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Harjeet: I'm a partner at Y Combinator. Ask me anything.
- Shenglong 15y agoI just #interfacefailed there. I think I asked the same question like 7 times before I realized what was going on. #fml
- GraffitiTim 15y agoI'm not seeing where you did that. Which AMA or question or username is it?
- Shenglong 15y agoI'm not seeing it show up either - strange. I wonder if there's an approval system before the questions are public.
- e1ven 15y agoI did the same thing. Posting a question doesn't make it at ALL clear if it's done so. Do you NEED to tweet it? Otherwise, posting a question just leads to a form where you can submit (another?) question. The UI could be a bit clearer there.
- davidcann 15y agoThe same thing happened to me and I'm still not sure if my question was entered or not. I can't find anywhere that lists the questions I've asked.
- cschmidt 15y agoI wouldn't completely rule out us ever doing something in NY, if we *had* to open another YC branch it would almost certainly be in NY. Wow, as someone who lives in Boston, this makes me realize how much NYC is eclipsing us. We're #3 (hopefully :-).
- wh-uws 15y agoIts probably between Boston and Austin,Tx for #3 Dont know which one it would be though
- GraffitiTim 15y agoApparently we accidentally launched AnyAsq!
- desigooner 15y agoA little off the track but do you intend to have a "Follow AMA" style button or A favorites button like StackOverflow to follow the interesting ones? It'd help to keep a track of all the conversations flying around the site.
- GraffitiTim 15y agoYes, I wish we had already built that feature.
- fttechfounder 15y agoHi, there's a question here about AnyAsq: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2710226 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2710226
- ZackOfAllTrades 15y agoI am guessing anyasq is a YC company that just launched? Rationale: Harjeet doing an interview at a relatively unknown company/project. Also, how does anyasq beat reddit ama?
- timsally 15y ago> Also, how does anyasq beat reddit ama? * Better moderation. Seems like there are no unverified AMAs on anyasq. Trolling is a major problem on /r/iama. * By leveraging the YC network to get AMAs with people who would never do a Reddit AMA. These two things are relatively straightforward and simple, but I think it's a winning combination. The popularity of the AMA concept certainly has been validated by /r/iama. Backed by a company, I think it has a lot of potential to form the basis of a small successful media company. For example, I have a binder saved of useful advice mined from /r/iama. The value of this advice is great and would normally be unavailable to me. If someone put out a curated book, I'd buy it in a second.
- ZackOfAllTrades 15y agoDevil's advocate: Reddit is getting better at the trolling with confirmations from moderators. Reddit AMA gets a surprising amount of important people to pass their way. And technically reddit is in the YC network (though the founders have left). But agreed that there are some people who would never do a AMA on reddit that might come from YC. Also, let's say that anyasq isn't a YC company (not sure if they are or not). Then all they have going for them is better moderation. To me that just sounds like retweeting on twitter without the character limit and a cleaner interface. I am not so sure that is a winning combination. One would think that YC would pick a company that didn't need to be in YC to succeed.
- timsally 15y ago> One would think that YC would pick a company that didn't need to be in YC to succeed. I don't think that holds up here. Like it or not, reputation is the name of the game when it comes to media. It doesn't matter if you are as good of a writer as those on staff at the Times, you simply wont get the same opportunities. I think it would be silly for YC to discount this fact when funding media companies.
- Sukotto 15y agoI am not willing to grant anyask the ability to modify my twitter profile and post as me so I'll just ask here. 1) Age-wise, what ratio of accepted YC applicants are over 35? 40? 2) What ratio of them fall into the "married with kids" category? My impression of YC is that you strongly (exclusively?) prefer under 30 people who are unattached or, at least, are married with no other obligations. Can you dispel that impression or is it close to the truth? (I hope this doesn't come across as trolling or as an accusation. If you think it is, I welcome suggestion on how to word it better)
- pg 15y agoI'd have to guess, but maybe 4% and 1% respectively. What percentage are married and/or have kids I couldn't even guess, because we don't ask and it's not the sort of thing that comes up unless it's related to what they're working on. All we care about is whether the startup seems likely to succeed. Think how stupid we'd have to be to miss out on a great startup because they failed to meet some arbitrary constraint.
- cperciva 15y agoWhat percentage are married and/or have kids I couldn't even guess, because we don't ask... Is this something you don't ask because you don't think it's a useful question, or because your lawyers told you to not ask it? I would expect that "what does your significant other think of this" would be an illuminating question where relevant, both in terms of demonstrating an ability to recognize problems and demonstrating an ability to overcome them. Certainly if a startup founder was planning on moving across the country and answered "I haven't told her yet" it would be a big red flag to me.
- pg 15y agoIANAL but I think it would be legal to ask; we're investing in people's startups, not hiring them. The reason we don't ask about such things is that we don't care. Interviews are only 10 minutes long. We need to spend that time talking about the startup.
- randall 15y agoSuper excited to see this concept. I had a prototype of this style of idea last year, but decided it was tertiary to my actual passion (video). Wish you huge luck! Would love to sit down and debrief a part of this you might attack later, namely live events and conferences. I've got some good ideas of how to integrate this to those in a visually appealing manner, and would love to chat.
- GraffitiTim 15y agoThanks! Would love to talk once this rush dies down a bit.
- rokhayakebe 15y ago1- Who have you passed on you wish you hadn't? 2- What is one of the assumption you had about the entire process that ended up not being true? 3- Who is one entrepreneur (or team) whom you really thought had it wrong, but invested in anyways because they had that je-ne-sais-quoi?
- pg 15y ago1. I shouldn't say specifically because YC applications are supposed to be confidential, but if you look at the more successful startups funded by YC's competitors, there's a large overlap. 2. How predictable outcomes would be. 3. Airbnb.
- yters 15y agoMore or less predictable?
- pg 15y agoLess predictable. We thought we'd learn how to pick winners. What we learned instead is that it's impossible. Not just because luck is such a big factor, but because founders change.
- ph0rque 15y agoGiven that founders change, is there something one can do as a founder to change into one whose company is more likely to succeed?
- pg 15y agoYes: become tougher and more ambitious, and less self-indulgent. Probably the single most important change is to overcome the fear of failure that makes one accept early, small acquistion offers. It's hard to turn down an early offer for a few million, but every successful startup has.
- MatthewB 15y agoFirst, thanks to Harjeet for doing this. The biggest question I had for a while about YC has already been answered. That is, how much does the educational background of an applicant impact the analysis of an application. I know a few former and current YC founders and they all seem to have the same thing in common: CS degrees from elite universities. Harjeet put my concerns to rest with his answer that it is only relevant if it directly relates to the problem being solved. I'm sure a PhD in Machine Learning from Stanford doesn't go unnoticed even if the problem being solved is technically somewhat simple. However, it is nice to see that everyone is treated equally at least on paper.
- seto28 15y agoNobody wants to be portrayed as elitist so I'm not so sure about this. Given 2 people who both have done impressive projects I would bet the one with the Stanford degree would be more likely to get in. It might even be a sub-conscious decision.
- stevenj 15y ago1. Does YC have any plans to hire associates/interns? 2. What 3 early-stage startups excite you most that haven't been funded by YC? 3. Do you personally invest in startups? 4. What do you like most about your job? 5. Do you have some cool YC-related stories you could share? 6. What's a typical day like for you? (If "typical" doesn't apply, what'd you do today?)
- Harj 15y ago1. No. 2. Square and Quora. Can't think of a third. 3. I've done a bit but don't have enough money to do more. 4. The people I work with. 5. Nothing springs to mind. There's probably some but I find it hard to just pull things out of my brain without context. 6. No typical day. Today I cleared out my inbox in the morning, did office hours in the afternoon and the weekly YC dinner is about to start now.
- cloudpre 15y agoHow are you ensuring that you are not missing Square and Quora kinds again? Is there a reason why you passed on both?
- grinich 15y agoI don't think those guys applied to YC, having been founders/early at Twitter and Facebook. Plus, they probably wanted to raise more than $20k or whatever.
- jdludlow 15y agoThere's no way in the world I'm going to sign up for this, regardless of who you have on there. This application will be able to: Read Tweets from your timeline. See who you follow, and follow new people. Update your profile. Post Tweets for you. Access your direct messages until June 30th, 2011.
- GraffitiTim 15y agoThere's a checkbox to tweet to your followers when you post an AMA or when you ask a question. I don't know if there's a way to request just the ability to tweet. But we don't use any of those other permissions.
- crocowhile 15y agoIf you don't use them don't ask for them
- GraffitiTim 15y agoI didn't see a way to do that, but if there is one I'll implement it soon.
- vaksel 15y agoagreed, who'd be dumb enough to sign up for that...I could see doing that if that was required for actually using some app...but in this case it's just a way for them to spam your followers to promote their site
- jtchang 15y agoWhy does this application need this much access?
- chrischen 15y agoYou give Twitter all those permissions too.
- redthrowaway 15y agoOk, this site just seems like a worse version of r/IAMA. I can't really see the appeal.
- yarone 15y agoTo me, it looks like an accessible-to-normals version of r/IAMA and I see the appeal clearly.
- redthrowaway 15y agoReddit's not exactly having trouble attracting a mainstream audience. It attracts a far more "normal" crowd (as in, broad and varied) than any other social news site, with the possible exception of stumbleupon and twitter, which are completely different kinds of sites and not conducive to AMAs anyway. Also, the (apparent) lack of ability for follow-up questions and conversations based on answers seems to be a big downside. Be it reddit, HN, or Wikipedia, nested conversations are a no-brainer in 2011.
- JoachimSchipper 15y agoTo be fair, I've often "read" reddit IAMA's by just looking for the original submitter's answers; the followup discussion is not necessarily equally valuable.
- GraffitiTim 15y agoSide note: IE is 2.5% of visits. Chrome is 58%.
- minmaximalism 15y agoIf you weren't actively involved in YC full-time, what type of company would you be starting? Alternatively, what overlooked/underhyped opportunities do you see in the market?
- dools 15y ago"I've noticed a trend in people listing employees (i.e. people with sub 5% equity stakes) as founders so they don't seem like they're a single founder. We see through this and mark it in the notes" Interesting. Can't help but wonder if this factored in the rejection of Decal since my two "co-founders" were technically employees of Working Software at the time of the application (although we've since come to an equity sharing agreement so it's more of a traditional startup now).
- deleted 15y ago[deleted]
- joeycfan 15y agoYour website has two immense flaws. 1 - your next page links 'more' expire and it drives me nuts 2 - I can spend time writing a well thought out response only to be told 'whoah not so fast!' If I am posting too fast, why was I given the opportunity to post??? And why is it IMPOSSIBLE to find out how long I have to wait????? I have written the site twice with no responce.