Honest question on how profitable Y Combinator really is.
What is Y Combinator's average portfolio return before management fees and carry?
I Am Sam Altman, President of Y Combinator. AMA
361–370 of 757 posts
Re: I Am Sam Altman, President of Y Combinator. AMA
#362What are your thoughts on advertising as _the_ way to make great services available for free (Google, reddit, Facebook, Stack Overflow)? What problems do you see with this model? When should this be preferred? Does it only work for massive sites?
It does indeed only work for big sites. It's not the only model, but it was one that is proven and easy to understand.
As a follow-up, do you think it is unethical to use AdBlock?
Re: I Am Sam Altman, President of Y Combinator. AMA
#363Hello Mr. Altman, Thank you for taking the time to do this, I was hoping you'd be willing to give me some advice? I really want to be successful one day.. But I just have no discipline and I rarely work toward my goals. I know what I want to achieve.. I just always pick short term rewards over long term ones.
Sam has already helped you indirectly by investing in reddit which has all sorts of community sourced help. Check out PeaceH guide to getting discipline[1] http://www.reddit.com/r/getdisciplined/comments/2dd7yh/advic...
> helped you indirectly by investing in reddit ...
... which is THE weapon of choice for anyone serious about honing their lack of focus and procrastination skills :)
Re: I Am Sam Altman, President of Y Combinator. AMA
#364Hey. This may sound like an unusual question, but I thought I'd ask. We started our company about 4 years ago. Since then our apps have been downloaded by 3 million people in over 100 countries (see http://qbix.com/blog/ ) Every year we've been applying to YC, and never even making it to the interview. I know that YC likes to invest in teams and the ideas sometimes change ... and as far as teams go, I think we've don…
can you send me an email?
Re: I Am Sam Altman, President of Y Combinator. AMA
#365Hey Sam, can you give please tell us about the time you, sama, most successfully hacked some (non-computer) system to your advantage?
Sure. When I was running my startup, we got catastrophic news that the first big customer in the space (Boost Mobile) was signing a deal with a competitor instead of with us. This would have killed us. The competitor was a much larger and better funded company that had been around for years. I was a 20 year old CEO. Most big companies do not like to make risky decisions, so this was not entirely surprising. We got th…
That sounds a bit creepy. How did you know which guy it was and what flight he will be taking? To track him like that seems creepy.
Re: I Am Sam Altman, President of Y Combinator. AMA
#366This answer by Adam D'Angelo on Quora blows my mind: "What was hot in Silicon Valley in March 2013?" http://www.quora.com/What-was-hot-in-Silicon-Valley-in-March... Every one of those blew up. So I ask you the same question: What is hot in Silicon Valley in March, 2015?
Adam is super smart. In fact, I asked him for an updated list at dinner a couple of weeks ago and I predict he will be right again. I'm not going to share my list because I've found that people put too much stock in it. I don't mind talking about things like nuclear energy or biotech, because people are either going to start those companies or not. But I don't want to cause founders to start or stop working on specif…
0) Binary computing 1) Ternary computing ~ Quantum computing
Re: I Am Sam Altman, President of Y Combinator. AMA
#367Earlier quoted context omitted.
It's hard to give a standard answer to this--it depends entirely on the specifics of each case.
Thanks for doing this AMA Sam. As a follow-up, what would you recommend applicants who are in this position do before the end of next week to increase their chances of being interviewed/accepted? (i.e. get feedback from as many YC alum as possible, iterate on their video, etc). Obviously without specifics, I'm sure your answer may be similar to the above, but any general recommendations here?
Talk to users, and tell us what you learn from them.
Re: I Am Sam Altman, President of Y Combinator. AMA
#368[deleted]
How can it be 2 different people, why don't you speak in 1st person and use 'I'?
Re: I Am Sam Altman, President of Y Combinator. AMA
#369On evaluating applications: assuming you're looking at a solid team and a seemingly good idea, how much does having a working prototype and early traction help a startup's chances of getting into YC? Is there some level of traction that makes any application a shoo-in? Are there categories of startups that you won't even consider without demonstrated traction?
On the flip side, what does it take to make you consider a team that has nothing built and no users yet?
Re: I Am Sam Altman, President of Y Combinator. AMA
#370I know there was one aerospace startup in W15 but are space startups out of YC's scope?
That particular startup is building rockets, so no.