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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

#741

Post by matheweis »

matheweis wrote: post #645
dean wrote: post #418

Have you ever considered funding enough to attract people who have financial obligations, such as kids, a spouse and a mortgage? It seems like a huge, untapped, resource that no one else is going after.

Speaking as one of those people, it's not just the financial obligations. In fact I think the financial obligations are a relatively small part of it ; it just means a higher burn rate, which isn't a tremendous problem in the scope of these things. The much bigger problems are the conflict of time spent on family vs the startup, and/or in many cases the desire to have a stable environment for the family. The time can…

BTW, here's a great post from someone who did get the balance right: http://tiempoapp.com/y-combinator-a-two-year-old-and-a-pregn...

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

#742

Post by fudged71 »

bramgg wrote: post #275
jpmcglone wrote: post #149

Hey Sam, can you give please tell us about the time you, sama, most successfully hacked some (non-computer) system to your advantage?

And can you please tell us what you're hoping to discover about a founder with that question :) Side question, mostly just for fun, have people's answers to that question ever been blatantly illegal?

One guy who got accepted answered that questions with "I sold drugs"

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

#743

Post by CHaro »

knicksjets121 wrote: post #403
sama wrote: post #379

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The big problem is a 4 or 5 person founding team. That's a high bar to get over (but possible, one startup I really like in this batch has 5 founders). Be so good we can't ignore you.

Thank you! Why would you say 4 or 5 person founding teams are a big problem?

It is difficult to keep 4-5 people perfectly aligned which is necessary early in a startups life, especially if all of them have equal say.

Losing days to arguing over what the best course of action is a startup killer

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

#744

Post by markpundmann »

TTPrograms wrote: post #734
defen wrote: post #629

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 actuall…

What your talking about is commonly referred to in economics as diminishing marginal returns. The first $1000 is much more useful than the second. Also, your interpretation of "expected impact" is what we call economic utility, which is commonly put in a cobbs douglas utility function (utility = (some_number > 1)^(1 > some_number > 0).

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

#745

Post by astrange »

dustcoin wrote: post #651
withdavidli wrote: post #631

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Thought process on this? If a person needs to dip into their retirement plan because a start up fails then they would be penalized, if that's the situation it's better to just keep it in cash.

The contributions to a Roth IRA (but not the investment returns) can be withdrawn with no tax penalty, so there isn't much reason not to max it out if possible. Employees should always contribute to a their 401k at least up to the company match, as it is essentially free money.

If you're getting paid at SV salary levels, it's entirely possible you're making too much to be allowed to contribute to a Roth IRA.

Some IRA companies will let you do put it into a traditional IRA then do a Roth conversion, but then again some will make you mail them a notarized form every time you want to do that.

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

#746

Post by josu »

cvander wrote: post #683
josu wrote: post #391

Hello Sam, Any plans to open up a YC hub in Mexico. The startup scene is in an infant stage but it seems to be growing very fast. 500 startup is already funding companies here[1]. Thank you! [1] http://500mexicocity.com/

Silicon Valley is very open to risk-taking Mexicans willing to do the program in Mountain View.

How about risk-taking Spaniards currently living in Mexico? ;)

I am building a startup that will cater to the Latin American countries, and while I would love to move to the SF area, I think that it would hurt my business, since currently I have no interest in the American market.

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

#748

Post by freyr »

pbreit wrote: post #593
freyr wrote: post #340

You have suggested that Silicon Valley is successful, in part, because workers accept a notion of "long-term compensation" [1]. Long-term compensation, perhaps better called maybe-someday compensation, requires SV software engineers to work for relatively less (factoring in cost-of-living) than many other skilled professionals, with hopes that they'll be rewarded with a big windfall in the future. With the rising cos…

You're missing a key reason why annual salaries are modest at the beginning. A key attribute of a founding team is intense resourcefulness and have considerable powers of persuasion. Both of these attributes result in lower salaries initially.

I guess my concern is how salaries grow with experience, in a place with cost of living comparable to or higher than Manhattan.

A software engineer, a management consultant, a white shoe lawyer, and a banker may all start out at a "modest" $100k-$125k salary. Maybe a bit lower, maybe a bit higher.

But in only one of those professions is there a fairly low ceiling for salary growth and a tacit belief that your value decreases with age and belief (or, at least, a tacit belief that younger workers can do "good enough" work with lower pay and longer hours). The consequences of this are why having engineers go all in on a startup with hopes of delayed compensation is a huge ask.

Again, people are happy to do it, so it's not Sam's problem. It's certainly not my problem. But this system has grown dependent on a continuous stream high-profile IPOs making the gamblers rich, drawing in new and optimistic workers to take their place. If that stream dries up, I won't want to be anywhere near SF/SV during the fallout.

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

#749

Post by getsat »

samspenc wrote: post #735
getsat wrote: post #607

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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".

Good point, thanks!

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

#750

Post by aliakhtar »

fudged71 wrote: post #742
bramgg wrote: post #275

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And can you please tell us what you're hoping to discover about a founder with that question :) Side question, mostly just for fun, have people's answers to that question ever been blatantly illegal?

One guy who got accepted answered that questions with "I sold drugs"

source?
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