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Hi Sam, this isn't really the place for this, but I was late to the party during your AMA a couple months ago and you weren't around when I asked my question. I
by adenadel 11y ago
Hi Sam, this isn't really the place for this, but I was late to the party during your AMA a couple months ago and you weren't around when I asked my question. I'm reposting it here in hopes that you'll see it.
A few weeks ago I submitted this article https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10213547 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10213547 about one of Peter Thiel's biotech investments and the top comment asked "How does someone very intelligent like Peter Thiel make investment decisions in an area where he lacks a huge amount of background knowledge?". I'm curious how you personally and YC as a whole goes about making investments in areas where you don't have great expertise. For example, how do you evaluate biotech markets and the YC biotech companies? How did you evaluate your energy investments?
- sama 11y ago1) Build a network of experts you can rely on for evaluation 2) A lot of what makes a startup good or bad translates across different domains, so even if you can't evaluate the technology yourself, you can still evaluate other things (e.g. how well the founders communicate, how quickly they get things done, etc.)