I Am Sam Altman, President of Y Combinator. AMA

Post by giftgaming » Sat, Mar 28, 2015, 11:32 PM UTC

paul wrote: post #533

mbym wrote: post #207

Question 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 hi…

Post by batraatin » Sun, Mar 29, 2015, 4:03 PM UTC

ing33k wrote: post #233

any plans to host a Startup School conference in Asia ?

Post by mej10 » Mon, Mar 30, 2015, 5:26 PM UTC

giftgaming wrote: post #752

mej10 wrote: post #362

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As a follow-up, do you think it is unethical to use AdBlock?

We're a non-intrusive advertising startup (giftgaming) -- I personally do not think it is unethical, as they provide no value, and if anything, detract from the website's value and sometimes are plain annoying. I cannot believe that in 2015, we still have intrusive ads, such as banner ads, popups, interstitials, pre-roll videos -- all technologies from the 90s? There must be a better solution.

Post by giftgaming » Fri, Apr 03, 2015, 10:33 PM UTC

mej10 wrote: post #755

giftgaming wrote: post #752

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We're a non-intrusive advertising startup (giftgaming) -- I personally do not think it is unethical, as they provide no value, and if anything, detract from the website's value and sometimes are plain annoying. I cannot believe that in 2015, we still have intrusive ads, such as banner ads, popups, interstitials, pre-roll videos -- all technologies from the 90s? There must be a better solution.

They provide value to the company providing the content. Many great sites are only possible thanks to advertising revenues. The world would be objectively worse-off if everyone used adblock.