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I am Sam Altman, President of Y Combinator – AMA

news.ycombinator.com

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Re: I am Sam Altman, President of Y Combinator – AMA

#121

Post by mindcrime »

1. Would / will you ever consider opening an East Coast branch? I understand all the "stuff" about why SV is great for startups, but there will always be people who can't /won't get up and travel completely to the other side of the country for an extended period of time. And while the EC might not be the startup hotbed that SV area is, it's quite clear that there is a LOT of startup activity and some great startups being formed out here. Wouldn't you want to tap into some of that?

2. In regards to YC Research, can you tell us anything more about the (general) topic area(s) you will be interested in? And maybe expand a little bit more on what kind of mechanisms might be put in place to facilitate working with outside researchers (hopefully including independent researchers and / or other startups).

Re: I am Sam Altman, President of Y Combinator – AMA

#122

Post by harryh »

How far do you think new Silicon Valley companies (and YC companies in particular) have progressed in providing fairer equity grants to employees? In particular I'm interested in what the norms are for "if you leave the company you must exercise in 90 days" type terms.

I know that you've been working on this problem personally and a few high profile companies have publicly announced changes. But what's going on with new small companies? What are the current norms?

I know that YC takes care of a lot of the legal work when setting up new YC companies. What do you currently recommend for employee option grants?

Re: I am Sam Altman, President of Y Combinator – AMA

#125

Post by sama »

jordanbartow wrote: post #70

What's the most important question on the application?

The first thing I read is "What is your company going to make?" Then I scan everything else quickly for evidence of something exceptional--something the founders have done, a great insight on this idea, or something impressive about progress to date.

Re: I am Sam Altman, President of Y Combinator – AMA

#126

Post by qunicorn »

Hi Sam (&all),

We curated all interesting YCombinator Q&As and created a wiki. www.askmeanything.me/brands/ycombinator

Some of these are from HN and some from the 'How to start a startup' course.

1] Help us curate more. Just submit link to pavan@askmeanything.me and we will have it posted with due credits to you and the source.

2] We will soon categorize them as 'application Q&A', 'co-founder Q&A' etc to make it more easy to read.

Def look for feedback.

Re: I am Sam Altman, President of Y Combinator – AMA

#127

Post by tmaly »

@sama I am about to launch a beta version of a service I find very useful in the food industry. I have spoken to a decent number of people during my customer development phase and everyone is excited about the service. However, I have not thought a lot about monetizing it. Right now I am just bootstrapping it and will release it as a free service. What is your take on free services and monetizing them?

Re: I am Sam Altman, President of Y Combinator – AMA

#128

Post by hollaur »

Hi @sama !

I submitted our application, and I wrote YC this letter on Medium (https://medium.com/@laurenholliday_/dear-y-combinator-we-wro...).

What else can one do to stand out? I'm so worried our application will get lost in a pile of all the others.

Also, is it possible that we'll hear from you before the 28th?

Thanks!

Lauren =)

Re: I am Sam Altman, President of Y Combinator – AMA

#129

Post by zeeshanm »

Any advice for single founder applying? Most of the people I talked to advice me to find a co-founder to increase my odds of getting in.

I don't necessarily agree with them. I have been doing this startup for over an year now. It has growth with a strong potential for more.

Re: I am Sam Altman, President of Y Combinator – AMA

#130

Post by sama »

harryh wrote: post #122

How far do you think new Silicon Valley companies (and YC companies in particular) have progressed in providing fairer equity grants to employees? In particular I'm interested in what the norms are for "if you leave the company you must exercise in 90 days" type terms. I know that you've been working on this problem personally and a few high profile companies have publicly announced changes. But what's going on with…

I mostly only know about YC companies other than what I've read in the press about large companies, but it seems like this has gotten much better.

We want to create a new employee option plan with all of our recommended fixes. We've been busy, but we'll hopefully get to it soon. We'll open-source it, of course.

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