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I Am Sam Altman, President of Y Combinator. AMA
341–350 of 768 posts
Re: I Am Sam Altman, President of Y Combinator. AMA
#342Earlier quoted context omitted.
Just for what it's worth, as I know it isn't the same as working for someone - I interviewed for a position working directly for Jason and he was all class. I'm a designer and part of the interview process, as is often the case, was to complete a small design project. He flat out insisted on paying me for my time (nobody else in my career has ever even offered) and wouldn't take no for an answer, and was professional…
That might make sense; strongarm negotiating doesn't necessarily mean you treat everyone like crap, but when there is more VC money than there are companies to invest in might cause you to lose out on deals.
Like I said, it was just my 2 cents for what they are worth here when Jason is being called a bully to people. I don't expect my experience to be analogous in the VC world or anything.
Re: I Am Sam Altman, President of Y Combinator. AMA
#343What are your thoughts regarding the effects venture capital strategy (game theory) has on the compute markets, specifically the creation and acceleration of bubble phases? Do you believe venture capital, beyond the obvious benefits for investors and founders, actually provides a heathy, sustainable ecosystem for innovation and advancement of humanity and the planet?
Re: I Am Sam Altman, President of Y Combinator. AMA
#344My company Krewe ( https://www.gokrewe.com ) is aimed at helping people make a new group of close friends in their neighborhood that they can see every day and build a strong local community. I only have a couple hundred sign ups (after about three weeks) so I don't know for sure that the concept will work. I also don't have a cofounder. Should I apply to YC now, or potentially wait for the next batch when I would (h…
Just want to say that I love your idea! Though, I do find the font a little hard to read, but that just might be me.
Re: I Am Sam Altman, President of Y Combinator. AMA
#345Hi Sam! We here in Finland have been slowly developing a startup ecosystem. The effort started 5-years ago and now finally, thanks to the amazing bunch of volunteers, we have stuff like Slush and Startup Saunato show for it. What would be your advice in rocketing the finnish startup ecosystem to the next level? P.S. You should visit us sometime, we'd love to host you at Startup Sauna!
Not sama, but one suggestion: cut down on the sauna references (Startup Sauna, Silicon Sauna, etc.). It runs the risk of sounding too silly/humorous.
Re: I Am Sam Altman, President of Y Combinator. AMA
#346Earlier quoted context omitted.
You suggested that those in 'dire straits' are treated differently, and I responded that, yes, they are, however it takes a significant amount of time and lives lost for us to recognise this.
It seems like you just joined a conversation about work Visas, but you had already decided you wanted to talk about Syria today.
If you look closely, you'll notice I've been talking about systemic racism this whole time.
Re: I Am Sam Altman, President of Y Combinator. AMA
#347Earlier quoted context omitted.
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 interesti…
Reddit was UVA, which is a pretty good school but not really what people think of as "elite".
Instacart was Waterloo, also a very good school but not a huge name outside of tech.
RethinkDB was Stony Brook University.
Mixpanel was an Arizona State dropout.
Re: I Am Sam Altman, President of Y Combinator. AMA
#348Has YC ever considered having a control group by randomly pre-accepting certain applicants into the program automatically? I'd be curious to see the stats on how successful that group would be versus the group that's actually picked by the committee.
We do talk about that every once in awhile, but the average company that applies to YC is not very good and thus the experiment would hurt the network (and be painful for us to work with).
What we've more seriously considered is randomly funding some companies just below the threshold.
Also, we do look at our ranking to see how companies at the top vs companies near the cutoff do. It's rare (but not unheard of) for a company very near the cutoff to be one of our most successful companies.
Re: I Am Sam Altman, President of Y Combinator. AMA
#349Earlier quoted context omitted.
You can usually find some intermediate milestone to prove to investors you're more than just a talker.
Do you have any examples?
Build a simulation(in some multiphysics simulation tool) that shows your concept may work and can be validated by a 3rd party.
Re: I Am Sam Altman, President of Y Combinator. AMA
#350I found a "YCombinator" account on WeChat yesterday. Is it indeed YC's official WeChat?
Here is the screenshot: http://logicalorange.com/mis/YCWeChat.jpg
Thanks for the AMA Sam!