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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

#341

Post by BinaryIdiot »

api wrote: post #249
mbym wrote: post #207

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…

Seconded: statistics such as these: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=77525 ... seem to show that very successful sole founder stories do exist. But nearly everything from the YC orbit says "find a partner or you'll fail," etc.

I came here to ask the same question. I started working on an idea of my own and I have many friends who are very talented but none that really seem to want to commit to something risky and obviously I don't want to force someone to come if they are not interested in taking the risk with me.

This is the main reason my next application to YC will be solo but I am certainly open (and would prefer) a partner.

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

#343

Post by beachstartup »

mbym wrote: post #207

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…

in my opinion, after starting multiple failed companies and one that seems to be working so far, individual founders are the exception that prove the rule.

at the end of the day, it's just a ton of work. even very very hard working and smart people are not physically capable doing this much work on their own - in terms of actual output founding a company is like 6 or 7 fulltime jobs' worth of deliverables, shared by 2 or 3 founders.

if you're a single founder, i think you'd have to raise money very early and make some key hires quickly in order to succesfully do it. from what i can, that's usually the case with single founders who were previously part of an all-star founding team that had a good exit.

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

#347

Post by Kinnard »

sama wrote: post #290
Kinnard wrote: post #284

What do you and the rest of YC think of dynamic equity splits? They're described in Slicing the Pie: http://www.slicingpie.com/ http://www.bloomberg.com/bw/articles/2012-12-18/grunt-funds-...

In general, I think fixed equity splits WITH VESTING are the way to go. Probably the optimal split is something like 51/49 (to prevent deadlocking) or 33.3/33.3/33.3 but anything near even is good enough.

Why do you think this is better than dynamic equity splits?

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

#348

Post by billions »

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?

1. Device powered health 2. Enterprise security 3. Streaming video

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

#349

Post by sama »

freyr wrote: post #340

You have suggested that Silicon Valley is successful, in part, because workers accept a notion of "long-term compensation" [1]. Long-term compensation, perhaps better called maybe-someday compensation, requires SV software engineers to work for relatively less (factoring in cost-of-living) than many other skilled professionals, with hopes that they'll be rewarded with a big windfall in the future. With the rising cos…

It's a personal choice for workers. If you're an engineer and you want a guaranteed $250k per year, go work for a financial firm. Nothing wrong with that decision. Everyone gets to make his or her own.

Engineers at startups make $100k+, sometimes much more. I don't think people are being asked to subject themselves to unreasonable financial strain.

It is indeed "maybe-someday" competition. When you work at a startup, you're acting like an investor but investing your time instead of your money. If you choose well, the upside can be pretty crazy.

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