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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

#211

Post by acgourley »

aswanson wrote: post #186
FlyingLawnmower wrote: post #162

Hi Sam, I'm a graduating college senior, and I've accepted a job at a very big company in the tech industry. Right now, it makes the most financial sense for me to join a big company and pay off my debt quickly, but at some point in the future I'd love to scratch that entrepreneurial itch and apply to YC. How do I maximize my time at a big company to gain relevant skills to keep the possibility of a startup open in t…

Im not Sam but I was similar to you (planwise) when I graduated. I would urge you to be very careful if that is your long-term plan, it is very easy to develop a lifestyle around a comfortable low-risk paycheck and say, "I'll do it down the line". 5-10 years can fly by very quickly in those situations, still at the same place doing the same thing. You will never have as much free time as you do right now, and if you…

To add to this: try to live like you are still in college as long as you can stand it.

If you have very low interest student loans, pay them off at the minimum rate and save the cash - you will need it to launch the startup. And if then your startup makes you poor, you can usually do income adjusted deferment on remaining loans.

Re: I am Sam Altman, President of Y Combinator – AMA

#212

Post by hiby007 »

sama wrote: post #181
giis wrote: post #177

Considering the fact that we are more than 1-billion people with booming economy (some redtapes are there but..), do you have plans for purely India (/subcontinent) specific programmes in near future?

I'm coming to visit soon! We fund more and more Indian companies (they come here for 3 months and then go back to India).

can we meet?

Re: I am Sam Altman, President of Y Combinator – AMA

#215

Post by sama »

jordanbartow wrote: post #90

I'm having trouble with the what are you making portion of the application. I know the product speaks for itself but no matter how I try to explain it to people they get confused without seeing it which means I'm not doing a great job of explaining it. Trying to compare it to existing technology doesn't work well with the product, or I can't find the right comparison. What's your advice on how to best answer this que…

You have to learn how to do this. If you can't get good at explaining what your product does, you will struggle in all aspects of your business. Make this your number one priority (though also consider that if people have a hard time understanding what you're doing, it may be a sign that it's not a good idea).

Re: I am Sam Altman, President of Y Combinator – AMA

#216

Post by raymondgh »

Hey Sam! Much respect. Sometimes when I watch an interview with you (such as a recent Stanford class), it seems like the discussion is very one-sided. I don't perceive you normally as stating your opinions authoritatively, but I fear that many are afraid to contest your claims or disagree with you, even in violation of their own beliefs. My questions are first whether you have noticed any kind of mass-submissiveness to or blind acceptance of to the YC Philosophy, and second, who do you think are the proponents of the most compelling contrasting views?

Re: I am Sam Altman, President of Y Combinator – AMA

#217

Post by spanacus »

Hey Sam, I am very interested in hearing more about the office hours initiative ran by Michael. Do you guys plan on scaling that up? I strongly believe in democratizing access to people and believe YC is doing this with all the effort it has put into Starup School , Fellowship and all these programs. We are actually building products towards the goal of democratizing access to people so very expected to hopefully work together

Re: I am Sam Altman, President of Y Combinator – AMA

#218

Post by sama »

fgimenez wrote: post #210

Regarding the research program, what sort of research projects are you looking at? While you are putting a considerable amount of money into the project, it obviously won't be able to fund experimentally expensive projects. Also, many research projects (like bioinformatics) require enormous amounts of difficult to obtain data (e.g. Hospital records, blood samples, etc...). Do you have a plan to help those kinds of la…

View my donation as seed capital. I expect we'll commit $100M+ to some projects over time.

We do have plans for collaboration with some institutions for our first group.

Open to anyone great! No PhD required.

Re: I am Sam Altman, President of Y Combinator – AMA

#219

Post by wnissen »

zcdziura wrote: post #150
mindcrime wrote: post #121

1. Would / will you ever consider opening an East Coast branch? I understand all the "stuff" about why SV is great for startups, but there will always be people who can't /won't get up and travel completely to the other side of the country for an extended period of time. And while the EC might not be the startup hotbed that SV area is, it's quite clear that there is a LOT of startup activity and some great startups b…

Especially in Boston. Boston has a TON of startups in the area.

This was 2007, but Paul Graham describes Boston VCs as being slow to act, so they stopped doing Demo Day out there.

http://www.paulgraham.com/startuphubs.html

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