His/her comment does not read as a complain, and I believe his opinion is shared with many. The reason, as you mentioned, is the short description takes away from the service, so I am sure these companies are in fact much much more. Another problem is that all these products are version 0.1 of a much bigger version, so they need time to mature.

Edit: However Zenedy's description was very good and there seem to have a real potential.

Well whatever the reason I think I've seen it said for every bunch of startups. Its easy to criticise and I doubt there is any correlation between startups that look interesting and success.

And although I'll regret being negative myself I will just say - Zenedy, really? I think if wanted to write a startup style description of a affiliate marketing site that'd be it.

He did not criticize. He just said he was not impressed. Frankly how often are you impressed with a product other than yours? Not so many times.

As for Zenedy. I think they are following the Demand Media model, and that has proven to be a business that generates a lot of money.

Do not discount affiliate marketers. If you look at startups that operate affiliate businesses they tend to become quickly profitable (frugalmechanic, ticketstumbler etc..)

I guess, I just hear some version of the startups not being impressive, interesting or whatever else enough each time. I don't think his point was, I'm not impressed because its not mine, I think his point was he was disappointed.

There's nothing wrong with affiliate marketing, I'm just a little surprised to see the YC funding the old "pick area, get low quality freelance content, build search rank, sell affiliates" model.

Too many start-ups! 26 really? Hard for many to stand out and get good coverage/press.

Pardon if that's a downer of a comment I do wish all best of luck!