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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

#441

Post by ryanSrich »

latj wrote: post #376
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,…

>Engineers at startups make $100k+, sometimes much more. I don't think people are being asked to subject themselves to unreasonable financial strain. Is $100k enough for a person to live without roommates within 20-30 minutes commute from said startup? Eat healthy food? Pay student loans? Have health insurance and build savings? I'm not from the Bay Area- this is a serious question.

It'd be cutting it close...but if you have no other debts I don't see why not. I suspect the biggest thing holding people back is that they have student loans and/or are not being offered $100k.

You can get a decent studio in the bay area for $2500 or so. If you don't have pets and you bike/pt everywhere then $100k is plenty.

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

#442

Post by vasilipupkin »

siglesias wrote: post #431
abeppu wrote: post #407

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

Sir/Madam, that is incorrect. Diversification can easily lower expected value, or raise it. It should maximize your signal to noise ratio, if properly done.

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

#443

Post by sama »

sajjadk wrote: post #309

Sam, Whats your take on startups targeting opportunities in developing countries ( difficult to operate terrains)? These are of course markets that have the potential of affecting billions of people.

Really depends on the specifics, but generally it's something we like.

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

#444

Post by tchock23 »

sama wrote: post #281
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…

We really prefer at least two founders, but it's not a deal-breaker. We funded Drew Houston of Dropbox as a solo founder, but he got a cofounder before the batch started. A bad cofounder is far, far worse than no cofounder. I'd spend maybe 20% of your time looking for a cofounder, and the rest on your business. But don't force a cofounder if you don't have a good, organic option. The more progress you make on the bus…

I help out as a mentor at an accelerator in upstate NY. Unfortunately, we see solo founders rushing to find a co-founder just to go through accelerator programs.

I wish your reply was shared widely with anyone applying to any accelerator anywhere...

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

#447

Post by sama »

t27 wrote: post #203

For hardware cos applying to this batch, the Bolt collaboration sounds awesome. Since Bolt has super expertise in prototyping, is it an indication that hardware ideas with an idea only Or partial prototype can get accepted? How can such co.s improve their chances further, compared to software co.s where making a proof of concept barely costs any money?

Yes, we will fund hardware companies with only an idea in some cases. However, the cost and time required to make a prototype has come down so much that most applicants have something built.

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

#448

Post by thescorer »

When you held Startup class in NYC. You brought up a few founders who were invested in... and what struck me was that each of them had previous relationships to their investors.

For example I heard at least twice from an investor: "I've known john for years prior to him coming to me with [insert company name here]."

So my question is, do you think there exists a "good ol boy's club" in SV that increases the chances by a great deal of getting funded? Or do you believe the playing field is even for those who don't have those kind of connections?

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

#449

Post by ryanSrich »

sama wrote: post #226
shubhamjain wrote: post #140

With you recently leading a round of investment for reddit, it seems you are quite optimistic about its success but as of late 2013 (and maybe now too), Reddit remains in red even after nearly a decade of its inception[1]. Reddit CEO once said, that ads are the reasons Digg failed[2], so I believe the site would be wary of using ads to the fullest. How do you think Reddit would become profitable and would be able to…

I am an extremely patient investor. I just invested in a company that I believe will take 20-30 years to work. If reddit gets to a billion users, which I believe it will, the company will have many, many interesting monetizations opportunities. It's on its way to become one of the great monopolies of the web.

> If reddit gets to a billion users

What makes this number significant? Can you talk about some of those opportunities that aren't available to reddit now, but will be when they reach that scale?

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