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I Am Sam Altman, President of Y Combinator. AMA

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

#281

Post by throwaway33912 »

sama wrote: post #120
throwaway33912 wrote: post #110

What should we (smart, technical people) be doing to stop Trump if he makes it to the general election? While it might not be the best fit for YC, have you thought about adding this to your RFS page?

Tech needs to run a candidate in the next election. I still am hopeful Trump will not win the general.

Thanks, Sam! I'm hopeful too, but prediction markets still, distressingly, give Trump a 20% chance of winning it all. I'm sure there are a lot of people in CA who have skills that are in short supply (familiarity with stats, social networks, programming, etc. -- think Nate Silver), and who would want to volunteer on a part-time basis. It's not clear at the moment how they could put these skills to good use, other than by maybe volunteering for the Clinton campaign (which sounds to me like the non-profit equivalent of working for Microsoft). Probably there is room for small, technical non-profits with creative ideas.

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

#282

Post by w1ntermute »

sama wrote: post #233
w1ntermute wrote: post #180

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If your most successful founders did go to top schools, why don't you select for that?

In a way we do, in that it's one (of many) examples for someone doing something impressive in the past. We definitely look for founders who have shown some evidence of doing something impressive (and we try to adjust for whatever life circumstances people were born into). But the main reason we don't is that there are important counterexamples in our portfolio, and if we said "we're only going to fund founders from t…

What are some counterexamples?

I wasn't suggesting that you should only fund founders from top schools, but that you should select for it (which it sounds like you already do).

The pedigrees of some of YC's most successful founders, for anyone who's curious:

* Twitch: Yale, MIT

* Cruise: MIT, Claremont McKenna

* OMGPOP: Princeton

* Heroku: UCSD

* Airbnb: RISD, Harvard

* Dropbox: MIT

* Zenefits: Harvard

It's interesting that Stanford and Berkeley are not represented here, probably because good companies founded by students there can easily get funded without going through YC. It seems like YC's strength lies in drawing elites from the rest of the country to SV.

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

#283

Post by sama »

d0m wrote: post #280

When YC started, it was so small that PG and Jessica knew everyone's names and could invest a lot of time and effort into making the startups successful. One complaint as YC gets bigger is that there is more "Fast food advice", i.e. there are so many startups that a partner can't hardly remember all of them and we both know that most often than not the devil is in the details. What's YC plan to make sure this doesn't…

The main thing is that we shard YC into small internal groups. I know all the startups in my group in the batch well, and very little about the startups in other groups.

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

#285

Post by sama »

drwl wrote: post #272

Was there a moment in your life that created a sense of urgency to live life to the fullest? From the looks of things you're doing so many (cool) things.

None of us live very long. May as well try to contribute to the future and try to feel fulfilled in the little time you have.

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

#286

Post by GFischer »

sama wrote: post #269
GFischer wrote: post #251

What would you value more for the application: a potentially huge, innovative idea plus a weekend-hack prototype/demo but no market validation yet, or a more mature, somewhat validated product but with existing startups on the space, some YC-backed? I have a very clear vision of what we want to accomplish, but we're selling a much more down to earth service to our customers and prospects. I do think there's a path le…

It would depend on the specifics in each case, but probably the potentially huge idea.

Thank you :) and thanks for the AMA.

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

#287

Post by foobarqux »

sama wrote: post #265
BinaryIdiot wrote: post #221

Hey Sam, Any comment regarding Jason Calacanis being banned from YC's upcoming demo day? Jason tweeted[1] his side but didn't know what the YC side of it was and was curious. [1] https://twitter.com/Jason/status/710176806184349696

To be clear, it has nothing to do with all the shit he talks about YC. Though that's annoying, it's fine. We collect feedback from YC founders on investors (we have a giant database of this). If you mistreat founders, we don't invite you to Demo Day. This isn't permanent--if you stop mistreating founders we start inviting you again. Also, it's possible that our founders are wrong in their assessment of how a particul…

Is it true that some VCs get first dibs on YC companies before demo day?

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

#289

Post by foobarqux »

carlisle_ wrote: post #278
BinaryIdiot wrote: post #221

Hey Sam, Any comment regarding Jason Calacanis being banned from YC's upcoming demo day? Jason tweeted[1] his side but didn't know what the YC side of it was and was curious. [1] https://twitter.com/Jason/status/710176806184349696

Jason is a bully. I've heard plenty of horror stories of people who have worked for him. I'm not surprised in the least and I'm extremely glad to see people standing up to him.

Care to share any specific ones?

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

#290

Post by phibit »

DKnoll wrote: post #266
phibit wrote: post #219

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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…

How long did it take for us (the West as a whole) to recognise the situation in Syria, and how many Syrians died in the meantime?

Very thought-provoking question but you've now completely diverged from the original topic.
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