What public companies have you invested in?
AAPL, AMZN, TSLA, GOOGL, INTC, FB, YELP, BOX.
I like tech.
I Am Sam Altman, President of Y Combinator. AMA
371–380 of 768 posts
Re: I Am Sam Altman, President of Y Combinator. AMA
#372Has 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…
Were the companies rejected by YC that have gone on to be the most successful often just below the cutoff?
Re: I Am Sam Altman, President of Y Combinator. AMA
#373I've applied like 3 times already. The second time we had a follow up question but nothing else, should I give up applying with this company?
I had to stop and give a response. As a fellow entrepreneur/founder I'd say if you're building a startup to get into YC, you're not worried about the right thing. The metrics I've found most useful in building a startup/company in general are 1. Are your users happy? 2. Are your users happy enough to refer other people to join? If you nail those, then what does anything else matter?
I'm sorry if I gave the wrong idea, but no. We are not building our company (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vz7QpBub6fo) to get into YC. Not sure how you deducted that. Trying to apply several times was something that made sense for us at that time and nothing else.
But it would be goog to know if YC is not interested in our company at all.
Re: I Am Sam Altman, President of Y Combinator. AMA
#374I'd love to apply, but I'm on a H1-b visa and I'm basically in prison. How did the other international founders you worked with get around the immigration mess to start a company?
Find a great lawyer and have them use your startup Delaware corp as sponsor for your H1B. It's like moving employers. You may need to move $$$ into the company to demonstrate there is enough money to meet your minimum wage category and few other hoops. Alternatively apply for an investors visa but this will mean more capital injection into your US entity and more of those hoops to jump. Happy to talk offline. I'm no lawyer but have been through few Visas and similar scenario to yours. PS. There is no prison ;-)
Re: I Am Sam Altman, President of Y Combinator. AMA
#375Will there be another YC Hacks this year? Did any teams/projects from YC Hacks wind up going through YC?
No--we try a lot of things but they don't all work. When they don't, we move on to new ones.
Re: I Am Sam Altman, President of Y Combinator. AMA
#376Could you share some personal insight into modelling AI systems?
Re: I Am Sam Altman, President of Y Combinator. AMA
#377Do you have some advice about how a founder should organize their day? How many hours of coding/designing/talking to users/sleeping...?
Re: I Am Sam Altman, President of Y Combinator. AMA
#378Hi Sam, Two of my college buddies and I applied to YC this week, we're looking forward to growing our startup idea. What do you think is the number one thing that most founders don't think about that ultimately hurts their company?
I would have to say asking Sam Altman for advice. Most founders simply don't think to do it and it ends up hurting them tremendously in the long run. You're on the right track.
Re: I Am Sam Altman, President of Y Combinator. AMA
#379Hi Sam, You've mentioned many times, more so recently, that YC is committed to investing in hard tech problems. When considering companies solving these problems for the next batch, knowing that often times even getting a prototype ready is a massive undertaking, how much chance does one have applying with nothing more than an idea and some research? And the possibility that it won't generate revenue for 5+ years?
A common failure mode for companies like these is to talk a lot about how hard their problems are and never get anything at all done.
Even a huge project starts with a first step. We look for founders that get that one done, and then the second, and ...
Good founders get stuff done. Bad founders talk about why they aren't getting stuff done. This is true for web apps and nuclear reactors.
Re: I Am Sam Altman, President of Y Combinator. AMA
#380Hey 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
Nothing but positives about Jason, I was in the last Launch class. I was away from my family for 4 months. Jason invited me to thanksgiving and when my family did arrive we had play dates with his family.
Post Launch he could easily cut us loose and focus on the top 1% of his portfolio. He doesn't do that, he is incredibly loyal and helpful. Some people just don't like that he likes to win but he doesn't do it at the expense of others in my experience.