Our favorite startups from YC’s Winter 2022 Demo Day, Part 1

Day one of Y Combinator’s Demo Day confab for the Winter 2022 batch is over.

We shook up our coverage this year, divvying things up by sector and geography. Our goal was to avoid a huge list, the sort that we compiled in years past. TechCrunch has notes on the ever-growing contingent of companies from Africa, Indian startups, international fintech and even a discussion on intra-startup competition at the accelerator.

But one thing we’re not changing with our Y Combinator coverage is collecting favorites.

Naturally, this is just our opinion. Our staff spends lots of time diving into the technologies that startups are building, the sectors they are focused on and the parts of the world they hope to serve. As a result, each of us has a distinct perspective. So, our favorites often stem from areas we know best and what we are currently fascinated by.

Out of the hundreds of companies we saw today, which stood out the most to TechCrunch staffers? Read on!

Our favorite startups from YC Winter 2022, day one

The following list is in no particular order. Companies’ websites and authors’ Twitter profiles are linked.

Alex Wilhelm: Discz Music

• Details: A mobile application aimed at the youth market that combines music with social features. The company reports that its application has reached the top 10 slots in the App Store’s music category. That translates to 15,000 daily active users (DAUs), a tidy figure likely large enough for the startup to really learn from its early audience.
• Why it’s a fave: If Discz can keep its DAUs growing, it’s acquisition bait. Every major social service — and the small ones, too — is in awe of TikTok’s ability to influence culture by shaping what people listen to. Social platforms need a music strategy. Why not buy what Discz is building and has found some early user traction with? In reverse, Spotify is great at providing music to folks, but rather distant in cultural terms. It could use a social strategy, yeah? Guess who I have in mind?