is YC fellowship more solo founder friendly than your regular YC program?
I Am Sam Altman, President of Y Combinator. AMA
501–510 of 768 posts
Re: I Am Sam Altman, President of Y Combinator. AMA
#502Earlier quoted context omitted.
From dang, who runs HN: "about 310k daily uniques and about 10x that in page views"
That's actually much less than I would've expected.
Every HN reader is an above decent potential founder or at the very least potential product starter/inventor/maker... That is 310,000 potential companies. I do not see anywhere else you could have that many of the same profile.
Re: I Am Sam Altman, President of Y Combinator. AMA
#503Earlier quoted context omitted.
Applying for government grants?
Never thought of that, honestly - I'll look into it. I've had surprising amount of folk ask in seriousness why I'm trying to take money away from the budget starved city, though.. That mindset might push back. Still worth a shot! ;)
Mind if I ask what city? Some cities and states have grant programs for exactly this kind of thing.
Re: I Am Sam Altman, President of Y Combinator. AMA
#504Earlier 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…
Can anybody name a few successful high-growth startups that were started by people with these kinds of family obligations? If it has happened before, that's evidence that it can happen again, but if it's never happened before, that's evidence that it may be harder or impossible to form a high-growth startup under obligations like those. (Disclaimer: high-growth startups are not the only kind of business worth forming…
JBoss, EDS and Linksys or Netgear were started by guys in serious relationships where failure meant "get a real job to keep the fiance/wife."
Elon Musk had wealth but rolled the dice while married and nearly ran out of cash funding his 3 companies.
Re: I Am Sam Altman, President of Y Combinator. AMA
#505I'm at a YC startup that's successful. How do you look at early employees of such companies, and how I tactfully apply? There is no way I could without it getting back to my CEO (or so it seems to me)
Why haven't you told them you have a side project/ are interested in starting your own company?
Re: I Am Sam Altman, President of Y Combinator. AMA
#506Earlier quoted context omitted.
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…
I can second this. I worked for a similar unnamed incubator company in the Bay Area and a vast majority of the ideas sent to us were from good-hearted people, but absolutely ludicrous and—at least from our opinion—would never be able to become successful businesses. Some people just really seem to have problems understanding product-market fit. My guess would be that applicants to Y-Combinator are probably along the…
If possible to ethically disclose this, what was the craziest thing you think could have worked, amd the outright craziest.
Re: I Am Sam Altman, President of Y Combinator. AMA
#507Earlier 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…
Can anybody name a few successful high-growth startups that were started by people with these kinds of family obligations? If it has happened before, that's evidence that it can happen again, but if it's never happened before, that's evidence that it may be harder or impossible to form a high-growth startup under obligations like those. (Disclaimer: high-growth startups are not the only kind of business worth forming…
SpaceX and Tesla?
But more seriously, some examples: http://priceonomics.com/founders-with-kids/
Re: I Am Sam Altman, President of Y Combinator. AMA
#508Earlier quoted context omitted.
Never thought of that, honestly - I'll look into it. I've had surprising amount of folk ask in seriousness why I'm trying to take money away from the budget starved city, though.. That mindset might push back. Still worth a shot! ;)
Mind if I ask what city? Some cities and states have grant programs for exactly this kind of thing.
Nice! I'm doing this out of Chicago, IL.
Re: I Am Sam Altman, President of Y Combinator. AMA
#509Earlier 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?
> Why does a person migrating today deserve to be treated as second class? You don't go into someone else's home and then expect to be treated like family. I don't think immigration policy is really centered around morality or what people "deserve" but, like with most government policy, looking out for the interests of the country.
It's in the interests of countries to have the best and brightest in the world starting businesses there.
Re: I Am Sam Altman, President of Y Combinator. AMA
#510Is Hacker News comment history "private/free speech", or does YC use Hacker News comment history in judging founders, employees, business partners etc.? I'm not talking about the judgements anybody could make by googling, I'm talking about using your positions as insiders, is Hacker News a source of intel? I am not a partner or potential partner, I ask because sometimes I see people write well meaning things that mak…
Personally, I never read an applicant's HN comments, nor do I note the names associated with comments with I read HN.
I note that this is not actually an answer.