What is YCs (and your) opinion on the casual gaming startups? Has YC received many applicants in the past of that nature and if any at all, what were the things that concerned you and what did you wish you saw more of?
I am Sam Altman, President of Y Combinator – AMA
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Re: I am Sam Altman, President of Y Combinator – AMA
#362When looking at founder groups, do you shy away from or gravitate towards founders who were friends before the company/idea?
Re: I am Sam Altman, President of Y Combinator – AMA
#363sama: Jacqueline Novogratz (CEO of Acumen) once said that a major challenge of building modern finance in developing nations is that developing communities often have lots of trust (within themselves) but not much accountability. In your position at YC, founders and investors alike trust you with lots of information. You have a unique view of where money is flowing and how equipped companies are to compete with each…
I think we're pretty accountable--if for example we started misusing information that would quickly become known and founders would stop applying to YC.
I think most things we do to help YC startups help the community in general. Think how much better the ecosystem for founders is now than 10 years ago! We take our responsibility as a sort of flag-bearer for the startup movement seriously.
Re: I am Sam Altman, President of Y Combinator – AMA
#364Hi Sama, I'm the founder of nanowe. We're launching an IoT product this year and have a great team working all days and nights on it. I get the feeling our startup can't be that bad not to be a part of YC as we have everything in place but need a great platform & community to showcase what we're building. Hardware is tough and takes more money and we're about to raise a convertible note using YC SAFE docs. Does this…
Definitely not--we certainly understand that some startups need to raise more money than others.
Great! I'll submit the application asap.
Re: I am Sam Altman, President of Y Combinator – AMA
#365Hi Sam. One of the questions in the application says: "If you have an online demo, what's the url?"
Do you expect a video walkthrough like what Drew Houston from Dropbox did in his 2007 application or do you expect a link to a live demo that you can click through?
Re: I am Sam Altman, President of Y Combinator – AMA
#366I think you mentioned somewhere that you are aiming for early-career researchers, not so much for established group leaders. Being an early-career researcher myself (postdoc), my first thought was that your program could easily turn out to be a trap. At first, it looks like a fantastic opportunity because freedom and independence, etc. However, I'm sure that you are looking for high risk / high reward projects. So th…
Well, that's fucked up about academia. All the more reason to create alternatives. Do you really want to be part of a system that does not allow for failure? At a minimum, I expect YCR researchers to be turning down job offers from YC companies all the time.
I may be missing something, but I think the person you responded to was expressing that they fear you are setting up that exact situation: that there is no room for failure.
Re: I am Sam Altman, President of Y Combinator – AMA
#367Recently a plethora of startups working on new nuclear energy technology have been created: Transatomic power, Flibe, Helion and UPower (to name a few). These startups, respectively, have technology based on molten salt reactors (MSR), new fuels (Thorium), or new modalities (small distributed scale and fusion). Most of these startups face a huge challenge (and capital requirement) to go from idea/concept to pilot/dem…
I think they should just try to raise large amounts of money rather than partner with large companies for development. However, they will need to partner with utilities for pilot plants. I can't speak to the other companies, but my hope is that UPower and Helion have prototypes in ~3-5 years.
Nuclear energy faces a challenging PR environment.
Letting the public perception get so bad should be considered one of the costliest PR mistakes in recent history in terms of human and environmental cost. The problem is highlighted by the fact that many will disagree with this statement.
How do you see the way out of this?
Re: I am Sam Altman, President of Y Combinator – AMA
#368Would you like to speak at HackingEDU (San Mateo, October 23-25), the world's largest education hackathon? http://www.hackingedu.co
Ok sure that sounds fun, could you email my office (SArouter@ycombinator.com)?
Re: I am Sam Altman, President of Y Combinator – AMA
#369[deleted]
Re: I am Sam Altman, President of Y Combinator – AMA
#370I think you mentioned somewhere that you are aiming for early-career researchers, not so much for established group leaders. Being an early-career researcher myself (postdoc), my first thought was that your program could easily turn out to be a trap. At first, it looks like a fantastic opportunity because freedom and independence, etc. However, I'm sure that you are looking for high risk / high reward projects. So th…
Well, that's fucked up about academia. All the more reason to create alternatives. Do you really want to be part of a system that does not allow for failure? At a minimum, I expect YCR researchers to be turning down job offers from YC companies all the time.
I fully agree with your analysis of the shortcomings of the academic system, but that's really a lame response and suggests that you didn't think this through. We're not talking about people in their early twenties who can invest some years in crazy experiments without fearing the consequences. Researchers at that stage have invested a substantial chunk of their lives in their careers and many of them have families to support. It would be foolish of them to take such a risk. If your attitude is, fuck them, it was their mistake to take up a career in academia, you will not attract the best people.