What is your take on the value proposition for an older, experienced engineer (e.g. 10+ years) joining a startup as an early employee (e.g. non-founder)? I get the sense from what I read and hear that there is romance and then there is reality. Would love to get an honest take from someone with your perspective.
I am Sam Altman, President of Y Combinator – AMA
131–140 of 559 posts
Re: I am Sam Altman, President of Y Combinator – AMA
#132Name the most influential person in your life! I'm really curious!
No huge surprises here, but probably Paul Graham, Peter Thiel, and Elon Musk have done the most to influence my thinking about investing and technology.
You obviously interact with PG quite a bit. Does the influence from Peter and Elon come from working in person, or from what they've done/wrote/speak about?
Re: I am Sam Altman, President of Y Combinator – AMA
#133I was excited about the research announcement! I've been thinking about this for a while: - small companies rarely fund university research - the grant application process is complex - grad students get paid so little compared to tech workers - hiring a PhD student before they finish means abandoning their research Do you think universities and research can be changed to get more companies funding research? I can ima…
Maybe, but I'm not sure small companies are the best funders for this.
One of the nicest surprises about the YCR announcement was how many very rich people and large organizations reached out saying they wanted to give money. It seems there is a lot of potential energy here that's been looking for something to do.
Re: I am Sam Altman, President of Y Combinator – AMA
#134Hello Sam, I am Honduran and applying for the winter 2016 batch with other two co founders. One of my co founders (Venezuelan) and I have student F-1 Visas. Since we cannot work yet until we are at OPT we won't be able to make any profits until January or February 2016. Beta for our platform is due tomorrow so we can have a demo but users won't be able to use it for now. Is this going to affect our application? If so…
That's ok; we understand.
Great! Thanks.
Have you had any other successful Honduran entrepreneurs at YC?
Re: I am Sam Altman, President of Y Combinator – AMA
#135Hi Sam,
Have YC considered doing a lower tier of funding?
Funding 120k is good for early startups, but I think YC could have far more reach and impact if it had an option to provide less capital to a greater number of startups. The purpose being to allow founders to support themselves and fully focus on their startup without having to worry about daily jobs.
I see two major benefits: 1) YC would have greater and broader impact since for the same amount of seed would be possible to found 12-15 more companies that are ready to move from the idea to execution stage.
2) (this touches me personally) For non US founders, we have to worry about rent, food etc. I believe that if founders had the oportunity to fully focus on their startups for 3 months without a daily job, it would have tremendous impact for the early startups, and as a nice side effect YC could have another pool of really good candidates/ideas. At the end of the 3 months the founders would have had a chance to demonstrate themselves, their execution level, etc., at a very low cost.
I truly believe the ROI on something like this would be considerable.
I know that capital is not the only (and arguably not even the most important) advantage of been admitted to YC, but personally speaking, if I had this option 3 years ago I'd have pursued it no questions asked. I feel that there might be other founders that would be in the same boat.
Do you have any thoughts on this? Thanks! Carlos.
Re: I am Sam Altman, President of Y Combinator – AMA
#136What is your take on the value proposition for an older, experienced engineer (e.g. 10+ years) joining a startup as an early employee (e.g. non-founder)? I get the sense from what I read and hear that there is romance and then there is reality. Would love to get an honest take from someone with your perspective.
It totally depends on the company. Are you going to get as meaningful (i.e. more than 1%) equity grant and real responsibility? Do the founders seems good, and good to work with?
Obviously if you can join the next Facebook as an early employee, that's really great :)
Re: I am Sam Altman, President of Y Combinator – AMA
#137Hello @sama, do you see -as mr president- YC (with YCR, YCF, alumni and partners) acting more and more as a self-sustaining network in the coming years? How do you think big corps and govs will react? It's extremely interesting to see this emerge but also scary, if you think of unpredictable consequences. How do you feel? Thanks and good luck.
Re: I am Sam Altman, President of Y Combinator – AMA
#138Sam,
we've applied to YC Winter 2016 within the first five days, but thinking about making minor changes to the application. Does "editing" have a negative-effect? Do you read the whole application again or just the edits? Thanks in advance!
Re: I am Sam Altman, President of Y Combinator – AMA
#139@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?
It's ok as long as you have a plan to make money eventually (i.e. http://blog.samaltman.com/unit-economics)
However, why not charge on day 1? It sounds like something people should pay for. And charging always makes it clear if people really like your service or not.
Re: I am Sam Altman, President of Y Combinator – AMA
#140Based on the current performance of the first YC Fellowship, will you have future editions of this programme? You guys mention that it's for founders who haven't raised any money at all (although something such as a free-equity grant from a university is ok).
If you do plan to invest in YC Fellows via an equity deal in the near future, how acceptable would a -very small- investment from FFF for exchange in equity would be before getting the Fellowship?