Did anything ever come of YC's "one million jobs" RFP?
I've stuck in an application for that for S16 but I'm not sure it's terribly good.
I Am Sam Altman, President of Y Combinator. AMA
621–630 of 768 posts
Re: I Am Sam Altman, President of Y Combinator. AMA
#622My company Krewe ( https://www.gokrewe.com ) is aimed at helping people make a new group of close friends in their neighborhood that they can see every day and build a strong local community. I only have a couple hundred sign ups (after about three weeks) so I don't know for sure that the concept will work. I also don't have a cofounder. Should I apply to YC now, or potentially wait for the next batch when I would (h…
Just stop working on this idea. The main problem, imho, with the current model of startup creation, is that it heavily selects for young technical people with little in the way of other commitments to take chances on new ideas. Many young technical people are hard-working and driven and that's wonderful, but (1) they form a narrow demographic [if you hang out at too many hacker cons you'll wildly overestimate the pop…
> Just stop working on this idea.
Wow.
> First of all, literally every social app in the world is designed to help people make friends.
Really?
---
I just signed up. I just moved to SF. All of my friends have money and live in the Mission, I live in the Sunset. I'd love to meet people in my neighborhood.
I will use Krewe. Will I like it? That I don't know, but I'm certainly excited to see how it plays out.
I love finding interesting ways to meet new people - locally or halfway around the world (currently trying Plane, a social icebreaker app I discovered on PH - they have no website but here's the App Store shortlink: bit.ly/planeapp)
I rarely comment on people's apps positively or negatively but this comment, while perhaps intended to be helpful, rubbed me the wrong way. Perhaps it's the arrogant tone (my interpretation).
Re: I Am Sam Altman, President of Y Combinator. AMA
#623My company Krewe ( https://www.gokrewe.com ) is aimed at helping people make a new group of close friends in their neighborhood that they can see every day and build a strong local community. I only have a couple hundred sign ups (after about three weeks) so I don't know for sure that the concept will work. I also don't have a cofounder. Should I apply to YC now, or potentially wait for the next batch when I would (h…
Just stop working on this idea. The main problem, imho, with the current model of startup creation, is that it heavily selects for young technical people with little in the way of other commitments to take chances on new ideas. Many young technical people are hard-working and driven and that's wonderful, but (1) they form a narrow demographic [if you hang out at too many hacker cons you'll wildly overestimate the pop…
[deleted]
Re: I Am Sam Altman, President of Y Combinator. AMA
#624Earlier quoted context omitted.
Thanks for the additions. Don't know much about RethinkDB, but as for the others: Reddit is a great example of founders without pedigree. Although it hasn't been too successful as a company, it's created phenomenal value for its users. I definitely spend more time on Reddit than Facebook/Instagram/Snapchat/Twitter combined. I'd say Waterloo is elite in the tech sense, and Apoorva worked at Amazon in fulfillment, so i…
Reddit hasn't been too successful as a company? I'd imagine their estimated value is at least 100 million.
Welcome to HN where $10 million in the bank may feel like a failure.
Re: I Am Sam Altman, President of Y Combinator. AMA
#625Earlier quoted context omitted.
> Rather obvious what is going on here - and it is pathetic Because having people create fake accounts just to leave positive comments is far more likely than thousands of people being exposed to this thread via Sam and Jason's tweeter feeds? I wouldn't be so quick to jump to conclusions with no data to back up your assertions. For what it's worth, while I've never worked with Jason, I have met him once (briefly) and…
All but one of the accounts was created before Jason tweeted about it. and i've been around here long enough to know that even when outsiders do link to threads you don't get 50%+ green comments without sockpuppets
> All but one of the accounts was created before Jason tweeted about it.
What about before Sam tweeted? What about any other outlets that linked to HN?
> and i've been around here long enough to know that even when outsiders do link to threads you don't get 50%+ green comments without sockpuppets
Sounds like, instead of relying on data, you already have your narrative set so it doesn't really matter what anyone says. Do you have data that shows this has happened in the past like you claim? If so, what are the correlations between those instances and this one? How do you control between fake accounts and accounts created due to an influx of traffic regarding a topic many are interested in?
Re: I Am Sam Altman, President of Y Combinator. AMA
#626Education-wise, are you able to describe the percentages of applicants with backgrounds coming from top schools versus lower-tier schools? Being in the Bay Area, I know that Stanford and UC Berkeley tend to have a decent amount of relatively successful launches/founders, but on the other hand I can't say I hear nearly as much about people who went to San Francisco State or San Jose State (or any other lower-tier scho…
We looked at our data here last year--we fund founders from a very wide variety of schools, and no school at all, but many of our most successful founders went to 'top schools' and thus it's easy to get the mistaken impression we select for that.
Wow! According to Paul Graham, that performance clearly indicates you are biased AGAINST founders from top schools!!
Re: I Am Sam Altman, President of Y Combinator. AMA
#627Earlier quoted context omitted.
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.
Sorry, will look into it.
Re: I Am Sam Altman, President of Y Combinator. AMA
#628Re: I Am Sam Altman, President of Y Combinator. AMA
#629Earlier quoted context omitted.
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?
Thank you for the feedback. Yes we are for commenting. We will try to make that obvious with UI changes. You are right that we are using Bing, Twitter, Youtube etc. They frictionlessly provide good content to users. We are also building our own features. Hopefully they will be our usp
Re: I Am Sam Altman, President of Y Combinator. AMA
#630Hey Sam, where do I apply for YC basic income? : ) Many people have no problems in life except those related to not having enough dough. I know a number of really creative/talented individuals who would be a lot better off if they didn't struggle to feed/house themselves. People who contribute to open source, build art projects and love to share knowledge. Definite contributors to society and the betterment of their…
The problem with this is that 1) YC is not a charity (though they do fund some nonprofits) 2) there's no generic, legal way to buy equity in people (https://www.quora.com/Can-you-buy-human-shares)