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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

#661

Post by dsr_ »

olalonde wrote: post #630
errantspark wrote: post #515

Hey 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 )

Not that way -- but in most states, an employer can claim ownership of an employee's business ideas.

You could do it formally with a contract: the employee is part-time, salaried, and assigns 49% ownership of new intellectual property to the employer, with a mutual right to match bids for the other's share.

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

#662

Post by darnton »

sama wrote: post #387
jimrandomh wrote: post #214

What is your plan for AI safety, and how does OpenAI fit into it? In http://blog.samaltman.com/machine-intelligence-part-2 you laid out sensible requirements and safeguards we should demand of late-stage AI development when it gets further along. But OpenAI's founding statement seems to have baked in a mission and vision that's incompatible with those safeguards, requiring immediate sharing of breakthroughs even if t…

We're still working through this--it turns out to be a research problem in itself. We talk about it a lot, and I'm working on a post about it (for example, we may not share intermediate breakthrough that we think pose major safety risks), but I've been much busier than expected the last few months and haven't gotten to it yet. Definitely expect us to do safety research.

What can a run-of-the-mill technical person do to help?

We know that super-AI is more likely than not to be existentially dangerous. It would be remiss to foresee the apocalypse and assume someone else will fix it.

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

#663

Post by optforfon »

blazespin wrote: post #611
sama wrote: post #351

Earlier 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.

"ideas are worth so little" .. that's a very broad and dangerous statement for you to make given that people might want to tell you things in confidence. Obviously, if you have IP, dont apply at YC because they don't think it's worth anything.

Have you seen all the companies that have insane valuations? None are based on really novel ideas.

If you have some truly novel technology you DEFINITELY shouldn't go to YC. They're not in the "technology transfer"-y business like universities.

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

#664

Post by rboyd »

rahulvohra wrote: post #455
sama wrote: post #265

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 compan…

Superhuman?? what a brand!

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

#665

Post by trunx »

zafka wrote: post #534
trunx wrote: post #338

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Thanks! Maybe if people upvote the question he will answer. ;)

Embedded software at Medical device company here. Would love to talk to you.

Sure. Where can I find your contact info? What kind of medical devices do you work on?

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

#666

Post by daveguy »

biot wrote: post #352
_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.

Or another idea along these lines might be to have a checkbox on the application that says "Submit to audience choice if rejected" and, if they don't get in, those applications are opened to voting by HN users above a certain karma threshold. Pick the five highest ranked applications and bring them in as a normal YC company.

I like this. An alternative would be to have borderlines ranked by those who got into YC in the current round or in past rounds. Top peer ranked would get in just under the cutoff. HN sounds even more exciting (probably couldn't include the whole application, maybe just a company description -- although that might not be something people are comfortable with). Either way, I wonder if there is any peer non-YC consideration.

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

#667

Post by namenotrequired »

w1ntermute wrote: post #372
sama wrote: post #348

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Were the companies rejected by YC that have gone on to be the most successful often just below the cutoff?

I recall pg previously stating that there was no correlation between how close to the cutoff an accepted candidate was and how well they ended up doing. Now Sam says the opposite. I can't find the original quote now and this was when PG was still in charge, so they probably have improved their interviewing process and collected more data since.

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

#668

Post by namenotrequired »

jackpirate wrote: post #156
sama wrote: post #142

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We have multiple people review each application (except the very good/very bad ones) and we look at the cases where the assessments are very different. Some of the best companies have the most disagreement, which is why we have implemented our "strong yes" policy--if any single partner wants to fund a company, we fund it. It's much more important to our returns that we fund the next Airbnb than if we mistakenly fund…

This is a really uninformative answer. Every peer reviewed conference/journal also does this. The NIPS study was special because they did more. They ran a controlled experiment to determine the exact variance in acceptance rates and then published the results. The GP was asking you to repeat the NIPS experiment.

They're in different business. NIPS needs to minimise the amount of really bad papers they accept. YC needs to maximise the amount of really good companies they fund.

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

#670

Post by namenotrequired »

baron816 wrote: post #557
throw420 wrote: post #535

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Thanks for trying to talk me out of this. No one has done that before despite me trying to get them to, so I really appreciate the feedback. None of your points causes any concern for me though. I have lot of ideas on how to retain users--it's not simply a single use product. Krewe is not a "Tinder for friends," it's completely different and actually tries to mimic the way people naturally form and maintain friendshi…

That's awesome, I agree with you that it's a huge problem. I do hope you're validating the points you're so confident about.
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