What does it mean to be president of YC?
Blah blah something about herding cats blah blah.
I Am Sam Altman, President of Y Combinator. AMA
311–320 of 757 posts
Re: I Am Sam Altman, President of Y Combinator. AMA
#312Hello Mr. Altman, Thank you for taking the time to do this, I was hoping you'd be willing to give me some advice? I really want to be successful one day.. But I just have no discipline and I rarely work toward my goals. I know what I want to achieve.. I just always pick short term rewards over long term ones.
Sam has already helped you indirectly by investing in reddit which has all sorts of community sourced help. Check out PeaceH guide to getting discipline[1]
http://www.reddit.com/r/getdisciplined/comments/2dd7yh/advic...
Re: I Am Sam Altman, President of Y Combinator. AMA
#313Question 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…
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 bus…
It seems like you really need to know the potential cofounder as a person, though, otherwise you won't be sure what they're like when stressed or making mistakes. Doesn't this limit it to people you already know fairly well?
Re: I Am Sam Altman, President of Y Combinator. AMA
#314I'm still working on building a prototype so I can earn a cofounder and future employees. I'd say I'm 2-3 months off from having the MVP done. Should I apply to YC?
You could, there's not much downside and you can reapply if you don't get it. But your chances sound significantly higher for the the next batch.
Re: I Am Sam Altman, President of Y Combinator. AMA
#315How about health drinks / food? Do you know if yc would have any interest or expertise to help natural food companies? Like Kambucha is $600M company now.
Re: I Am Sam Altman, President of Y Combinator. AMA
#316Question 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…
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 bus…
Very helpful, cheers. "The more progress you make on the business, the easier it will be to get a great cofounder" -- agreed -- and being accepted to YC would itself more than help convince people to join the team also :) I hope there are more Drew Houstons out there with confidence to apply.
Re: I Am Sam Altman, President of Y Combinator. AMA
#317Hi Sam, I've heard you mention a few great things about University of Waterloo (They even have you in a video on their Engineering channel https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QQz5hj8y1TE ). Waterloo has such a vibrant startup scene and several groups from the region have gone through YCombinator. When is the next time you are coming to visit Waterloo?
I need to book a trip soon. Maybe in May.
Re: I Am Sam Altman, President of Y Combinator. AMA
#318What are your thoughts on advertising as _the_ way to make great services available for free (Google, reddit, Facebook, Stack Overflow)? What problems do you see with this model? When should this be preferred? Does it only work for massive sites?
It does indeed only work for big sites. It's not the only model, but it was one that is proven and easy to understand.
Re: I Am Sam Altman, President of Y Combinator. AMA
#319How about health drinks / food? Do you know if yc would have any interest or expertise to help natural food companies? Like Kambucha is $600M company now.
It's out of our area of expertise, but again, if we can understand why it might be a $10B company, we'll fund it.
Re: I Am Sam Altman, President of Y Combinator. AMA
#320When applying to YC, if you have a four or five person start-up team, if one member isn't able to come to Silicon Valley, but the rest are (3/4 or 4/5), how much does that penalize you?