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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

#491

Post by ricfulop »

sama wrote: post #265
BinaryIdiot wrote: post #221

Hey 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…

Excluding Jason is perplexing to me. For context I've started 6 companies, one went public and was a unicorn. I've worked with Jason as an angel in my companies and I've been on a board with him. Jason has been an awesome throughout several years of doing business with him. I can't envision a scenario where he wouldn't be founder friendly and I'd love to have him as an investor in any future project I pursue. Any first time founder would be lucky to work with Jason.

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

#494

Post by ricfulop »

carlisle_ wrote: post #278
BinaryIdiot wrote: post #221

Hey 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

Jason is a bully. I've heard plenty of horror stories of people who have worked for him. I'm not surprised in the least and I'm extremely glad to see people standing up to him.

Have you actually worked with him? I have for many years and he has been one of the most founder friendly and dedicated people I've ever met!

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

#495

Post by nikkwong »

sama wrote: post #348
_ll5a wrote: post #304

Has YC ever considered having a control group by randomly pre-accepting certain applicants into the program automatically? I'd be curious to see the stats on how successful that group would be versus the group that's actually picked by the committee.

We do talk about that every once in awhile, but the average company that applies to YC is not very good and thus the experiment would hurt the network (and be painful for us to work with). What we've more seriously considered is randomly funding some companies just below the threshold. Also, we do look at our ranking to see how companies at the top vs companies near the cutoff do. It's rare (but not unheard of) for a…

I can second this. I worked for a similar unnamed incubator company in the Bay Area and a vast majority of the ideas sent to us were from good-hearted people, but absolutely ludicrous and—at least from our opinion—would never be able to become successful businesses. Some people just really seem to have problems understanding product-market fit.

My guess would be that applicants to Y-Combinator are probably along the same spectrum–some great ideas, some decent ideas, and a lot of junk inbetween.

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

#497

Post by nailer »

pw wrote: post #463
henrymercer wrote: post #191

Last March, you mentioned on twitter that you are a customer of/financially support Shanley Kane's organization, Model View Culture. Since since then (and before then too), she has made a variety of racially and sexually charged statements, such as, "fire some fuckin white guys to get it done" ( https://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:KtAdEv... ). Do you or Y-Combinator still patronize or support Model…

I'd love to hear what you find so objectionable about the tweets to linked to. It seems radical but not offensive.

Shanley also signs off a lot of her content with 'kill all men' and has doxxed critics before.

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

#500

Post by hahla »

demiurge_09 wrote: post #486

Hey Sam, For a non-technical founder interested in building tech products; is it more important to learn how to code (well enough to build a prototype) vs understand software architecture (to manage the building of the product)

I would argue that learning how to code well enough to build a prototype is the same thing as being able to understand software architecture to manage the building of the product. A better question would be learn how to code vs be able to lead and manage a team.
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