Speaker 00 What's missing?
20:55 Speaker 01 So like if you look at this part, it almost feels like it's the raw like Markdown output. The UI doesn't really fit with the rest of the thing. The video is like clipped wrongly. There's like an extra stuff here. I think the first impression really matters and anything above the fold just make them as good as you can. Like no obvious detail bugs.
21:23 Speaker 00 The power of ChatGPT inside your email.
21:25 Speaker 01 I would say like the messaging and stuff is pretty clear. Actually not bad.
21:30 Speaker 00 Yeah.
21:30 Speaker 01 It's more like how you presented. Look at all the like say this thing is like not aligned in the same spot. These images and the previews all have different sizes.
21:40 Speaker 00 Right.
21:40 Speaker 01 Some of them have shadows, some of them don't.
21:43 Speaker 00 Yeah, yeah, this one's got a border.
21:46 Speaker 00 There's a screenshot with a border in the window and then a border around the screenshot.
21:49 Speaker 01 There's a lot of like boxes and boxes and boxes.
21:52 Speaker 00 Yeah, and I mean, it seems like there's some inspiration taken from the latest Cursor site as well, right? With showing some of these screenshots and calling out.
22:00 Speaker 01 It's like the structure is fine, lacking some details.
22:06 Speaker 01 Yeah, oh wow, they're actually stealing like a Notion picture here.
22:11 Speaker 00 Yeah, another thing that resonates with me immediately is like they're using Cursor to describe what they do, so Cursor for email.
22:18 Speaker 01 Yeah.
22:18 Speaker 00 And then you and then power of ChatGPT. And then you come best of super teaching. So they keep calling out all these other products that people may know to describe what they do rather than just literally explaining what they do.
22:31 Speaker 01 True.
22:31 Speaker 00 And owning it themselves.
22:32 Speaker 01 Yeah, they almost look like Notion Agent and Cursor in one. But lacking all the details.
22:40 Speaker 00 Yeah.
22:40 Speaker 01 The details are what matters.
22:42 Speaker 00 And it's interesting, you can pick that out from the screenshot too because you've used those products so much, right?
22:46 Speaker 01 Yes.
22:47 Speaker 00 Cool. Thank you, Slashy. All right, next up, we've got Freya.
22:52 Speaker 01 Oh.
22:53 Speaker 00 Voice AI that sounds human for enterprise.
22:55 Speaker 01 How can I hear it?
22:57 Speaker 00 Uh, here we go.
22:58 Speaker 01 It has a start call. What does it do?
23:01 Speaker 00 Well, it's.
23:01 Speaker 01 Is it a phone number?
23:02 Speaker 00 Let's say Freya safely handles inbound and outbound calls from support and service to sales and beyond, fluently in dozens of languages, twenty-four seven.
23:09 Speaker 01 Mm-hmm.
23:10 Speaker 00 Should we talk to Freya?
23:11 Speaker 01 Yeah, let's try it.
23:11 Speaker 00 All right.
23:12 Speaker 04 Hi there, I am Freya, the voice of Freya Voice. We're an AI platform that helps businesses automate voice-based customer service. Our AI agents handle full conversations end-to-end and sound completely natural. Freya Voice is perfect for tasks like scheduling, answering common questions, or managing claims. Available twenty-four, seven, and over forty languages.
23:34 Speaker 01 You will speak Chinese?
23:35 Speaker 04 If it sounds like my response may have seemed unclear or cut off, let me try that again. Freya Voice is a platform that automates voice-based customer service with AI agents.
23:45 Speaker 00 What did you say?
23:46 Speaker 01 I said, like, do you speak Chinese? Because it says fluently in dozens of languages.
23:50 Speaker 00 I was gonna tell you to try speaking Chinese and, and I think my expectation would be that she would respond back in Chinese, right? Yeah.
23:57 Speaker 01 This is actually probably the best one we've seen today.
24:00 Speaker 00 It's very clear.
24:01 Speaker 01 Yeah.
24:02 Speaker 00 Oh, they're kind of hijacking the scroll.
24:05 Speaker 01 Oh, scroll jack. Not sure.
24:08 Speaker 01 Ay, ay, ay. Okay, minus five points.
24:12 Speaker 00 Yeah, yeah, don't hijack the scroll, but the, the communication.
24:16 Speaker 01 Messaging, pretty good.
24:18 Speaker 00 Yeah.
24:18 Speaker 01 Yeah, demo, really accessible, pretty good.
24:21 Speaker 00 Yep. Replace entire call center operations, handle custom use cases end-to-end.
24:26 Speaker 01 Hmm.
24:27 Speaker 00 Lead qualification, turn every lead into revenue opportunity.
24:31 Speaker 01 Mm-hmm.
24:32 Speaker 00 Okay.
24:35 Speaker 00 Resolve customer issues before they escalate, built for accuracy you can trust.
24:40 Speaker 01 Hmm.
24:42 Speaker 00 Results that speak for themselves, okay.
24:44 Speaker 01 Whoa.
24:46 Speaker 00 Yeah, I mean, it seems like overall the, the, um, messaging here is very clear.
24:51 Speaker 01 Yeah.
24:52 Speaker 00 And I think we understand what they do. And I think if we ran a call center, an enterprise call center, we'd probably consider this and we know that this is for us.
25:01 Speaker 01 Yeah.
25:02 Speaker 00 All right, let's see what their question is.
25:03 Speaker 01 Pretty good.
25:04 Speaker 00 Curious how to very clearly convey the information of what we should focus on and give a smooth and simple experience.
25:11 Speaker 00 I felt like they did that.
25:12 Speaker 01 Yeah.
25:12 Speaker 00 I don't think that's the thing to change.
25:13 Speaker 01 It's not bad. I would wonder like how to make the the demo even more like obvious. Maybe you can just start right here.
25:22 Speaker 00 Right. Yeah, that's a question, right? It's like, do you want to talk to Freya or meet the team? What's the main CTA you want to drive people to? It seems like meet the team because that's a button up here and that's the blue button here.
25:37 Speaker 00 But meet the team is kind of weird too. Like, do I want a demo? Yeah, like who is the team?
25:44 Speaker 01 Yeah.
25:44 Speaker 00 And then what? And it's just take us, there we go.
25:46 Speaker 01 Ah, Allen Lee again.
25:47 Speaker 00 Yep. Freya team meeting. Okay. Yeah, maybe like book a demo or something.
25:52 Speaker 01 Book a demo will be better.
25:53 Speaker 00 That's the main thing. Awesome.
25:55 Speaker 01 Not bad.
25:55 Speaker 00 Nice job, Freya. Okay, Finta magically simplify accounting and taxes. Automate bookkeeping, effortless tax filing, real time insights, set up in 10 minutes, back to building by 5:12pm.
26:08 Speaker 01 Very detailed. Not sure what's the reference.
26:10 Speaker 00 I don't understand the 5:12pm either.
26:14 Speaker 01 Wait, is it like?
26:16 Speaker 00 Oh, yeah.
26:17 Speaker 01 It matches the time.
26:19 Speaker 00 10 minutes from now.
26:19 Speaker 01 That's cool. That's cute, but you know.
26:21 Speaker 00 Now it's 5:13.
26:22 Speaker 01 Took a little bit to get.
26:23 Speaker 00 Yeah, okay. All right, that was clever. Very cool. Okay.
26:29 Speaker 01 So what?
26:30 Speaker 00 Pricing gets started. Yeah, it's something around simplifying accounting and taxes.
26:35 Speaker 01 For like individuals where?
26:37 Speaker 00 Yeah, so this was not clear to me. And then when I go a little bit deeper, it's like automate bookkeeping.
26:41 Speaker 01 Right.
26:41 Speaker 00 And so that makes me think more businesses.
26:43 Speaker 01 Startups.
26:44 Speaker 00 Oh, here we go, right down here.
26:47 Speaker 00 For US-based C corps, LLCs and PBCs.
26:52 Speaker 01 Maybe like kind of fold that with the primary messaging.
26:55 Speaker 00 Yeah.
26:56 Speaker 01 And then maybe kill the time thing.
26:58 Speaker 00 Yeah. And I think, you know, we're seeing a lot of consistent patterns as we've gone through a few of these, which makes me feel like a lot of these are building effectively the same template, right? We got the little thing up here. Some people put the back by YC here. Some people put we're hiring. We got the blue buttons. We got two buttons next to each other. We got a headline. We got something else here. We got a logo here. We got a screenshot here.
27:21 Speaker 01 Yep.
27:22 Speaker 00 And so sometimes for a lot of businesses, that might be good enough.
27:25 Speaker 01 Yeah.
27:26 Speaker 00 You know, just clearly, it's like a pattern that users are used to. They know where to go.
27:30 Speaker 01 Yep.
27:31 Speaker 00 But you know, sometimes it's helpful if you want to build your own brand and identity and be different and memorable. Is to break out of that box and come up with something that's like really unique and focused to what you're trying to communicate and get across around how you're different.
27:45 Speaker 01 I actually don't mind keeping things like simple and plain. Just let people scroll. Have the messaging be the primary thing. Have the product be the primary thing.
27:55 Speaker 00 Yep.
27:56 Speaker 01 As you scroll, there's like little punch points. Boom, boom, boom. Maybe you're just like scrolling and seeing some pictures that vibe with that idea. So it's not that bad.
28:07 Speaker 00 Yeah. And I like this too, like tax season with zero stress. You know, that probably appeals to the type of person that would be their customer. And to filed our taxes and claim seventeen thousand in credits process was easy. Cool.
28:20 Speaker 01 Not bad.
28:20 Speaker 00 Yeah. I got live chat.
28:23 Speaker 01 How the sections break is a little weird to me. Like I kind of want these things to be like more under the tax thing.
28:30 Speaker 00 Yeah.
28:31 Speaker 01 Like you, you got this like white section and then some grays and then some whites and then some cars on top.
28:37 Speaker 00 Yeah.
28:38 Speaker 01 It's kind of fucks up the hierarchy.
28:40 Speaker 00 Yeah. Yeah, it seems like the full width is like a headline.
28:44 Speaker 01 Right. It's like a boom.
28:45 Speaker 00 Yeah. And then the line that goes across makes it feel like it's breaking up.
28:49 Speaker 01 Like why is this card like sliding on top?
28:52 Speaker 00 Yeah. It looks like it's supposed to be a card sticking out.
28:56 Speaker 01 It's like there's some cool visual treatments, but they actually cause some confusion.
29:01 Speaker 00 Yep.
29:03 Speaker 00 But generally, like visually, it looks nice. It looks well organized.
29:06 Speaker 01 Yeah. It's like if you look at each of the pieces, it's actually pretty well built.
29:10 Speaker 00 Yeah.
29:10 Speaker 01 Like there's a lot of little details in there.
29:12 Speaker 00 Right. Yeah. The temptation is to show a big screenshot from far away and you can't tell what's going on.
29:16 Speaker 01 Right.
29:16 Speaker 00 Instead, they're honing in on the very specific thing.
29:19 Speaker 01 Like if I were to do this, it's almost like I want to. Just make these like maybe shrink them and make them more cardi, make them more like parts of the same hole. Instead of like, uh, there's like a lot of things in like flats. That's all like kinda moving and doing stuff.
29:36 Speaker 00 Yeah. All right, let's see what their question is. Does it convert?
29:40 Speaker 00 They're gonna have to answer that for us, but um, I don't know. I think it communicates what it does. My sense is if I were in the market for a product like this, this would appeal to me and I would probably wanna check it out. So my hunch is probably yes, uh, maybe just making this more prominent, that who it's for.
29:58 Speaker 01 Yeah.
29:59 Speaker 00 Uh, and making that like ram that home a little bit more, I think would be good.
30:03 Speaker 01 I would steal the little trick to hide this button until say you're here. And then it kinda animates and then you know where it is.
30:11 Speaker 00 Right, you pay attention to it, yeah.
30:12 Speaker 01 Cause like, I feel like main issue with like say, I think hero is pretty good. Once you pass here, it's like a little disorienting, not sure what to do now.
30:22 Speaker 00 Yep. Cool. Thank you, Finta.
30:24 Speaker 01 Last one?
30:25 Speaker 00 All right, last one.
30:26 Speaker 01 Vibe flow.
30:28 Speaker 00 Vibe flow, let's check it out. Prompt and then visually.
30:32 Speaker 01 Okay.
30:33 Speaker 00 Nice.
30:33 Speaker 01 Where's the visuals?
30:37 Speaker 00 Projects, explore your projects, sign in to see projects. All right, well clearly they want us to engage with the prompt box. Why don't you give it a shot?
30:43 Speaker 01 Okay, um.
30:49 Speaker 01 Okay, a spinner.
30:50 Speaker 00 It's thinking.
30:53 Speaker 00 Ah, okay.
30:54 Speaker 01 Oh wow.
30:55 Speaker 00 Showing us something. Charging the electron.
30:57 Speaker 01 What is this?
30:59 Speaker 00 Is that some kind of preview?
31:00 Speaker 01 What is that?
31:02 Speaker 00 Is it like a mini map of a whole page or something?
31:04 Speaker 01 Maybe, maybe. It's like the canvas.
31:06 Speaker 00 Yeah. This is one of the core, uh, I'm curious how you think about this, uh, cursor, um, you know, so many products that use L L M's today have this weight. And what do you do when the user has to wait? To keep it engaging or make it feel like it's going faster?
31:23 Speaker 01 I think you want to almost like show every single state that's happening. So like, you know, I thought for like 29 minutes, what did it do?
31:33 Speaker 00 Yeah.
31:33 Speaker 01 And if it does like tool calls, like just show them. But you do want to control like, you don't want to show too many things at once where like it just becomes like a wall of text. You want to control like, ah, the things that are running, you show them in a more like focusable spot. And as it progresses, it kind of shows you like, ah, these are the things that are running. These maybe are the actions I need to confirm. This is my input. You kind of shift people's focus. And I don't want these like random empty states with spinners everywhere or like, ah, in the preview you saw like, it was like looping some random messages. But they weren't really helpful.
32:16 Speaker 00 Right.
32:17 Speaker 01 They were actually kind of distracting. So you need to figure out like, when things are happening, where do I want people to focus their eyes on?
32:25 Speaker 00 Yeah. It's hard too, because you don't know, is it going to come back in five seconds or is it going to come back in 10 minutes?
32:30 Speaker 01 Yeah.
32:31 Speaker 00 Okay, so this one, we hit an error.
32:35 Speaker 01 Let's see.
32:41 Speaker 01 Feels very like vibe coded, the whole thing.
32:45 Speaker 00 What gives it that impression for you?
32:46 Speaker 01 If you look at all the little details, they don't meld together.
32:50 Speaker 00 So everything feels kind of disjointed?
32:52 Speaker 01 Yeah, like, there's like weird hover states, like with little radius on top, but not on the bottom. If you look at all these different views, like some of them are like, I don't know, portals into like iframes of something. This is almost like a vibe coded VS code.
33:08 Speaker 01 That's just pure AI generated UI, you know? There's not even like a, like not even, say you're not using Chasian or whatever. Like it's just raw AI input.
33:20 Speaker 00 Yeah. What do you think this toggle button does in the top right?
33:24 Speaker 01 No idea.
33:25 Speaker 00 The mystery toggle button?
33:26 Speaker 01 No tooltip either. Ah, what does it do?
33:30 Speaker 00 It looks like it goes fullscreen and I assume that's the preview.
33:32 Speaker 01 Ah, yeah, I guess we can't really see much.
33:36 Speaker 00 Is it still working or where is it at?
33:38 Speaker 01 I think it failed.
33:42 Speaker 01 Interesting.
33:43 Speaker 00 Okay. No luck.
33:45 Speaker 01 Sad.
33:48 Speaker 01 This is what I do.
33:51 Speaker 01 Ah, so that's cool, like little, like suggestions.
33:57 Speaker 01 I might still do this. Why is there two spinners?
34:01 Speaker 00 Right.
34:03 Speaker 01 Why can't I open the thinking?
34:06 Speaker 01 Why is there just spinning and not telling me what is thinking?
34:09 Speaker 00 Yep.
34:12 Speaker 01 Also, the suggestions came before I did anything.
34:15 Speaker 00 Yeah.
34:18 Speaker 00 Okay, so it looks like the core issue is we don't have 3D libraries. So it's gonna try to do a CSS basis, CSS base.
34:27 Speaker 01 Oh!
34:28 Speaker 00 Okay.
34:29 Speaker 01 Whoa! That's a very interesting attempt.
34:33 Speaker 00 Yeah. Creative.
34:36 Speaker 01 That Earth will happy.
34:39 Speaker 00 Alright, let's see what their question is. General advice on how to improve the design. Ah, I think we touched.
34:43 Speaker 01 I guess the problem was before I came in, I couldn't even do anything or see anything. You remember, like, there was the prompt box and then when you scroll down, it's like, all your projects sign in.
34:54 Speaker 00 Right.
34:55 Speaker 01 Why not just show people, like, other people's projects?
34:58 Speaker 00 Yeah, and then we tried to make something and we got hit with a signup wall.
35:02 Speaker 01 Yeah, just give them, like, even in Rio OS, you can send three free messages before you sign in. That just let people play.
35:09 Speaker 00 Yep.
35:10 Speaker 01 And maybe make sure that maybe the initial demo is more constrained so that it gives you better output.
35:16 Speaker 00 Awesome. Thank you, Vibe Flow. Rio, that does it for the reviews.
35:20 Speaker 01 Thank you.
35:20 Speaker 00 Thank you so much for joining. This was incredible, really great feedback, and really appreciate you joining us today.
35:25 Speaker 01 Great.
Previous Inside The Startup Launching AI Into Space Next The Best Consumer Startup Ideas Were "Impossible" Until Now Page updated October 12, 2026 · transcript and summary are machine-generated
