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I Am Sam Altman, President of Y Combinator. AMA

news.ycombinator.com

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Re: I Am Sam Altman, President of Y Combinator. AMA

#203

Post by t27 »

For hardware cos applying to this batch, the Bolt collaboration sounds awesome. Since Bolt has super expertise in prototyping, is it an indication that hardware ideas with an idea only Or partial prototype can get accepted? How can such co.s improve their chances further, compared to software co.s where making a proof of concept barely costs any money?

Re: I Am Sam Altman, President of Y Combinator. AMA

#204

Post by tehansen »

sama wrote: post #81
tehansen wrote: post #71

Do you think that YC could ever invest or advise startups / founders that can't move to silicon valley for 3 months for one reason or another? Is there something inherent in the in-person experience that cannot be overcome by technology (in general too i suppose, rather than just the type of work ycombinator does)? Personally i believe we're not quite there yet. I have some hope, that within our life time communicati…

There is for sure something about in-person interaction that cannot be replaced by any current technology. Alan Kay recently told me he thinks it's something biological. Our model just doesn't work well for people that can't move to the valley for 3 months. Remote work is good in many cases, but early-stage startup advising is not one of them.

Thank you for taking the time to answer :)

I have no doubt its biological, but biological processes are inherent to any human activity and are ultimately based on physics as well. Consider even just the absurd number of extremely complex biological processes involved in typing a reply as we essentially communicate telepathically thousands of miles apart right now.

I'm daydreaming about having a captivating discussion with you and Alan Kay in which I manage to convince both of you to help me replace current technology with something that would change this and the world with it.

Any advice on how to make that happen?

I'm leaning towards "stop daydreaming and get to work building it" being the best advice toward that end myself...but then there is all the other things I need to get done as well.

:P

Re: I Am Sam Altman, President of Y Combinator. AMA

#205

Post by GolfyMcG »

shubhamjain wrote: post #140

With you recently leading a round of investment for reddit, it seems you are quite optimistic about its success but as of late 2013 (and maybe now too), Reddit remains in red even after nearly a decade of its inception[1]. Reddit CEO once said, that ads are the reasons Digg failed[2], so I believe the site would be wary of using ads to the fullest. How do you think Reddit would become profitable and would be able to…

Also, if you don't use Alien Blue (the mobile app for Reddit) then you might not know they have been testing "Sponsored" posts. It didn't take a genius to know people would complain, but the ads are getting A LOT of pushback from users. I supposed you can put this in context and look at how Facebook gets crap for changing anything, but is this really the most creative idea Reddit can come up with to generate more revenue?

Re: I Am Sam Altman, President of Y Combinator. AMA

#207

Post by mbym »

Question re solo founders: "A startup is too much work for one person" and if you can't convince even one friend to join you, that doesn't speak well for your idea! On the other hand, a bad hire/partnership can ruin the company. YC gives signal it really prefers to look at teams than individual applications. Q: Do you have have advice or rules of thumb re how much time a solo founder should put into finding partner(s)? Or thoughts re how much to prioritise this, vs. just writing code and talking to users to finish initial version yourself? I don't mean this to be just focused on "getting into YC" but more in general: what's the right way to think about fixing this problem (being a solo founder) vs tackling other things like actually building something initial users can be using? For software ideas surely it is occasionally sensible to make at least a prototype and actually get some users before ever buddying up? Or if I've got this far but am basically still going it alone, am I doing something wrong?

Re: I Am Sam Altman, President of Y Combinator. AMA

#209

Post by aashaykumar92 »

I don't want to work for a company, I'd much rather start my own. And there are definitely some problems I'd like to solve, but I'm still figuring out which ones will actually add value and how to go about solving them. Any advice? If I just applied with a bunch of ideas and the YC team liked one, would it be considered? I'd imagine there needs to be at least some progress but still thought I'd ask.

My relevant background is that I built a social calendaring app with my college roommate and it was eventually acquired by our university. In my eyes, it was a failure that I learned a lot from.

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