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I Am Sam Altman, President of Y Combinator. AMA

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

#401

Post by sama »

danenania wrote: post #369

On evaluating applications: assuming you're looking at a solid team and a seemingly good idea, how much does having a working prototype and early traction help a startup's chances of getting into YC? Is there some level of traction that makes any application a shoo-in? Are there categories of startups that you won't even consider without demonstrated traction? On the flip side, what does it take to make you consider…

A prototype helps a lot.

Traction helps too, but we tried not to get fooled by graphs. In fact, I always ask the other interviewers "would we fund this company if they had no traction at all?"

To fund a company with nothing built and no users, we have to believe 1) the idea is great and 2) the team is unstoppable.

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

#403

Post by knicksjets121 »

sama wrote: post #379
knicksjets121 wrote: post #320

When 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?

The big problem is a 4 or 5 person founding team. That's a high bar to get over (but possible, one startup I really like in this batch has 5 founders). Be so good we can't ignore you.

Thank you! Why would you say 4 or 5 person founding teams are a big problem?

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

#404

Post by puranjay »

atroyn wrote: post #76
sama wrote: post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The most common thing is getting founders to focus on the right thing. At this stage, nothing but building a product that users love matters. Founders want to focus on anything else, and have wonderfully detailed excuses for why whatever it is is so important. "Write code and talk to users" is not sexy, but it's the road to success. Seeing your name in the press is sexy, but unfortunately has nothing to do whatsoever…

One thing my company struggled with in ImagineK12 was attracting enough users to know if we were making something they loved - how can founders focus on both?

Did you try talking to the customers you already had, or folks who did not sign up but were in the same demographics?

I'm currently building a tool for writers and emailing writers individually (sometimes, even buying 30 minutes of their time) and talking to them has been really insightful.

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

#405

Post by sama »

mej10 wrote: post #394

What are your thoughts on drug use among the entrepreneur/tech communities? Specifically modafinil, amphetamines, psychedelics.

The only one of those (not counting caffeine) I've tried is modafinil. The side effects are weird, but man do you get a productivity boost.

Personally, I'm scared to screw with my brain chemistry too much and am supersensitive to psychoactive drugs of any sort.

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

#406

Post by ajani »

YC has been branching out with it's investments with companies in areas like charities and biotech. But it's as of now a small percentage. I understand predicting anything into the future is mostly an exercise in failure, but what do you think YC's mix of portfolio will be like in 20 - 30 years?

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

#407

Post by abeppu »

sama wrote: post #349
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,…

> When you work at a startup, you're acting like an investor but investing your time instead of your money.

True, except: (a) An employee can probably only work for one startup at a time, and begins vesting after a year. That's like asking an investor to bet on at most 1 company per year. (b) Employers tend to give substantially less detailed information about their business, financials, etc to prospective employees than they give to investors. We have to make our choice very carefully, but we often have to make it with less information. (c) And after we've chosen, and vested, we do also have to invest money to exercise. If after that point things go downhill, we're out on money, but also years of our careers.

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

#408

Post by sama »

lsllc wrote: post #390

There's a well known theory that non-competes stifles innovation and in particular CA's ban on these has allowed SV to flourish. There have been moves afoot in MA to enact a similar ban, although recently it seems to have been somewhat defanged through lobbying by the likes EMC (despite still being protected by copyright, trade secrets and patents!). What are your thoughts on this; if MA is able to pass a ban on non-…

I think it'd be good to do this, but that the startup scene is really broken in Boston for many other reasons. I'm not very optimistic this would be enough to fix it.

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

#410

Post by sherm8n »

sama wrote: post #279
jpmcglone wrote: post #149

Hey Sam, can you give please tell us about the time you, sama, most successfully hacked some (non-computer) system to your advantage?

Sure. When I was running my startup, we got catastrophic news that the first big customer in the space (Boost Mobile) was signing a deal with a competitor instead of with us. This would have killed us. The competitor was a much larger and better funded company that had been around for years. I was a 20 year old CEO. Most big companies do not like to make risky decisions, so this was not entirely surprising. We got th…

Straight hustlin'!
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