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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

#351

Post by sama »

rsp1984 wrote: post #328

Obviously YC can't enter into NDAs with applicants but can you shed a little bit of light on what YC does to protect the applicants' business ideas? Some might be discouraged from applying because they fear if the idea is interesting (but not the team or there's another reason it's not accepted) that someone from within YC or a related ecosystem might just take the idea and look at the product so far and decide to ju…

Honestly, we are so busy, there are so many companies, and ideas are worth so little, that most of us don't think twice about a specific company once we move on to the next applications.

The very best ideas usually don't seem worth stealing.

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

#352

Post by biot »

_ll5a wrote: post #304

Has 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.

Or another idea along these lines might be to have a checkbox on the application that says "Submit to audience choice if rejected" and, if they don't get in, those applications are opened to voting by HN users above a certain karma threshold. Pick the five highest ranked applications and bring them in as a normal YC company.

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

#353

Post by aidenn0 »

vogt wrote: post #342
aidenn0 wrote: post #339

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

And it's interesting because the difference between "valid negotiating tactic" and "being an asshole" is so context dependent.

There are plenty of situations where flat out lying is not just acceptable, but expected as a bargaining tactic, along with other behavior that would be unacceptable in other situations.

Just thinking about the different ways I buy things at flea markets, the grocery store, and an auto dealership shows 3 very different behaviors.

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

#354

Post by andkon »

jackpirate wrote: post #156
sama wrote: post #142

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We have multiple people review each application (except the very good/very bad ones) and we look at the cases where the assessments are very different. Some of the best companies have the most disagreement, which is why we have implemented our "strong yes" policy--if any single partner wants to fund a company, we fund it. It's much more important to our returns that we fund the next Airbnb than if we mistakenly fund…

This is a really uninformative answer. Every peer reviewed conference/journal also does this. The NIPS study was special because they did more. They ran a controlled experiment to determine the exact variance in acceptance rates and then published the results. The GP was asking you to repeat the NIPS experiment.

If any partner can unilaterally say yes to any application, it makes the NIPS study irrelevant to their problem.

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

#355

Post by joshmanders »

galistoca wrote: post #319
eranation wrote: post #216

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

I wouldn't bet on a founder who is not willing to take on risks. I am not being judgmental, I'm just saying whoever complains about this should face the reality--The reality is that there are tons of other people who are as qualified as this person who ARE willing to take that kind of risks. All things equal, there's no reason why VCs should fund people who don't want to take risks.

Leaving your area for three months isn't taking on risks. I'm sure YC would be foaming at the mouth to take basecamp and if they could start over with the ability to apply to YC I'm sure DHH and Jason would still turn it down if they were required to go to SF.

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

#356

Post by eruditely »

spike021 wrote: post #145

Education-wise, are you able to describe the percentages of applicants with backgrounds coming from top schools versus lower-tier schools? Being in the Bay Area, I know that Stanford and UC Berkeley tend to have a decent amount of relatively successful launches/founders, but on the other hand I can't say I hear nearly as much about people who went to San Francisco State or San Jose State (or any other lower-tier scho…

Do you guys really consider SJ State to be a low-tier school? Not even for something like mathematics?

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

#357

Post by BillionaireBear »

toomuchtodo wrote: post #263
BillionaireBear wrote: post #213

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Precisely. People need to be where their customers are.

How many YC company customers are in SF?

Hey :)

Just to clarify my statement - for some companies, it makes complete sense to stay in their local territory (think a young Alibaba). For some others, it doesn't. It's case by case.

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

#358

Post by RCra »

Hey Sam! We're disrupting a $3.2B information market, full of old slow tech. We've received encouragement from YC alum to apply and had help with our application, but warned that what we're doing might be too difficult for the average tech person to grasp and be vetted out for this reason. We have 11k in revenue from our first sales cycle and 200% mom user growth. Any recommendations on how we can make sure we get heard?

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

#359

Post by Alupis »

DKnoll wrote: post #315
Alupis wrote: post #305

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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? Should probably recognize that civil wars, genocide, and humanitarian disasters are occurring all around the world, right now, and no nation is doing anything about it (nor does the average person even know about these). Nations of the world have no real obligation to do anything... whic…

>and work is being done to accomplish this. That's the best euphemism for bombs and sponsoring what we would otherwise consider terrorist organisations I've ever heard.

> That's the best euphemism for bombs and sponsoring what we would otherwise consider terrorist organisations I've ever heard

I do believe you have inadvertently made my point.

"The west" (including Canada) doesn't care about any global issue unless it conflicts with their interests. In this case, the Assad regime was/is uncooperative with the US in particular, which is why the US seized the opportunity to topple his control (via many methods, including funding known terrorist organizations which just happen to also be against the Assad regime at this moment in time).

"The west" is not involved in any other civil war or genocide at the moment, although there are many active around the world.

> >and work is being done to accomplish this.

Perhaps you're not current on events, but non-military options are being taken right now, and are looking somewhat promising.

We've gone far into the weeds here and gotten even further off-topic than we already were. I, however, feel you're the type to want the last word, so feel free.

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

#360

Post by brownbat »

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…

> both Canada and the US have the right to protect their national interests

The unstated premise is that the current structure of our immigration system serves any national interest.

Let's set aside the fact that immigration creates more jobs for natives than it displaces (turns out immigrants buy things just like natives do),[0] and that there's near universal consensus among economists that restrictions on the movement of goods, people, and money invariably hurt a state more than they help, and that we clearly agree with this philosophy when moving these things 3,250 miles from Anchorage to Albany, just somehow don't for the 210 miles from Ottawa.

Let's set all that aside and assume there's some coherent and humane rationale for telling people who they're allowed to do business with and where they're allowed to walk based on the random accident of what hospital they were born in.

Even then, the current administration of immigration law is nonsensical in several ways. If a citizen's brother was born in the Philippines, they would have had to apply 23 years ago for the State Department to even read their application.[1] We have a bunch of categories where we've picked quotas out of a hat that have no meaningful relationship to the country's needs. Quotas are a particularly terrible approach to rationing, especially when you have to apply in a single category, so there's no extra consideration for someone who would be valuable for multiple reasons (ie, someone who holds a unique advanced degree, is a family member of a citizen, and is fleeing persecution in another country).

The fact that all countries do something does not make it right, or even necessarily rational.[2]

[0] https://www.uschamber.com/sites/default/files/legacy/reports...

[1] http://travel.state.gov/content/visas/en/law-and-policy/bull...

[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Slavery

N.B. - Thank you for your civil comment on a difficult topic, this is exactly why I like discussions on HN, so upvoted even though I'm adding a counterpoint.

EDIT - misplaced cite

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