I Am Sam Altman, President of Y Combinator. AMA • Hacker News Board

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

#251

Post by [deleted] » Fri, Mar 20, 2015, 6:08 PM UTC

[deleted]

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

#252

Post by 765anon » Fri, Mar 20, 2015, 6:09 PM UTC

Is YC India in your plans ?

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

#253

Post by codegeek » Fri, Mar 20, 2015, 6:10 PM UTC

Will YC invest in a startup that has the potential to be a billion dollar B2B company in 10-15 years and not a quick exit ? Since it is B2B, it will never have a million users or be viral but more like solid few thousands customers.

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

#254

Post by matheweis » Fri, Mar 20, 2015, 6:10 PM UTC

sama wrote: post #121

atroyn wrote: post #117

Funds need a 10x return from one company to cover the entire fund. Is that a philosophy YC subscribes to, and if so, how long until it becomes evident which (if any) company in a given class will be the 10x ?

10x returns don't help us much. Our entire model is driven by occasional 10,000x returns. It usually takes about 2 years to have a good sense for who is on a trajectory to maybe get there, and then about 10 years to see if they actually do.

Any recommendations for getting funding for growing projects with proven/consistent revenue streams that do have those smaller returns?

Seems there should be groups interested in lower risk/lower return models, but they don't seem to exist.

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

#255

Post by ninebrows » Fri, Mar 20, 2015, 6:10 PM UTC

sama wrote: post #223

ninebrows wrote: post #217

If the product is good and if the product has a single co-founder, what are the chances of getting accepted? The reason is that I live in a place where it's very hard to find a good co-founder and I don't want to team up with the only options that I have. I don't want to make wrong choices. In my place, people tend to join companies and look for jobs rather than start companies.

We will fund a company with 1 founder, but the bar is very high. Have you thought about working at a startup first as a way to meet potential cofounders?

Thanks Sam. Yes. I have worked in a startup for few years. I made very good friends, some technical and some management.

I found a good guy who is on the management side, I asked him whether he is interested in startup. He is just married, from a middle class family and he is not willing to take any risk.

I also know technical people. Unfortunately I did not find good people on technical side but they are very talented. When I say good, I mean honest people.

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

#256

Post by vasilipupkin » Fri, Mar 20, 2015, 6:10 PM UTC

pyrrhotech wrote: post #119

I frequently see the stat that YC companies are worth 30 billion in total. While this is very impressive, it's still less than say Uber at 40 billion for a single company that's about the median age of the group--so it seems like a fair comparison, though an obvious outlier. For the Uber, Twitter, Facebook, Google, etc. outlier startups, how much pure luck do you think plays into their success? AirBnB and Dropbox are…

Ah. This is better phrasing of what I was trying to ask with my 10,000X return question.

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

#257

Post by chimeracoder » Fri, Mar 20, 2015, 6:10 PM UTC

[deleted] wrote: post #251

[deleted]

> there are rumors going around that Yishan was bribed to step down so that Ms. Ellen Pao could become interim CEO just in time for her trial against Kleiner Perkins. Could you comment on her character?

It's bad enough that you're publicly asking sama for petty gossip on an AMA like this, but ending it by making this about Pao's character, not Yishan's character, the changing of the guard at Reddit in general, or even the KP lawsuit, is really low.

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

#258

Post by hectorxp » Fri, Mar 20, 2015, 6:10 PM UTC

Is there a chance to be approved if my startup is an incubator/accelerator a la YC in another region of the world?

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

#259

Post by sama » Fri, Mar 20, 2015, 6:11 PM UTC

arfliw wrote: post #169

This answer by Adam D'Angelo on Quora blows my mind: "What was hot in Silicon Valley in March 2013?" http://www.quora.com/What-was-hot-in-Silicon-Valley-in-March... Every one of those blew up. So I ask you the same question: What is hot in Silicon Valley in March, 2015?

Adam is super smart. In fact, I asked him for an updated list at dinner a couple of weeks ago and I predict he will be right again.

I'm not going to share my list because I've found that people put too much stock in it. I don't mind talking about things like nuclear energy or biotech, because people are either going to start those companies or not.

But I don't want to cause founders to start or stop working on specific idea because I say something like "I think enterprise software is great" and they really want to get into YC. I never used to worry about this, but I've since found it happens surprisingly often.

The best companies are usually started before any trend is obvious. By the time the trend is obvious, it's too late.

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

#260

Post by pnathan » Fri, Mar 20, 2015, 6:11 PM UTC

sama wrote: post #118

pnathan wrote: post #115

Do you anticipate that putting together a structure for companies looking to perform long-term technology development ( i.e. three years, five years) is something YC would have on the board?

We fund a lot of 3-5 year horizon companies. 10-20 years is harder. This does not work for startups. I have a few ideas I want to try, though.

Thanks for answering, Sam. Perhaps I should clarify: does YC accept companies whose core tech is only buildable in 3-5 years - i.e., 3 months of work on the tech gives no salable product.

I am following the YC adventures with interest, and look forward to seeing the long-range horizon ideas.