You have said that the best founders believe their success is inevitable, yet YC (understandably) has a really high failure rate.
Do you think it helps, as a founder and in life, to be optimistic rather than realistic?
I Am Sam Altman, President of YC Group. AMA
371–380 of 458 posts
Re: I Am Sam Altman, President of YC Group. AMA
#372Re: I Am Sam Altman, President of YC Group. AMA
#373Earlier quoted context omitted.
What we've thought about the most is creating a better way for potential cofounders to meet each other.
Thanks for answering. Prehaps a batch of single founders is a great way to do this. (i.e. they all work on their own ideas, and at the end of the batch, they consolidate based on relationships they hit off, success of individual ideas, etc...) I think YC would agree that people in the same YC class make some outstandingly strong friendships.
Yes, maybe suggest single founders live in the same house/apartment complex...
Re: I Am Sam Altman, President of YC Group. AMA
#374Sam, what would you say to a bootstrapped fast-food delivery startup, cash positive, little overhead and 10,000's of customers applying to YC?
Re: I Am Sam Altman, President of YC Group. AMA
#375Earlier quoted context omitted.
Hey Sam, What's the difference between being persistent and wasting time? I'm curious as to where you draw the line.
Seth Godin wrote a book on the subject https://www.amazon.com/Dip-Little-Book-Teaches-Stick/dp/1591...
Have you read this book? If so, how good is it?
Re: I Am Sam Altman, President of YC Group. AMA
#376Earlier quoted context omitted.
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.
This happened in the last general election in the UK. Someone drew a penis next to the conservative candidate's name on the ballot paper and it was counted as a vote.
http://www.itv.com/news/wales/update/2015-05-08/angry-voter-...
Re: I Am Sam Altman, President of YC Group. AMA
#377Earlier quoted context omitted.
> I like the idea of a guaranteed floor but no ceiling Raising that floor seems like it would simply devalue the dollar. I'm not sure how having no ceiling helps the situation.
Raising the floor logically implies redistributing real wealth to the poor from the non-poor, but implies nothing about the value of a dollar.
It seems to me that prices and wages would rise as a result of raising the floor. The important question is where the money comes from to raise the floor. If it is not from the top end, the gap between rich and poor doesn't change in terms of actual buying power. It may just widen the gap.
Re: I Am Sam Altman, President of YC Group. AMA
#378You (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.
failures are at least as important a dataset as successes. Most technical entrepreneurs i know are very pattern oriented people. And in a way Reducing the datasets to successes will invitably bias their patterns one way.
If the goal of writing about startups is to encourage more entrepreneurs to take the plunge, writing about success is certainly a good way. However, if the goal is to help entrepreneurs make better decisions, and hopefully lead to a higher success rate, then sharing failure stories becomes necessary.
Re: I Am Sam Altman, President of YC Group. AMA
#379Do you plan to allow future YC teams to attend the program remotely, or with a greatly reduced expectation of spending time in Mountain View? I get that SV is a great place to start a startup, all things being equal. But there are a lot of great opportunities that are 8-12 time zones away. And leaving your customers alone for 3 months -- especially if you are trying to grow rapidly during those 3 months -- sounds ver…
We have discussed trying a remote group through the YC batch. Although we're all varying degrees of skeptical, I think it's worth a try. As you point out, there are (some) good reasons that MV doesn't make sense, like your customers being very far away. That said, it's only three months.
I think it can be tough to move to SV for someone who is married with kids. That is what has stopped me from applying, and I have definitely thought about creative ways I could make it work logistically. :)
Re: I Am Sam Altman, President of YC Group. AMA
#380Hi, I know you started accepting hardware startups recently, I also realize you value teams that can iterate quickly. Having spent 18 months working to show that what the complex hardware product is feasible, my worry is that we would be seen as "slow" because in the software world , where I came from, 18 months is a lifetime. So my question is, do you treat hardware and software startups the same in terms of iteration speed?
Cheers!