What do you think about a startup that builds its own hedge fund to finance itself through its own machine learning and AI algos?
I am Sam Altman, President of Y Combinator – AMA
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Re: I am Sam Altman, President of Y Combinator – AMA
#282My startup is based in Paris, and it would be logistically tedious to move to SF (remote management, current customers ...) YC and the Bay area would be an immense deal to us : => Regardless of the product I'm building : Are the advantages of moving to SF enough to balance the immediate difficulties of leaving ? PS: We are building an AI (currently for students) that plugs into messaging apps. 150k messages exchanged…
It's so hard to answer this generally. It really depends on the situation of each particular startup. We have funded many startups from Paris specifically with teams there; I'd reach out to some of them and see how it worked.
Re: I am Sam Altman, President of Y Combinator – AMA
#283How did you learn to code? What would you recommend to aspiring developers?
Re: I am Sam Altman, President of Y Combinator – AMA
#284You've mentioned that co-founder fallouts are one of the most biggest problems facing companies at YC stage. Do you see any useful correlates to this problem? What types of teams tend to have infighting vs. those that don't?
The biggest correlation is that teams that met recently fall apart much more often.
The shared history seems to be valuable for keeping teams together through the very though times of a startup.
Re: I am Sam Altman, President of Y Combinator – AMA
#285I'm curious why YC chose to include a video in the application. Have you done any tests regarding bias towards people that present themselves well or are simply attractive? Or would such a bias be intentional since other people (i.e. investors) are going to be biased the same way?
Re: I am Sam Altman, President of Y Combinator – AMA
#286Your talks and latest actions suggest that YC is now more dedicated to making a better future, rather than helping individuals succeed. (thank you for that)
Our startup is a for-profit company. However, as a part of our strategy we are making a lot of medical data open sourced. Even if we completely fail, we will move the leave an extremely positive footprint on traditional Chinese medicine industry. Q: 1. How would you suggest balancing good intensions for the industry with making money? 2. Should we reflect this in the application and how?
Thank you!
Re: I am Sam Altman, President of Y Combinator – AMA
#287I'm mid-application for the YC Winter 2016 cycle, but I'm concerned because neither my cofounder nor I come from a technical background, yet our idea is technical. Do you see this as a deterrent to being accepted?
Honestly yes, that's a negative. It'd be possible to overcome with a really good answer on how you will get the technology built, but it's harder than ever to be an entirely non-technical team--recruiting engineers is just so difficult and expensive.
Got it. Thank you for the reply. We both work in technology, so we do know people but were honestly hoping YC could help us with a sort of road map. The idea is worth what we may have to overcome.
Re: I am Sam Altman, President of Y Combinator – AMA
#288Earlier quoted context omitted.
1. Never say never, but no current plans (and honestly, it might make more sense to do something outside the US next). The hardest part would be convincing some of our partners to move out there, or finding new ones we could train out here first. 2. Not ready to talk about specific areas, but I promise they are interesting ones :) It will be super super easy for our researchers to collaborate with outsider researcher…
Canada perhaps (specifically Kitchener-Waterloo)?
Vancouver might be better. It has less of a tech sector, but frankly nowhere in Canada has enough of a tech sector to matter much; however Vancouver has the important advantages of being much closer to the bay area (2.5 hours flying time to SFO, 7 flights/day each way), being large enough to have a tech boom without completely unbalancing its economy, and actually being somewhere people want to live.
Re: I am Sam Altman, President of Y Combinator – AMA
#289Is there anything you think we (hackers/techies living in SF) can (or should) be doing to make housing in San Francisco more affordable, apart from voting no on Prop F and Prop I?
I think there is a great startup waiting to be started to figure out a new way for people to live in cities.
Re: I am Sam Altman, President of Y Combinator – AMA
#290I'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).
Thanks for the feedback. I think my product is an idea that sounds bad or confusing but is really solid or has the capability of transforming into something really brilliant. I just need to focus in. Ive shown large groups of people the product and they immediately understand it and always have one or two use cases for the product.