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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

#211

Post by DKnoll »

phibit wrote: post #176
DKnoll wrote: post #151

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Think about it -- you clearly decided your home country was not as conducive for building your future as the US may be Hi, as a Canadian, I also take issue with your statement. Your ancestors came here for the same reason as him, and with far less scrutiny, same as mine, and were provided many benefits not recieved today, including land grants. Why does a person migrating today deserve to be treated as second class?

> Your ancestors came here for the same reason as him, and with far less scrutiny, same as mine, and were provided many benefits not recieved today, including land grants. There has been a dramatic change in economic and social climate in the Americas. Our vague "ancestors" entered Canada and the US in times where it might not have been so magnificent to immigrate, and as such they were presented with incentives to i…

Canada just accepted 25,000 Syrian refugees fleeing war and something much worse than communism.

The social and economic climate has changed dramatically, you're right. We no longer have a climate condusive to a free-for-all exploitation of Aboriginals, Africans, and the environment.

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

#213

Post by BillionaireBear »

komali2 wrote: post #195
teej wrote: post #175

This is going to sound crass, but if a founder can't make the sacrifice to spend 3 months in SV for YC, are they really prepared to build the next billion dollar company?

I see where you're coming from, but environment has many subtle factors that lead to, I believe, missed opportunities if they aren't taken advantage of. For example, what would a Houston Oil startup gain from spending a few months of critical startup time in a city with high rent, drastically different driving culture, little access to oil companies, services, equipment, fields and etc, and a completely different set…

Precisely. People need to be where their customers are.

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

#214

Post by jimrandomh »

What is your plan for AI safety, and how does OpenAI fit into it?

In http://blog.samaltman.com/machine-intelligence-part-2 you laid out sensible requirements and safeguards we should demand of late-stage AI development when it gets further along. But OpenAI's founding statement seems to have baked in a mission and vision that's incompatible with those safeguards, requiring immediate sharing of breakthroughs even if the technologies required to use them safely aren't ready yet. That founding statement used to have the word "safely" in it, but this was edited out without any sort of announcement or comment, and, to the best of my thirdhand-rumor knowledge, OpenAI is not currently doing any safety-related research.

(I wrote a blog post on this back in December, and no one has given any plausible answer: http://conceptspacecartography.com/openai-should-hold-off-on... )

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

#215

Post by sbierwagen »

sama wrote: post #197
badminton1 wrote: post #150

From your experience, which personality traits are the highest predictors of success or failure in startup people?

• Determination • Unstoppability • Ambition • Clarity of vision/communication • Intelligence

Looks like HN doesn't support the * bullet point markdown syntax.

EDIT: Ha, did you just directly edit the html there, or something?

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

#216

Post by eranation »

teej wrote: post #175

This is going to sound crass, but if a founder can't make the sacrifice to spend 3 months in SV for YC, are they really prepared to build the next billion dollar company?

If that founder is a director of engineering/product in an enterprise software company in Atlanta, has a spouse, two kids and a mortgage, and the health insurance is dependent on her/his employer, then they will probably have a higher sacrifice than if they are a single Stanford grad living in SF with a year of saving after working at Google. They both need to make a sacrifice but it's not the same scale. If you make it easier for the enterprise founder to go and do it, and they know their industry and customers from the inside out, I think YC are increasing their odds a little bit of getting an enterprise software unicorn then if they don't. Nothing is guaranteed, and that enterprise person will have to make even worse sacrifices probably if they gets funded, but I'm pretty sure it will increase the number of them who will make the leap.

However as Sam said he doesn't feel they are underrepresented, and that they can use the fellowship which sounds great :)

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

#217

Post by sama »

Taraji wrote: post #208

Hi Sam, you just replied to a question with this : "Having a cofounder you don't know well is usually a very bad idea. It's much more important to trust someone and know they are great than to 'hire' for a specific skill." What do you recommend for someone who isn't a friend with a good developer ? Is it better to subcontract the development of the site/app to a good software development company ?

I'd try to meet good developers, and I think the best way to do this is either at school or by working at a tech company.

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

#218

Post by nostrademons »

mattmaroon wrote: post #168
sama wrote: post #113

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We used to give founders $20k. Part of the reason we upped it to $120k is so that founders with higher personal expense structures could do the program. But we're an investor, not a company. It's important to us founders run their own companies and make their own decisions, and so we try not to build too much of our own infrastructure.

I've wondered about this for awhile. Obviously it's been a bit since I've been involved, but you guys have such scale now that solving some obvious problems for founders might be beneficial. Housing being the big one. It was merely annoying back in '07, but now I feel like it'd be a significant distraction and expense for anyone not from the bay area to find a place to live there. Maybe an official Y-scraper would ma…

This is also one of the big reasons why someone might choose to work for, say, Google X instead of found a startup. Google's famous for taking care of every detail of employees' lives - food, laundry, haircuts, oil changes, dry cleaning, gyms, social events, and child care are all available on-site, and it seems like they may soon offer housing soon. Many people who are highly proficient in their fields like to concentrate on their fields, rather than on extraneous details of their lives. When I've approached former coworkers about whether they'd be interested in founding a startup, usually the top answer is "I can have more impact at Google, because they take care of all the stuff I'm not good at so I can concentrate on what I am good at."

Something to think about, particularly if you want to fund more hard-tech. For soft-tech founders (marketplaces, delivery startups, etc.), it's often good to do the routine chores of life yourself so you know where the pain points of potential customers are, but for hard-tech, you really want to be able to concentrate on the technology.

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

#219

Post by phibit »

DKnoll wrote: post #211
phibit wrote: post #176

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Your ancestors came here for the same reason as him, and with far less scrutiny, same as mine, and were provided many benefits not recieved today, including land grants. There has been a dramatic change in economic and social climate in the Americas. Our vague "ancestors" entered Canada and the US in times where it might not have been so magnificent to immigrate, and as such they were presented with incentives to i…

Canada just accepted 25,000 Syrian refugees fleeing war and something much worse than communism. The social and economic climate has changed dramatically, you're right. We no longer have a climate condusive to a free-for-all exploitation of Aboriginals, Africans, and the environment.

> Canada just accepted 25,000 Syrian refugees fleeing war and something much worse than communism.

This is to my point, there is less scrutiny for immigrants in 'dire straits'.

> The social and economic climate has changed dramatically, you're right. We no longer have a climate condusive to a free-for-all exploitation of Aboriginals, Africans, and the environment.

Unclear how this goes to show that anybody should be allowed to immigrate anywhere under any conditions.

Edit: straights -> straits

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