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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

#651

Post by dustcoin »

withdavidli wrote: post #631
stevewilhelm wrote: post #582

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

The contributions to a Roth IRA (but not the investment returns) can be withdrawn with no tax penalty, so there isn't much reason not to max it out if possible.

Employees should always contribute to a their 401k at least up to the company match, as it is essentially free money.

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

#654

Post by Retra »

pbreit wrote: post #594
abeppu wrote: post #407

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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…

But the employee has one massive advantage to the investor: the actual ability to influence the success of the company.

You don't think giving a company money influences their success?

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

#655

Post by limeyx »

Kinnard wrote: post #347
sama wrote: post #290

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

Maybe it lets people stop focusing on how much equity they do/don't have (or gained or lost in a given week) and get on with actually building the company ? :)

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

#656

Post by walterbell »

chimeracoder wrote: post #241
sama wrote: post #226

Earlier 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…

Access to research prototypes?

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

#657

Post by elmar »

sama wrote: post #121
atroyn wrote: post #117

Funds need a 10x return from one company to cover the entire fund. Is that a philosophy YC subscribes to, and if so, how long until it becomes evident which (if any) company in a given class will be the 10x ?

10x returns don't help us much. Our entire model is driven by occasional 10,000x returns. It usually takes about 2 years to have a good sense for who is on a trajectory to maybe get there, and then about 10 years to see if they actually do.

A nice article on the 10,000x return Startup

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9241288

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

#658

Post by dropit_sphere »

jsmthrowaway wrote: post #626
dropit_sphere wrote: post #619

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is what this account is for, after all, so: I am a regular poster on r/theredpill(which was recently "honored" by winning the bigotry category---but with low toxicity---in a recent sentiment analysis of reddit comments). There is a lot of what someone might call "hate speech." Some of that doesn't really deserve the title and is just "truths that polite society omits;" some reflects genuine, generalized anger ag…

The Red Pill an organization of freedom fighters? We're comparing feminists to ISIS now? Genuine, generalized anger against women? What are you upset about, that it's fallen out of favor to feel up a woman at a bar without permission before you begin a courtship that ends with her in the kitchen as your property with your dinner on the table at 5:30? Upset that you can't give her two black eyes for finishing dinner a…

I'm not really interested in defending the subreddit. I am attempting to add a dash of reality: hate speech cannot be eliminated by clamping down on any particular subreddit. There will always be somewhere on the internet for people to express hateful, offensive views.

Of course, that's exactly the kind of thing a misogynist would say. And you could make a case that just because you can't stamp the stuff out entirely doesn't mean you have to let it happen on your servers.

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

#659

Post by walterbell »

gok2 wrote: post #432
sama wrote: post #165

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Both. The best answer is something like "we have a path to be be doing enough revenue to cover our expenses in a year, but if things really work, here is how we could make $1B a year in 10 years."

I think it was a bad idea to write the best answer here :)

The important part of the answer is "here is how".

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

#660

Post by rday »

AstroChimpHam wrote: post #647
kzhahou wrote: post #614

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Go become a startup founder yourself. The issue isn't me. And, I might already be a founder. That's besides the point. I'm happy for your friend. That's excellent, to be able to negotiate well. Most people don't. And most people are TOLD, repeatedly, that 1% is an "excellent" percent even as the earliest joining a company. The word "exploitative" is as tricky today as in centuries past. If the employee doesn't want…

I've been both a founder and an early employee. As an early employee, I always received a salary, and knew I could leave any time I felt like it. My level of risk was low, and I was perfectly happy with my equity knowing I had a nice upside without much downside at all. As a founder, I haven't paid myself in months, and have commitments to my customers such that I 100% can't just shut things down and leave to do some…

I've been a founder and an early employee as well. As a founder, you sign on for the bad times. As an early employee, I always got duped.

As an early employee, I've had to go without a paycheck on multiple occasions. I had to go without healthcare for several months even though I was told the company already had it in place.

Sure, I could leave anytime I wanted. But I would forfeit all my stock if I left. Even if I left because they stopped paying their engineers. Besides, the money was coming. Why leave now? They promise they will make it up.

I've been told that everyone in the company had to take a 20% salary reduction to keep things alive. I could have left then too. Again, forfeiting my shares. But again, I bore the downside of the business without anywhere near the potential upside.

The important part is that none of this was malicious. The founder just had no idea what he was doing, and thought they had to lie for the good of the company.

As an early employee, I hired people into both the companies I'm speaking about. I'll never do that again. I haven't ever done that again. I urge everyone to not be the first engineer.

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