How hard is it to become a YC partner?
I Am Sam Altman, President of Y Combinator. AMA
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Re: I Am Sam Altman, President of Y Combinator. AMA
#562With you recently leading a round of investment for reddit, it seems you are quite optimistic about its success but as of late 2013 (and maybe now too), Reddit remains in red even after nearly a decade of its inception[1]. Reddit CEO once said, that ads are the reasons Digg failed[2], so I believe the site would be wary of using ads to the fullest. How do you think Reddit would become profitable and would be able to…
I am an extremely patient investor. I just invested in a company that I believe will take 20-30 years to work. If reddit gets to a billion users, which I believe it will, the company will have many, many interesting monetizations opportunities. It's on its way to become one of the great monopolies of the web.
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Re: I Am Sam Altman, President of Y Combinator. AMA
#563Earlier quoted context omitted.
The supply can't just be produced out of the blue. There isn't enough land in San Francisco to build a whole bunch of housing. The key is to expand out of city or create zones in city for affordable housing.
There's plenty of land if you build vertically instead of flat. There's a bunch of 2-4 story buildings that could be 10-20+ story buildings.
Right but this is not China, we need to follow guidelines as bay area is earthquake prone.
Re: I Am Sam Altman, President of Y Combinator. AMA
#564Earlier quoted context omitted.
Also, if you don't use Alien Blue (the mobile app for Reddit) then you might not know they have been testing "Sponsored" posts. It didn't take a genius to know people would complain, but the ads are getting A LOT of pushback from users. I supposed you can put this in context and look at how Facebook gets crap for changing anything, but is this really the most creative idea Reddit can come up with to generate more rev…
A LOT of pushback? That link in another comment is the only pushback I've ever seen, and I use Alien Blue (having purchased it). I haven't even noticed sponsored posts on the mobile version (I have on the desktop site though), and they hardly bother me. I've never seen anyone else seriously complain about them either. Sam, if you're passing along GolfyMcG's feedback, please pass along mine as well. I run Ad Block, bu…
Yes - A LOT of pushback. I didn't purchase it, and I don't complain about the ads because I understand they have to make money. I do read the comments on them and they are exclusively sarcastic comments/complaints about the ads existing.
My complaint isn't about the ads existing - it's more a disappointment in Reddit/Alexis Ohanian/YCom/etc in not being able to produce a more interesting business model. There is always so much talk about being "thought leaders" and focusing on really game changing technologies. This is the opposite of that : /
Re: I Am Sam Altman, President of Y Combinator. AMA
#565Solo founder, rebel, lots of startup ideas, 0 startups (a "tutoring business"), flailing in corporate America, effortlessly producing psuedo brilliance...is YC4me? Can I apply on a really nice concept? Or a set of concepts? Like Elon's 3...ya kno?
Re: I Am Sam Altman, President of Y Combinator. AMA
#566Earlier quoted context omitted.
I am an extremely patient investor. I just invested in a company that I believe will take 20-30 years to work. If reddit gets to a billion users, which I believe it will, the company will have many, many interesting monetizations opportunities. It's on its way to become one of the great monopolies of the web.
> I just invested in a company that I believe will take 20-30 years to work. How do you conceptualize investments on that sort of timescale? 20 years ago was 1995, and 30 years ago was 1985. So much has changed between then and now. I understand that broader market trends can sometimes be predicted, but when you invest, you're betting not only on a market trend but on a specific instantiation of that trend. How do yo…
Reddit is the meta-web. It is probably also flexible enough to be the backbone (aka platform) of other businesses in the future.
Re: I Am Sam Altman, President of Y Combinator. AMA
#567> anything else
i know i'm late to the party, but it just seems like place like HN, with a group of people who so vociferously speak in favor of online privacy and person data ownership, would have no methods of completely removing one's identity/posts to the site. could you please address what appears to be a discrepancy between HN's policy and the audience?
Re: I Am Sam Altman, President of Y Combinator. AMA
#568Earlier quoted context omitted.
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,…
How senior is this guy who makes 100K? Is that out of college or 5/10 years? How tough is the competition? I appreciate YMMV, but I'm asking on behalf of my brother, who is graduating Columbia CS soon. We've got family in the SF area, so it might be a good choice for him to head over that way.
If he's a good interviewee, did summer internships, and got decent grades, he should be able to land something in that range. There's some competition, but for the reasons I stated ($100K goes a long way almost everywhere except SF, due to the very high cost of living), SF companies covet recent CS grads who work very hard and don't have many expenses (kids, car, house, etc.). It would probably be great experience and exposure for him though, and worth it while he's young.
Re: I Am Sam Altman, President of Y Combinator. AMA
#569We are a bootstrapped ~2.5yr old company that is doing $5M in Revenue and ~$2M in PBT. We have fallen into a bit of a funk in the past 6-12M or so growth-wise and basically flat-lined. We are talking to a few funds to raise a ~$10M round (mostly secondary) to bring the PBT down to 0 and really swing for the fences. We've thought about applying to YC but the 7% seems high for us at this stage. Is YC interested in co-i…
I'd be more concerned with whether YC would invest in a company whose growth had flatlined: http://www.paulgraham.com/growth.html, with that said if you're making that much revenue I think there's likely other good options for you. Best of luck!
Re: I Am Sam Altman, President of Y Combinator. AMA
#570Earlier quoted context omitted.
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 hi…
Thank you for that! What makes you believe that someone or something is an outlier? How much of it is a gut feeling versus observable data, for example?
No two are the same, but generally a good sign is if they have outlier behavior in their past. For example, if you won a gold medal in the Olympics, there's a good chance that you would at least get an interview -- the level of determination and persistence required to accomplish something like that would definitely be helpful in founding a startup. (that said, I don't know that we've ever actually funded an Olympian) A more common example would be creating a popular open source project (e.g. the creator of Sails.js is in the current batch).