441–450 of 458 posts
What is the oldest age for a founder that you have accepted for YC?
Early 70s.
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Yes the combination of compulsory and preferential voting has a great calming influence on the political system. Our two major parties (labor and liberal) are very similar in practice as they are competing for the middle ground, not the exciting the extreme wings to the polls. The only downside is it tends to make for boring politics, but overall boring is good if you have to live in the country.
pity it's such a shitstorm of conservative religious interest group pandering with a touch of racism, xenophobia and homophobia at present :(
The good thing is it is mostly just noise - what actually gets through the parliament is much more benign.
Sam, thanks for taking the time to talk with us. I hope it's ok, but I've got a few questions about something not directly related to YC applications. As a middle-aged developer, I've seen a lot in my lifetime, but I believe that right now, even though in some ways I'm much more hopeful for the future than I've ever been, I feel like there are many huge time-bombs out there in the world that make focusing on a startu…
war - https://medium.com/@angushervey/the-decline-of-war-8760f9a5b...
democracy - https://ourworldindata.org/democratisation/
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You raise very good points. The future will either be great or terrible--I think an intermediate outcome is unlikely. I think it's a super exciting time to be alive, but I feel the shared sense of responsibility most others do to do everything I can to get safely through the other side. I understand the desire to save enough for a scary world ahead, and I think it's prudent to do that. Beyond, that, if you're nervous…
Intermediate outcomes have predominated through most of human history. Why do you think it's different this time?
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Early 70s.
That's awesome! Male or female? As an older(40+) female single founder in EdTech, I find it very difficult to attract investment and so have others with the same profile as me. How should we approach fund raising?
I know you know a bunch of people who are concerned about technological stagnation and I was curious about your personal take on it.
Thanks
Sam, thanks for taking the time to talk with us. I hope it's ok, but I've got a few questions about something not directly related to YC applications. As a middle-aged developer, I've seen a lot in my lifetime, but I believe that right now, even though in some ways I'm much more hopeful for the future than I've ever been, I feel like there are many huge time-bombs out there in the world that make focusing on a startu…
I don't want to sound too arrogant but why should I apply if I think I can succeed on my own?
You should apply if you think the company will be worth ~7% more if you do YC that it would be worth if you do it on your own. If you could make a $10B company on your own, but doing YC could make it be a $20B company, then it would obviously be well worth it.
Sam, are the odds stacked against us if we have 5 founders? (EE, ME, EE, SW, Sales/Business) Also does a startup that can help reduce carbon emissions/move from something that generates lots of emission classify under the energy section of request for startup?
Slightly against--we're not sure why it is, but 5 or 6 founder companies have (with some notable exceptions) significantly underperformed our average.