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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

#51

How much is the bias against startups that have been to other accelerators? What are the benchmarks for progress in those cases?

Small. In general, we just look for progress commensurate with resources. If you've raised more money and been working on the company for longer, we expect more progress than if you've just started.

Re: I Am Sam Altman, President of Y Combinator. AMA

#52
I've been following you and @paulg as well as many other YC members for a long period and I'm quiet confident that you'll adhere to the vision/idea behind a project that I'm about to start this year. Do you recommend that I apply for YC really early, like now, just to present the idea ? Or should I develop it and apply with a prototype ? Or should I launch it and then apply ? In which case can YC help the idea to have bigger chances to succeed ? And in which case you do you most likely accept the application or at least give it a better chance ?

Re: I Am Sam Altman, President of Y Combinator. AMA

#59
post #16

YC has a giant application pool. This makes it very difficult for very early stage companies with no revenue / users to compete in the application pool. As a company with no revenue / users, How can we best stand out against those that do have growth / users? I understand that companies can apply for the fellowship. But what does a company lose by getting into the Fellowship over Core?

We fund companies with no traction/revenue all the time, though the bar is higher.

A really compelling idea is more important to us than traction or revenue. We understand how quickly exponential growth happens.

Re: I Am Sam Altman, President of Y Combinator. AMA

#60
post #16

YC has a giant application pool. This makes it very difficult for very early stage companies with no revenue / users to compete in the application pool. As a company with no revenue / users, How can we best stand out against those that do have growth / users? I understand that companies can apply for the fellowship. But what does a company lose by getting into the Fellowship over Core?

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