What did you eat for Breakfast?
I Am Sam Altman, President of Y Combinator. AMA
531–540 of 757 posts
Re: I Am Sam Altman, President of Y Combinator. AMA
#532Does the current partnership explicitly cap the partner count or is there some point in the future where you think it would make sense to cap the number of partners?
No and probably not.
Re: I Am Sam Altman, President of Y Combinator. AMA
#533Question 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…
Please don't let the lack of a cofounder discourage you from applying. It's definitely a huge help to have a good cofounder, but we accept great founders regardless. There's a tendency for people to want to reduce the world to black-and-white rules like, "yc doesn't accept single founders", but it simply isn't true. We are specifically looking for outliers, so any such rule would be a huge mistake (because the big hits are, by definition, exceptions).
Re: I Am Sam Altman, President of Y Combinator. AMA
#534Reddit is well on it's way to becoming a dominant monopoly on the web, however there's a (subtle but important) difference between being a platform for free speech, and promoting hate speech. If there are a billion users, but they're horrible people (eg /r/coontown), is that something you will look back on and consider as having been worthwhile?
As a five-year Redditor, this is an awesome question, but I have two potential ways to better ask it:
1. I wouldn't ask about a billion horrible people. Don't forget that the user number reflects logged-out consumers, and Reddit is still limited to far fewer participants. The demographics of people that choose to make an account and participate are very likely strongly disconnected from the circumstances required to make Reddit a billion-eyeball property. Maybe a better question would be "what can Reddit do to appeal to participation from non-teenaged and non-twentysomething white males who think /r/spacedicks is funny?"
2. I wouldn't ask about his perspective on things like coontown from the perspective of an investment, I'd ask him his thoughts on controversial speech on Reddit in general, as well as Reddit's responsibilities to act in the service of protecting free speech. /r/coontown is only the latest. Don't forget there was /r/jailbait before it and the banning of all Zoe Quinn discussion and subreddits, as well as vast numbers of communities that you and I both will not mention that are even worse than those already named.
(Warning to those unfamiliar with Reddit: please do not investigate things like spacedicks or coontown if you are sensitive.)
Re: I Am Sam Altman, President of Y Combinator. AMA
#535Where do you see YC in 5 years? in 10 years?
Some say "the best product always wins." Can you give an anecdote where perhaps the best product did NOT win?
Do you still advocate 10/20/30/40 grants?
Quora participated in YC and this was very unusual. When can we expect to see something posted about how this went?
Re: I Am Sam Altman, President of Y Combinator. AMA
#536[deleted]
Re: I Am Sam Altman, President of Y Combinator. AMA
#537I've been closely following YC and the startup scene in SF. What's your advice to a startup, applying to YC this season, and is from a foreign country? I've read most your writings and watched few interviews as well. It'd be great if you have something to add! And thanks for the AMA!
It doesn't hurt or help--we fund lots of founders from foreign countries (more than 40% of the last batch was born outside the US).
Re: I Am Sam Altman, President of Y Combinator. AMA
#538If someone has an idea or seed of a company, but is only aiming for a mid-high 8 figures as a reasonable exit, would YC consider funding them? Or must it be a shoot-the-moon endeavor? I've written a prototype in use at a large company, and recently found that Oracle acquired a less-performing competitor (yet in market, so not not bad!) product for $20M.
I'm working on my idea anyways, just wondering if YC and the like are a complete waste of time for me. I've got a verbal commit on $120K annual revenue already, but having seed money to focus full time to launch is appealing.
Re: I Am Sam Altman, President of Y Combinator. AMA
#539Would you ever consider investing startups in defense industry? For example a startup that builds anti-drone systems etc?
Yes, definitely.
Re: I Am Sam Altman, President of Y Combinator. AMA
#540Hi Sam! As a high school student / developer with a (seemingly great) idea and no same-age peers, would you suggest waiting until college to find a cofounder, or going through with the idea now alone?
Tough one. I'd probably suggest going to college to meet cofounders.