I Am Sam Altman, President of Y Combinator. AMA

We really prefer at least two founders, but it's not a deal-breaker. We funded Drew Houston of Dropbox as a solo founder, but he got a cofounder before the batch started.

A bad cofounder is far, far worse than no cofounder.

I'd spend maybe 20% of your time looking for a cofounder, and the rest on your business. But don't force a cofounder if you don't have a good, organic option.

The more progress you make on the business, the easier it will be to get a great cofounder.

1) How common are applications from companies that have bootstrapped to a certain size in a non-US market where local knowledge helps (showing some early traction but could still grow in that market) and want to expand to the US? What are you mostly looking for in these companies, do you see them "diluting their markets" as a potential red flag (assuming the idea is transferable culturally etc.)?

2) I get the feeling there is some mild prejudice against academia in the startup community. What is the general reaction if a founder comes from academia ("dropping out to persue the startup")? Tone wise it seems like there's a "why did you waste your time in academia and not build stuff" kind of attitude. Strikes me as strange because on an abstract level good academics do very "startupy" things (form hypothesis, test, act on results) except slower/more deliberate.

The apparent cause is running out of money, but the real cause is failing to build something users love. It is usually apparent in the first 6 months, but not always.

Another big cause is cofounder tension.

Hey Sam,

Re solo founders. Would you consider a team with one founder and 1-2 "employees"?

The reason I ask this is because my partners and I have more of a mentor-tutee relationship and although we all share perks and they get equity (considerably less than my share, but still sizeable), they see themselves more as learning than being at the same level as myself in terms of responsibility.

My social enterprise is a combination of a Foundation and a Company. Why? To make the social ideologies independent from shareholder pressure AND to make sure we can commercialise effectively towards a sustainable business model. I don't want to be an NGO reliant on donations! Should I apply to YC as the foundation or the company? My social ideology is to extract the value of data without compromising identity privacy. Innit is a system that allows users to own and trade in their own data (particularly health and financial data)