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I Am Sam Altman, President of Y Combinator. AMA

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

#591

Post by neolefty »

sama wrote: post #403
smaili wrote: post #136

I've submitted my application as a single founder - not because I want it that way but because none of my friends have the freedom for a venture. Does YC do match making (if they see a good fit) or this something you need to specifically request on the application?

We don't. We think it's much better if cofounders have some sort of shared history together.

I think you should try grouping random individuals as an experiment. They should each already have a project, and be capable of implementing it, but obviously they'll have to choose one when they get together.

My two most successful lab final projects in college were randoms. One of them won the annual award for best undergrad lab project, and the other won the in-course competition. These were late-course groupings, after as many as half of each class's starting participants had already dropped out, so it was already pretty selective.

Bad: We didn't know each other ahead of time. There were always weaker and stronger participants. In one 4-person team, one teammate just completely flaked, but the rest of us stepped up.

Good: We didn't have relationship baggage that could have come from partnering with friends on a very stressful project. I think it really helped us focus on the projects. We were thrilled with any success.

I used to think it was just good luck finding outstanding teammates. But perhaps it was because they had already independently made it through the hard first half of the course without having close friends also enrolled in the class. As a counter-datapoint, another course had a lottery-based grouping, with no pre-harrowing, and my teammates and I never gelled.

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

#592

Post by cybin »

BTW: The application form has a really nasty bug. If you've just spent the last hour in writing some of the greatest prose ever written, hit save, and don't wait for the response in the top right corner and hit logout your work will be lost:( dammit! Sam I hope you fix that.

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

#593

Post by JeremyHoward »

nikcub wrote: post #560
redtri wrote: post #399

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Jason is the only investor I've worked with that treated me simply as a founder, not a "female founder." This alone is a reason that new YC entrepreneurs should have access to working with him. He sets an example of how entrepreneurs should be treated. Jason has seen me at my worst, when I was ready to throw in the towel and battling with my board and generally having a tough, tough time, and I left the meeting with…

You are one of 7 brand new accounts created since this thread was posted who have left comments praising Jason: https://news.ycombinator.com/user?id=supergeek18 https://news.ycombinator.com/user?id=vincentc https://news.ycombinator.com/user?id=Clectasteve https://news.ycombinator.com/user?id=ericzli https://news.ycombinator.com/user?id=rushtix https://news.ycombinator.com/user?id=redtri https://news.ycombinator.com/u…

Sam altman tweeted this thread to his 149,000 twitter followers some of which would have worked with Jason, and won't have HN accounts.

Before Sam edited his comment, his comment implied that Jason had bullied founders, changed offers and shared founders confidential information.

> 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 (i.e. bullying them, changing offers, sharing their confidential info, etc etc etc) then we start inviting you again.

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

#594

Post by geofft »

henrymercer wrote: post #588
pw wrote: post #463

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

She wants mass firings of people like me and you for no other reason than our sex and the color of our skin.

This seems reasonable if (and only if!) people who match you on sex and skin color are unfairly overrepresented, and if the meaning is to fire those who aren't qualified, not to indiscriminately fire to meet a quota. I read both of those things as implied by that tweet and its context, but I can see how they're not obvious. Without that context, I admit the sentence is racist and sexist, but in context, it seems like a reasonable response to existing racism and sexism that has given employment to unqualified white men more than to unqualified people of different race/gender. (It is sort of like "black lives matter": shorn of context it seems to privilege one race, but in a world where black lives seem to matter less than other lives, it is a response to that existing racism.)

I am a man but not white, so perhaps this does not sting as much as it stings you, in which case I apologize for not being able to fully empathize. Anecdotally, the vast majority of the underqualified and incompetent people I've worked with in tech have been men, even taking into account the general proportion of men and women in tech. Without thinking hard, I can name underqualified men, qualified men, and qualified women that I have worked with, but would have to think hard to remember underqualified women. So I'm okay with focusing any attempts to fire unqualified people on men, or, at least, making sure that any efforts to fire unqualified people end up firing at least some men.

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

#595

Post by orionblastar »

jonstokes wrote: post #313

I'm working on a piece about universal basic income, and I have the following summary of the how I think that many tech people like yourself believe UBI is going to work: 1. Companies innovate by doing things more cheaply with automation than human workers can do them. 2. As a result of automation, the more efficient companies reap all the profits in a market as they drive the less efficient companies out of business…

UBI has to pay enough for health and dental insurance so in case something happens they can pay the bills.

If you pay a small amount of money to live on and they can't afford insurance and they get sick they can't afford the bills.

I myself am on disability and filed chapter 13 bankruptcy due to medical bills. It ruined my credit and now I have dental that doesn't cover my root and gum scalings and I have a cadaract forming in my left eye and can't afford surgery. I might even end up homeless as a result. I used to be a programmer until I got too sick and had to quit.

Disability is like basic income but it only pays what your FICA contrubuted to it. The more you pay into it the more you get if you become disabled.

Also working on challenges and projects mean nothing if you have no money to market them and get investors. Esp if you can't afford a good computer or a web server. Get stuck with cheap ones that are limited.

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

#596

Post by pedalpete »

desdiv wrote: post #590
pedalpete wrote: post #561

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As a Canadian, I'd suspect entering the US under a TN visa (Free trade agreement if you have an applicable university degree or 10 years experience) would probably do it. Anybody have experience with that when attending YC?

For TN you need a job offer. Specifically, when you try to enter the US on the TN status (it's not a visa technically), you'll be asked to show an offer letter from a US company that clearly states your intended role and salary.

Oh, thanks for clarifying. I thought we could get the visa while looking for work if you were qualified.

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

#597

Post by orionblastar »

beachstartup wrote: post #563
newjersey wrote: post #532

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Oh wow. I wish they said that the bar was so low. I would like to apply as well if that's the case. Edit: I still think the idea of Dropbox is pretty stupid and I wouldn't have given Drew Houston a penny if I was an investor. But I never thought the average application would be so far worse if Dropbox got funded and succeeded.

well, hold on, i don't speak for yc, i was just going off of my own hiring experiences and perhaps extrapolating a bit creatively. but i can read a lot into sama's "not very good" understatement. for a yc (or vc) partner to say that in an actual post is pretty telling. and of course, my statement about grammar is grammatically wrong. not much changes on forum banter through the decades, does it?

A lot of the not very good companies don't have a business plan, aren't organized very well, have issues, are in it for the money but lack experience and skills. They need a lot of help just to get better and I guess they don't have what it takes to get funded.

You don't want to fund a company that doesn't know what they are doing and needs a lot of help to get to that level where they do get funded.

But that is a startup opportunity to help these awful companies get better so they can get funded and then pay the mentors money for the training.

I'm sure they get coffee shops and pizza places apply as well that don't qualify but want to do some sort of cybercafe in their store.

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

#598

Post by seibelj »

comment wrote: post #421
eric001 wrote: post #309

Earlier 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!

I honestly have no idea what this website does or what its purpose is. Is it for commenting? I couldn't figure that out. It seems like you've glued together various websites and search engines into a single page. Why would I use this?

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

#599

Post by tangled_zans »

bpchaps wrote: post #367

I'm actively working on data-based civics projects that should hopefully have positive individual financial impact - particularly for lower income households. It's very fulfilling work that perhaps comes close in addressing localized economic problems (eg, neighborhoods). Problem with this sort of work is that it's generally incremental and has zero immediate effects. In other words, there's no way in hell anyone's g…

Hey! I was replying to your comment on my other thread and then it disappeared :P You sound like you're going through a lot of the same stuff that I am. I'm 27 also and my mind is a maze of incomprehensible things. Let me know if you want to chat about it, my e-mail is in my profile. Might be something that we can both share insights on!

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

#600

Post by ec109685 »

ryandrake wrote: post #488
_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.

If the thought is that randomly selected start-ups might possibly outperform hand-picked ones, then I suppose anyone with a few million $$$ laying around is free to test that hypothesis. If true you could make bank!

Nobody besides YC has their network. The question is whether it is their selection process or other factors that contribute to a startup's success.
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