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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

#431

Post by siglesias »

abeppu wrote: post #407
sama wrote: post #349

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's a personal choice for workers. If you're an engineer and you want a guaranteed $250k per year, go work for a financial firm. Nothing wrong with that decision. Everyone gets to make his or her own. Engineers at startups make $100k+, sometimes much more. I don't think people are being asked to subject themselves to unreasonable financial strain. It is indeed "maybe-someday" competition. When you work at a startup,…

> 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…

Diversification only lowers risk. The expected value doesn't change.

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

#432

Post by gok2 »

sama wrote: post #165
mastratton3 wrote: post #131

In terms of "How will you make money", are you interested in the market for the initial product/use case or what we think the product can eventually grow into? ie: We think our total initial market has the potential to be around $30M/yr but can grow to take on other use cases.

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 :)

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

#433

Post by vh »

Hey Sam,

What would you recommend to entrepreneurs from post-Soviet states and the 3rd world, where they have almost no VCs and limited access to global resources. Should they think big and target the global market or just copy the ideas that work in the US for the local market?

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

#434

Post by mathattack »

sama wrote: post #349
freyr wrote: post #340

You have suggested that Silicon Valley is successful, in part, because workers accept a notion of "long-term compensation" [1]. Long-term compensation, perhaps better called maybe-someday compensation, requires SV software engineers to work for relatively less (factoring in cost-of-living) than many other skilled professionals, with hopes that they'll be rewarded with a big windfall in the future. With the rising cos…

It's a personal choice for workers. If you're an engineer and you want a guaranteed $250k per year, go work for a financial firm. Nothing wrong with that decision. Everyone gets to make his or her own. Engineers at startups make $100k+, sometimes much more. I don't think people are being asked to subject themselves to unreasonable financial strain. It is indeed "maybe-someday" competition. When you work at a startup,…

Couldn't it be more accurate to position this as follows?

"At a funded startup, a VC is investing money expecting a 30+% annual return. One condition of your employment is to invest along side of them via less cash compensation. If you can't take the risk, or don't believe in the upside, other places are better."

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

#436

Post by BinaryIdiot »

niche wrote: post #357
BinaryIdiot wrote: post #341

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I came here to ask the same question. I started working on an idea of my own and I have many friends who are very talented but none that really seem to want to commit to something risky and obviously I don't want to force someone to come if they are not interested in taking the risk with me. This is the main reason my next application to YC will be solo but I am certainly open (and would prefer) a partner.

Hi BinaryIdiot, I am free and available, I am a TernaryIdiot, we could make a team!

We may have some communication problems! ha

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

#437

Post by sama »

jpmcglone wrote: post #399
sama wrote: post #349

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's a personal choice for workers. If you're an engineer and you want a guaranteed $250k per year, go work for a financial firm. Nothing wrong with that decision. Everyone gets to make his or her own. Engineers at startups make $100k+, sometimes much more. I don't think people are being asked to subject themselves to unreasonable financial strain. It is indeed "maybe-someday" competition. When you work at a startup,…

I interviewed for a company once that had different kinds of offers, ranging from low-salary/high-equity, to high-salary/low-equity. I thought that was an interesting idea :D They had 5 options total, and the middle option wasn't awful. I'd like to see more of this in the valley.

I always used to make offers like this--I think it's a good way to do it.

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

#438

Post by 32faction »

suyash wrote: post #365
sama wrote: post #279

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Sure, but it was necessary. I'd do it too if it meant my startup would survive.

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

#440

Post by sama »

upquark wrote: post #430

Possibly naive question: I'm a married guy in his 30s working at a major investment bank in NYC (lead quantitative role). I have a graduate degree from a non-elite school. No experience at top tech firms (had offers but didn't go). Now, I have some cool side projects that I believe could become great consumer apps given enough care and resources. Is there any reason for me to apply to YC, and any chance of getting se…

We have funded lots of people with similar backgrounds.

What will matter is the quality of your idea and progress so far.

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