381–390 of 458 posts
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Honestly, that's a tough combination. We'd look for evidence that he or she could execute and make stuff happen.
To clarify - are single founder, early stage applications unlikely to be invited to interview at YC? At what point does 'early stage' no longer matter?
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Yep, well that would be interesting in the sense of how you could disrupt the music business by "manufacturing" beats. We've seen some similar progress around machine generated art (e.g. deep dreaming and the like).
I'd sooner expect strong AI than an AI that can actually produce good music purely autonomously.
Nevertheless, here's a novel composition made by an NLP algorithm trained on classical music:
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.
As far as formally completing a degree (i.e. getting a printed piece of paper that says Ph.D. next to my name) I find it practically irrelevant for either getting hired in the industry or being useful once hired. My 2c.
It seems half these questions are from Single Founders. Considering YC's interest in experimenting with who and what they fund... Has YC ever considered a class of only single founders and trying to solve the problems YC anticipates with single founder startups (i.e. emotional support, etc...) It seems to me that the demand is there, and the potential for single founders to succeed is certainly possible... why not ex…
What we've thought about the most is creating a better way for potential cofounders to meet each other.
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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?
Thanks to having read that book before I started my startup, that startup has now become two thriving companies in a highly challenging market, and I've figured out some methods of overcoming major personal challenges, that could turn out to be hugely valuable to many other people, once I'm ready share them.
I'm still working through my own dip, but had I not read that book I'd have quit very early on and would likely be living a pretty mundane existence.
It's a short book, but an invaluable one.
In a normal company, run by adults, this abuse of the company name to settle a personal grudge would lead to their being fired in disgrace.
Why didn't this happen? It seems especially strange that these people were retained, given how disliked Buchheit and Gackle are even in the YC community. What did they have to offer (or threaten) in order to keep their jobs?
How important is for YC founders to be ethical in a world that cares mostly about financial success, profit margins, exponential growth, etc? Think Theranos, Zenefits et al.
https://www.ycombinator.com/ethics/
Two related questions. It's known YC prefers teams. Do you have a preferred shape or size for the team (2 tech, 1 marketing, or 1 tech, 1 web, 1 marketing and business etc); is any combination shown to be more likely to succeed within YC? How do you view teams too heavy on tech? It's common for a group of tech people to have the idea, but as a team have some gaps on say the marketing side, and probably other areas. A…
Some tips I've found for finding/actuating a good marketer; 1) Dig into exact contributions to campaigns for past roles. Ask for the logic around decisions. Often marketers talk about their campaigns results but really they were a body in a room with little input. Dig for detail and motivations to decisions and you will find out who is who. 2) Look for initiative. Many marketeers repeat what is always done optimising…
Definitely matches some of the fun we had trying to figure it out in the dark.
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What we've thought about the most is creating a better way for potential cofounders to meet each other.
Do you think it's usually possible for two potential cofounders who don't already know one another to sufficiently evaluate one another quickly enough to start a company together in the short term (say, less than 3 months)? There seem to be similar challenges to creating a scalable solution for finding an SO/spouse (another unsolved problem).
For example a mountaineering class at the National Outdoor Leadership School puts students who don't know each other, and might not know anything about climbing, into serious high-mountain situations for a month. At the end of the class, groups of students head off on "small group expeditions" for a few days without instructors. NOLS has an excellent safety record and students often form strong friendships.
The military is another institution that takes people who don't know each other and quickly forms bonds of trust and mutual understanding to perform under very serious conditions.
Granted--those are carefully managed situations where the people are facing shared challenges. But maybe that's what YC would need to create in order to foster an environment in which founders can build strong enough relationships to feel comfortable building companies together.