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I Am Sam Altman, President of YC Group. AMA

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271–280 of 458 posts

Re: I Am Sam Altman, President of YC Group. AMA

#271

Hi Sam, in interview with Elon Musk, you asked him 'Do you think people that want to be useful today should get PhDs?' Elon: Mostly not. Here are my questions: 1. Do you think people need to get a PhD degree to become useful research scientist in AI industry? 2. Do you think people need to get a PhD degree to become Member of Technical Staff (Machine Learning) in Open AI? Thank you.

I know this is addressed at sama, but as someone doing AI without a PhD:

1. Not at all. You need to develop a consistent work schedule that will consist of researching papers, applying the knowledge, and writing your own. There is a lot of theory and practice. Very exciting time to be in AI.

What you need is time and the interest in doing it. Feel free to email me if you have questions (not a sales pitch, just being friendly).

Re: I Am Sam Altman, President of YC Group. AMA

#272
My hardest decision in the past has often been when to decide a startup has failed and its time to move on. Having seen many startups both succeed and fail you're in a unique position to perhaps give some strong opinions on this. Do you have any sort of timelines/guidelines you like to look at as a gauge of success and when it's time to double down or dump it off the side and try again?

Re: I Am Sam Altman, President of YC Group. AMA

#273
post #24
post #8

You (and by extension YC) always seem to mostly focus on the success stories of the alumni/group. Have you or will you consider talking about the failures? If you can't do it, is there a reason why?

We do try to talk about this but should talk about it more. It turns out that most people (and certainly most journalists) want to talk about/write about the success cases. I'll think about how to best do this.

Actually, you could reply to that commenter with a link to the interview you recently did with Livingston where you asked what successful ones have in common. Her answer was focus but she mentioned all kinds of bad habits that led to actual failures. It's a nice start on the list.

I'd do it myself but lost some bookmarks in a recent crash/restore cycle.

Re: I Am Sam Altman, President of YC Group. AMA

#274
post #244

What is your view on income inequality? Do you think the start-up structure of running a business could increase or decrease income inequality (and what do you consider beneficial?)

I think it's a consequence of technology but a real challenge for society. I think the right goal is probably to eliminate poverty--conceptually, I like the idea of a guaranteed floor but no ceiling. I'm very interested in basic income and we're running a large experiment on it. If that doesn't work we have some other ideas.

Out of curiosity (realizing how early current experiments are) do you expect there to be any correlation between providing basic income and people engaging in entrepreneurial activity?

I'd expect the YC volume has to have given you some sense of how much "mouths to feed" affects ability and inclination to jump off the startup cliff in a wingsuit.

Re: I Am Sam Altman, President of YC Group. AMA

#275
You've said it's important for founders to be able to communicate and persuade, both in public and one on one. I think in that same talk you claimed to not be a very good public speaker but that you were much better in person. There are lots of examples for learning better public communication. How do you learn to be better one on one?

Re: I Am Sam Altman, President of YC Group. AMA

#277

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'd especially like to see this in the form of lessons learned. Some of my favorite startup pieces are where a founder sat down, told their story, and said, "Next time, here's what I'm doing different." In the startup world we have to be comfortable making mistakes, but I really want those to be new, interesting mistakes.

Even better, usually, is the second/third-time founder actually operating differently after making those mistakes the first time around. That way it's less "here's how I messed up" and more "here's how I messed up, and I know because what I'm doing now is working a lot better."

Two & Three trick pony's are very rare, usually a guy gets over confident after his first win, put's it all in the pot, and assumes he's going to win the house. Just like poker, its a losers play.

Better for recursive 'winning entrepreneurs' to play it like sam, and dole out their money to 100 different excellent candidates, and then manage the winners, and try to cull the losers early.

...

Harvard spends a lot of time on case history, and a lot of time on losers. But in general once you have been an entrepreneur its pretty quick to spot a loser or a winner.

For first time young guys with a good idea, and the right experience '25 years' is about right, 2 or 3 founders is right, backed by a good CPA and law-firm is rarely mentioned but this can be more key than TECH, as fighting the legal hassles and avoiding taxation are more important than how much money you make, its all about much money you walk away with when the game is over.

Very few people play second rounds, I think most lose their health, and of course most fail, and you don't hear about them. These few people who continue to play VC, are in the game for the love of it, the connections of SV and such, for most people the dream is to get out and grow wine grapes, or just get far from the rat race.

I think most 'winners' end up like the WOZ, they just retire early and spend their lives doing as they wish, very few become like Jobs and try be a control freak until death. I think a normal person gets very bored with managing people after a certain point. Even fewer 'winners' become VC enablers, again we only hear about the winner's. Most 'winners' are smart enough to know that making money is easy, keeping it is hard, so said Carnegie of steel in the 1800's.

Re: I Am Sam Altman, President of YC Group. AMA

#278

Does the YC Group provide any psychological counseling/guidance/referals for attendees? Does it feel any responsibility to?

I'm actually working on a startup to provide medical/mental health benefit for startups, but I think we might be too early to apply to YC...we're doing a private beta right now...interesting to see this come up.

Re: I Am Sam Altman, President of YC Group. AMA

#279
post #171

Do you really think that financially incentivizing voting will create good downstream effects? Almost all ideas of civic duty are historically drawn from non-financial incentives and the idea of attaching some financial incentive to them potentially seems to further exacerbate a "pay to play" atmosphere that is one of the reasons people (like myself) don't find it particularly stimulating to participate in the presen…

Here in Australia we get a fine if we don’t turn up at the polling place and have our name crossed off the list on election day. Of course this creates a pool of voters (5-10%) who really don’t want to participate (these people typically spoil their ballot by doing things like drawing a penis on the ballot), but what this does do is keep a much larger section of the population engaged in the political process. What h…

Incidentally, I think the AEC said prior to the last election that you could effectively draw a cock and balls on your ballot, but if the intention of otherwise marking candidate preference was clear, the vote could count.

Re: I Am Sam Altman, President of YC Group. AMA

#280
post #254
post #236

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The East Coast is not the first place I'd go to find more people who want to focus on solving larger problems. If anything, I think I'd probably go further west...

interesting ellipsis. is there a yc china coming soon?

I'd say India, but either would be exciting.
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