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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

#631

Post by withdavidli »

stevewilhelm wrote: post #582
physcab wrote: post #557

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Apartments in SF now are $1800 / studio - $2200 / 1br. so... $100k: - $30k taxes - $24k rent - $12k food and misc ------------- $34k $34k is about what you have to play with for investing, transportation, entertainment, fitness, saving, student loans, other debt

Anyone working at a startup should be maxing out their retirement plan contributions: $18,000 for a 401k, $5,500 for an IRA. They are a hedge against startup failure.

Thought process on this? If a person needs to dip into their retirement plan because a start up fails then they would be penalized, if that's the situation it's better to just keep it in cash.

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

#632

Post by jacquesm »

BinaryIdiot wrote: post #341
api wrote: post #249

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Make sure you are the person reaching out to the one that you pick, not the other way around.

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

#634

Post by Gozu »

sama wrote: post #516
Gozu wrote: post #492

Hey Sam, I'm working on this idea on my free time but for now it's in an early stage. We believe strongly in it but we don't have yet a ready prototype which means we don't have any structure, users, revenue, etc.. I'm wondering if YCombinator's goal is to encourage people from initial concept or help existent startups to grow and go further ? Knowing our story, do you honestly think we have a chance at this time to…

Why don't you have a prototype? That'll be an important question. That said, we make most of our money backing companies at the "initial concept" stage, so we'd love to hear from you.

We're working on a prototype but it takes time and having a full-time job limits our commitment and progress. It's good to know because being funded will literally help to be focused on this idea.

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

#635

Post by eldavido »

curun1r wrote: post #623
freyr wrote: post #547

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So you get a small, shared apartment, dinners at work, no car, and $2k/month left to save. Honestly, that's not bad, but I'm guessing you're young. Consider you're slightly older and thinking of starting a family. Will your income cover: extra food and clothing for a child? day care or maternity leave? saving for college? saving for retirement? a larger apartment for your growing family? a down payment on a house or…

> the SV software industry has taken a unique stance that experience is actually a liability I see this viewpoint often, but it always seems to be from people who either haven't used their time wisely or otherwise don't want to change their role. There's a bizarre belief that they should be paid more for the same type/amount of work. Apart from a few situations, the marginal value of very good code over simply adequa…

You're correct that the marginal value of great code vs. good code is...marginal, MOST of the time. But I think the 1% cases are where the big (200k+) comp packages are for ICs. Stuff like perf optimizations at big scale, 1% adwords CTR improvements, optimizing JS runtimes, etc.

I agree that for most organizations management is the highest-leverage (ergo, highest-paid) path.

A better way to frame the problem is to think about the organization's economics and how your contribution fits into it. Figure out the 2-3 key metrics for success at the org and figure out whether you can move those, and if so, how. And realize that in a lot of job roles, you won't move the key metrics, and won't be paid as such.

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

#636

Post by [deleted] »

sama wrote: post #224
jorge_leria wrote: post #41

YC is famous for funding startups at a very early stage, even at a pre-traction stage, which seems to contradict the popular knowledge that an idea without a good execution is worth nothing. With just an application form and a 10 minute interview, how can you tell if the founders will be able to execute the idea properly? What are the most important traits that you look for in an application from a very early stage s…

Even if the company is only a few weeks old, we look for signs that the founders are determined, getting things done week by week, and improving quickly. If it's just an idea, then we look at what the founders have done in the past. Most people don't magically start doing great things for the first time when they start a startup.

[deleted]

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

#637

Post by dfinninger »

sjg007 wrote: post #566
chimeracoder wrote: post #241

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

Yeah, just look at Reddit Gifts. I can totally see more stuff like that pop up.

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

#638

Post by waterlesscloud »

xtrumanx wrote: post #324
baristaGeek wrote: post #93

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Watch the Startup School video on Youtube. It's when he talks about what he built before/parallel to The Facebook (Wirehog, Synapse, ZuckNet, etc.)

For the lazy, here's the link[0] where Mark talks about building a site that got students to upload their notes that helped him pass an exam for a course he hadn't studied for. PG remarked that this was fitting answer for the "Tell us how you hacked a system" question in the YC application and added he has to constantly remind himself its too late to accept Mark into YC. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MGsalg2f9js?t=…

There's some very interesting things in that video. It set me to thinking about things Facebook isn't actually doing that Zuckerburg says he cares about. Which are things worthy of some further thinking to see what opportunities exist there...

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

#639

Post by lordnacho »

freyr wrote: post #568
lordnacho wrote: post #513

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 an…

Great. I'll make him post next time there's a hiring thread.

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

#640

Post by tpeng »

Rainymood wrote: post #625
tpeng wrote: post #581

Earlier quoted context omitted.

reddit has the potential to unlock a lot of value if niche subreddits can achieve critical mass. There are quite a few subreddits that could support highly targeted and valuable advertising. Comment and voting quality also appears to improve dramatically with scale; compare the quality of comments on default subs to niche subs. If niche subs can get that dramatic improvement in quality, reddit would also be able to a…

>Comment and voting quality also appears to improve dramatically with scale; compare the quality of comments on default subs to niche subs. I hope you meant - worsen dramatically ... it's the reason I unsubbed from almost all the defaults.

See my reply to waterlesscloud for an explanation. There are some big problems in the defaults, particularly around political topics, however, these are not issues of scale. They are issues of diversity. Reddit will need to address the diversity issue in order to succeed.
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