What public companies have you invested in?
AAPL, AMZN, TSLA, GOOGL, INTC, FB, YELP, BOX. I like tech.
You don't think TWTR is a good buy right now?
I Am Sam Altman, President of Y Combinator. AMA
451–460 of 768 posts
Re: I Am Sam Altman, President of Y Combinator. AMA
#452Obviously YC can't enter into NDAs with applicants but can you shed a little bit of light on what YC does to protect the applicants' business ideas? Some might be discouraged from applying because they fear if the idea is interesting (but not the team or there's another reason it's not accepted) that someone from within YC or a related ecosystem might just take the idea and look at the product so far and decide to ju…
Honestly, we are so busy, there are so many companies, and ideas are worth so little, that most of us don't think twice about a specific company once we move on to the next applications. The very best ideas usually don't seem worth stealing.
Does anyone other than those evaluating applications (i.e. YC staff) have access to these applications, the ideas they contain or any prototypes which may have been submitted?
Re: I Am Sam Altman, President of Y Combinator. AMA
#453Earlier quoted context omitted.
Honestly, we are so busy, there are so many companies, and ideas are worth so little, that most of us don't think twice about a specific company once we move on to the next applications. The very best ideas usually don't seem worth stealing.
The concept of ideas being worth near to nothing is new to me, can you explain that thinking? Without monetary arguments this seems not right.
If an idea is a good business opportunity, it's common for multiple people to be working on it independently at the same time. It's also common for many people to fail working on that very idea before you get to it.
One of the values of VCs and networks and experts is that they can tell you how other companies in your space have failed (running out of money, founder breakups, "people won't pay for it", "it really needs X but X doesn't scale", etc.).
If you watch the start-up space for long enough you start seeing multiple teams with the "same idea" but only a handful succeed at it; even at small a scale as university incubators.
Re: I Am Sam Altman, President of Y Combinator. AMA
#454Earlier quoted context omitted.
Dude, that site is very difficult to understand. Just saying.
Thanks, what about homepage https://comment.ws ? What do you find difficult here? Would appreciate your or anyone else's feedback!
Your website seemingly doesn't load at all for me. Firefox on Win7 with uBlock Origin and Disconnect plugins. Just shows a search bar that doesn't work and the rest of the page is blank.
Re: I Am Sam Altman, President of Y Combinator. AMA
#455Hey Sam, Any comment regarding Jason Calacanis being banned from YC's upcoming demo day? Jason tweeted[1] his side but didn't know what the YC side of it was and was curious. [1] https://twitter.com/Jason/status/710176806184349696
To be clear, it has nothing to do with all the shit he talks about YC. Though that's annoying, it's fine. We collect feedback from YC founders on investors (we have a giant database of this). If you mistreat founders, we don't invite you to Demo Day. This isn't permanent--if you stop mistreating founders we start inviting you again. Also, it's possible that our founders are wrong in their assessment of how a particul…
Since Jason gets a lot of flak (not that he cares):
Jason was one of the first and most helpful investors in Rapportive (YCS10, acq LinkedIn). He believed in us when there was no obvious reason to.
Jason was one of the first investors I went back to for Superhuman. (He negotiated hard, but then so do I — that's just part of each side getting what they want.)
I'd work with Jason again in a heartbeat for my next company.
Re: I Am Sam Altman, President of Y Combinator. AMA
#456Earlier quoted context omitted.
Truth is an absolute defence for libel.
> Truth is an absolute defence for libel. In the USA. In the UK, the opposite.
The UK has different legal systems for Scotland and England, so there isn't a "UK Libel law".
English defamation law has several defences:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/English_defamation_law
> Allowable defences are justification (i.e. the truth of the statement), fair comment (i.e., whether the statement was a view that a reasonable person could have held), and privilege (i.e., whether the statements were made in Parliament or in court, or whether they were fair reports of allegations in the public interest).
> An offer of amends is a barrier to litigation.
> A defamatory statement is presumed to be false, unless the defendant can prove its truth.
> Furthermore, to collect compensatory damages, a public official or public figure must prove actual malice (knowing falsity or reckless disregard for the truth). A private individual must only prove negligence (not exercising due care) to collect compensatory damages. In order to collect punitive damages, all individuals must prove actual malice.
Re: I Am Sam Altman, President of Y Combinator. AMA
#457Curious, why're you President of YC? Just to be clear, this is not intended to be why you vs someone, but if there's a story behind why you ended up where you are today. Thanks!
Re: I Am Sam Altman, President of Y Combinator. AMA
#458Earlier quoted context omitted.
Bezos did it, I believe.
Not necessarily their first startups, but: Dre (Beats), Larry Ellison, Travis Kalanick, Phil Knight (Nike), Jack Ma (Alibaba), Sam Walton, Wang Jianlin (Dalian Wanda). Mike Bloomberg and Amancio Ortega (Zara) were nearly 40.
I find it interesting which people you chose to label with their company and which you didn't.
Re: I Am Sam Altman, President of Y Combinator. AMA
#459Does this statement risk a tortious interference with business relationship suit? You have published a statement that could reasonably interpreted as Jason Calacanis mistreats founders by bullying them, changing offers, sharing their confidential info and other things. That intentionally obstructs Mr. Calcanis from entering into valuable business relationships with startup company founders. It seems very risky unless…
We detached this subthread from https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11315443 and marked it off-topic.
Re: I Am Sam Altman, President of Y Combinator. AMA
#460Hi, Sam,
Many of the HW people I see on YC focus on consumer applications.
How does YC feel about more 'b2b' applications, like nuclear seals for the IAEA, or industrial things?