How I become a hacker
I Am Sam Altman, President of Y Combinator. AMA
731–740 of 757 posts
Re: I Am Sam Altman, President of Y Combinator. AMA
#732Earlier quoted context omitted.
We really prefer at least two founders, but it's not a deal-breaker. We funded Drew Houston of Dropbox as a solo founder, but he got a cofounder before the batch started. A bad cofounder is far, far worse than no cofounder. I'd spend maybe 20% of your time looking for a cofounder, and the rest on your business. But don't force a cofounder if you don't have a good, organic option. The more progress you make on the bus…
I help out as a mentor at an accelerator in upstate NY. Unfortunately, we see solo founders rushing to find a co-founder just to go through accelerator programs. I wish your reply was shared widely with anyone applying to any accelerator anywhere...
If i join u
Re: I Am Sam Altman, President of Y Combinator. AMA
#733Hi Sam, Not a YC-specific question, but I was wondering what advice you have for someone who lives outside of a major technology center and doesn't have the ability to move? I'm eager to get something started here in the next year but I'm pretty much on my own, thanks!
This is 2015 - clearly it's not possible to found a company without living in a tech hub ;)
Re: I Am Sam Altman, President of Y Combinator. AMA
#734Earlier quoted context omitted.
Diversification only lowers risk. The expected value doesn't change.
Would you rather have a 1% chance at a billion dollars or a guaranteed million? The former has a 10x higher expected value but I think most people would choose the latter.
I love examples like this. My interpretation of this generally depends on an idea of "Expected Impact", where ex. the difference between $10^6 and $10^9 in terms of lifestyle impact can be smaller than the difference between $10^3 and $10^6. You could assume a logarithmic value function, for example, but each person might have a different function depending on what you would do with the money.
Not that people actually think that way, but you can construct a model where the guaranteed million is the rational choice.
Re: I Am Sam Altman, President of Y Combinator. AMA
#735Earlier quoted context omitted.
Apartments in SF now are $1800 / studio - $2200 / 1br. so... $100k: - $30k taxes - $24k rent - $12k food and misc ------------- $34k $34k is about what you have to play with for investing, transportation, entertainment, fitness, saving, student loans, other debt
1br is around $3,000 now: https://www.rentjungle.com/average-rent-in-san-francisco-ren... 100k = 25% marginal tax rate for Fed, but effective rate of 17.3% + 6.8% State tax rate = 24.13% = $24130 (assuming you are single) $100k: - $24.1k taxes - $36k rent - $12k food and misc ------------- $27.9k So you basically have $2,325 left over after expenses each month to play with.
Make sure to account for medicare and social security. That's an additional $10K-$15K in "expenses".
Re: I Am Sam Altman, President of Y Combinator. AMA
#736Re: I Am Sam Altman, President of Y Combinator. AMA
#737With you recently leading a round of investment for reddit, it seems you are quite optimistic about its success but as of late 2013 (and maybe now too), Reddit remains in red even after nearly a decade of its inception[1]. Reddit CEO once said, that ads are the reasons Digg failed[2], so I believe the site would be wary of using ads to the fullest. How do you think Reddit would become profitable and would be able to…
Also, if you don't use Alien Blue (the mobile app for Reddit) then you might not know they have been testing "Sponsored" posts. It didn't take a genius to know people would complain, but the ads are getting A LOT of pushback from users. I supposed you can put this in context and look at how Facebook gets crap for changing anything, but is this really the most creative idea Reddit can come up with to generate more rev…
Or put it in context and see that people are pissed that bugs aren't fixed for months but instead you get ads now.
Re: I Am Sam Altman, President of Y Combinator. AMA
#738Earlier quoted context omitted.
Investors have a lot more control over the board than a average employee will.
Startup boards have very little to do with the company's success. Key employees have much more impact.
Employees have more do with success. But if a big investor goes, we want this. Your probably going to do that.
Re: I Am Sam Altman, President of Y Combinator. AMA
#739What is required to apply? Do you look for a prototype? Do you look at user growth rate over the past few months? How do you decide if an idea is really good?
Re: I Am Sam Altman, President of Y Combinator. AMA
#740Earlier quoted context omitted.
Here's the current status of ads, as I understand it: On iPhone, you only see sponsored posts if you have not purchased Pro. When they rolled out ads initially to iPhone, Pro users saw them and complained, Reddit said it was a bug, and fixed something on the backend to prevent them from being shown to Pro users. On iPad, you see sponsored posts even if you have Pro. As far as anyone can tell, this is intentional. Fro…
No, Alien Blue on iPad has not had a 'Pro' version in months.
Thanks for the correction. I don't have the iPad version myself, so I was going off of comments made by other users. It sounds like people who did pay for Pro when they did offer it in the iPad version are upset, then.