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I Am Sam Altman, President of YC Group. AMA

news.ycombinator.com

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Re: I Am Sam Altman, President of YC Group. AMA

#451

Post by the_watcher »

ta11 wrote: post #168
blairanderson wrote: post #166

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I would say that if you cannot explain it simply then you cannot sell it simply. You also sound like you 'deserve' to be heard while in fact nobody owes you a meeting.

I'm not saying I deserve a meeting, I'm saying the process doesn't work for me. I don't agree with your simply conclusion. People didn't know what Twitter was for. And Gordon Moore didn't know why someone would want a home computer just to keep recipes. But those that understood it knew what the possibilities were.

People did know what it was for, but they knew what it was. Because it could be explained simply.

Re: I Am Sam Altman, President of YC Group. AMA

#452

Post by CN7R »

sama wrote: post #300
CN7R wrote: post #260

How does a college freshman get into startup culture without technical skills learned in upper division classes? Is working at a start up a viable path for college graduates or is it recommended starting at a more established company? Do you see Silicon Valley maintaining its dominance as a tech capital in future decades or will there be better entrepreneur ecosystems? Which industries are ripe for entrepreneurship?…

Working at a startup is the right answer to your first question, and it's definitely a viable path! I expect the rest of the world will trend towards Silicon Valley. But I'm biased. To find industries ripe for new companies, look for places where technology is causing a high rate of change.

I really appreciate your answers as it solidifies my goals -- now if only I can convince my mom to stop asking to go to medical school.

Re: I Am Sam Altman, President of YC Group. AMA

#453

Post by liseman »

econnors wrote: post #228

What are the best ways for hardware startups to show traction pre-launch? We feel like we have a compelling prototype, but are worried that a lack of pre-sales/press/etc. will be a red flag.

Launch:) Short of this, get your cardboard-box-level prototype into users' hands.

No matter how early and rough, show your product to potential customers and listen to what they say. You'll learn more from an hour doing this than a month of brainstorming with your team about what features you should someday maybe add to make your product compelling.

Over many cycles of sharing many prototypes with customers, you'll figure out what your future users actually want your product to do. This will almost always be way different than your original vision.

And stop worrying about whether you're too early: many of our best startups get rejected before applying again with progress and getting accepted. Pretty much everybody thinks they're too early or late for YC, and they're all wrong;)

(Disclaimer: I work for YC advising hardware startups.)

Re: I Am Sam Altman, President of YC Group. AMA

#454

Post by econnors »

liseman wrote: post #453
econnors wrote: post #228

What are the best ways for hardware startups to show traction pre-launch? We feel like we have a compelling prototype, but are worried that a lack of pre-sales/press/etc. will be a red flag.

Launch:) Short of this, get your cardboard-box-level prototype into users' hands. No matter how early and rough, show your product to potential customers and listen to what they say. You'll learn more from an hour doing this than a month of brainstorming with your team about what features you should someday maybe add to make your product compelling. Over many cycles of sharing many prototypes with customers, you'll f…

Thanks for following up on this, that's helpful advice.

Re: I Am Sam Altman, President of YC Group. AMA

#455

Post by js4 »

r0naa wrote: post #141
sama wrote: post #114

Earlier quoted context omitted.

1) This is where effectively all of our returns come from. 2) These companies are the most fun to work with. 3) It turns out that it's harder than it sounds to capture the full value of a smaller market for a bunch of reasons, and so the failure rate is much higher than expected. I think the payoff, at least in our case, is well worth it.

>3) It turns out that it's harder than it sounds to capture the full value of a smaller market for a bunch of reasons, and so the failure rate is much higher than expected. What kind of reasons? Direct me to some resources if there are too many to enumerate

Things go wrong in business regardless of market size -team issues, tech issues, funding issues, operational issues etc.

Your probability of success in a small market is going to be marginally better than it is in a bigger market. So if you look at it in terms of expected value, the bigger market is more valuable given the probability of failure.

Re: I Am Sam Altman, President of YC Group. AMA

#457

Post by mrhektor »

berpasan wrote: post #370
mrhektor wrote: post #331

What is an ideal stage for a company to apply to YC? We've gotten together an excellent team and partners, and are just starting to build out the value prop. However, we don't have any customers / traction yet. Should we wait to apply, or apply right now?

Apply, you lose nothing. And apply again once you get more progress. There is no ideal stage, but they'll fund the most promissing of them. The more your startup grows and the more times you apply (= persistance and staying alive), the more interesting your startups gets, hence better the odds. At Quero we applied 3 times before being invited for an inverview and approved.

Thanks for the advice, I think we'll fill out an application and see what happens :)

Re: I Am Sam Altman, President of YC Group. AMA

#458

Post by meowface »

alexbeloi wrote: post #382
meowface wrote: post #265

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'd sooner expect strong AI than an AI that can actually produce good music purely autonomously.

Who knows what you mean by purely autonomously since even people can't help but learn from their experiences. Nevertheless, here's a novel composition made by an NLP algorithm trained on classical music: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QEjdiE0AoCU

I stand corrected. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lcGYEXJqun8 also changed my mind a bit.
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