sama

46 ms·

631.
by sama 12y ago
We fund a lot of 3-5 year horizon companies. 10-20 years is harder. This does not work for startups. I have a few ideas I want to try, though.
632.
by sama 12y ago
One of my partners is planning to do something here, but I'm not sure exactly what it's going to look like. (We run an extremely decentralized partnership.)
633.
by sama 12y ago
Yes, I've thought about trying something like that.
634.
by sama 12y ago
I think so, yes. But also, it's a different time now. I'd have had more progress by the time I applied to YC. For some companies, in a week, good hackers can get a prototype built and have a few initial users. If that's po
635.
by sama 12y ago
We won't accept a direct clone, but competing companies are fine.
636.
by sama 12y ago
I imagine each partner will have different answers. One thing I say is that we should be willing to fund anything that could be a $10B company, and that is such a difficult restriction we shouldn't have any other restriction. Personal
637.
by sama 12y ago
There is for sure something about in-person interaction that cannot be replaced by any current technology. Alan Kay recently told me he thinks it's something biological. Our model just doesn't work well for people that can't
638.
by sama 12y ago
Great question! The biggest mistake founders make is burying whatever it is that's exceptional about them or their company deep in the application. We are optimists. We want to believe. Help us by putting whatever it is that is goin
639.
by sama 12y ago
The most common thing is getting founders to focus on the right thing. At this stage, nothing but building a product that users love matters. Founders want to focus on anything else, and have wonderfully detailed excuses for why whatever
640.
by sama 12y ago
Yes. There are certain people that you cannot sit across from and let yourself not invest. He is one of them, for sure. He also had great growth. (Zuck comes to speak to the YC batch every year or so. PG used to say that when he talked
641.
by sama 12y ago
Counting companies that have raised with SAFEs but not equity rounds, probably about 250-300.
642.
by sama 12y ago
No. That got a quick involuntary shudder out of me.
643.
by sama 12y ago
The evolution of the university. But I think it's a much better model--it's got just the right amount of decentralization, it attracts the best people in the world to one place because of the network effect, we pay you instead of
644.
by sama 12y ago
We never set this ahead of time--it really depends on how many companies apply that we want to fund, subject to the constraints of how hard the parters can work. I'd guess in the range of 100-130, based on current application volume.
645.
by sama 12y ago
Personally, I think it's super interesting. LendUp is a company we funded a few years ago, and we've done more recently.
646.
by sama 12y ago
It is often on the first time. The 7th time is the highest count I know of. It's common for it to be on the second or third time. If we reject a company at interviews, we'll say what our objection is. If you reapply and that is
647.
by sama 12y ago
Unlike most other programs, YC does not have mentors--just partners that spend all their time advising startups (and some part-time partners). This is really important--most people give terrible startup advice, and people that do nothing bu
648.
I Am Sam Altman, President of Y Combinator. AMA
634 points by sama 12y ago|689 comments
649.
by sama 12y ago
definitely--it would be great if we could spend more time on interviews. the tradeoff we make for very quick evaluations is that we are able to look at every company that wants to be part of YC with no introduction or connection to us whats
650.
by sama 12y ago
first of all, we do care about great products. a lot. though we still try not to fund great products that we don't believe will become great businesses (there are many, many reasons why this might not be the case). it's critica
651.
by sama 12y ago
>This has basically the highest insanity * prominence of speaker product I've ever seen. Is that two compliments in one? :) I am debating releasing a sort of part 3, which actually could be called "insanity", but you shoul
652.
by sama 12y ago
though i dropped out, i studied AI in college. i also worked in andrew ng's lab. as a current grad student, why do you believe whatever makes us smart cannot be replicated by a computer program?
653.
by sama 12y ago
i'd thought about adding something about this but decided it's worth a full post. i don't think you need very much of a cushion--i.e., 6 months of living expenses saved up is more than most founders have. but saving up a bit
654.
by sama 12y ago
that really is all there is to it. if you've read enough that all of this strikes you as obvious, then you don't need to read anymore--get to work! :) i wrote this because i think it's useful for people thinking about startu
655.
by sama 12y ago
as you said, it's first a and then b. if you build something a small number of users love, you'll find growing is far, far easier than if you don't do that first.
656.
by sama 12y ago
Certainly working really hard without an expectation of being compensated it (either with equity or cash) is dumb. I've argued a lot that startups should give employees more equity, and I think that's shifting. Also, most startu
657.
by sama 12y ago
stay tuned.
658.
YC for Hardware(blog.ycombinator.com)
445 points by sama 12y ago|128 comments
659.
by sama 12y ago
we've talked about this before. we fund founders of all ages above 18 (though i think the oldest founder in the current batch is 66). we haven't calculated it yet but the median age for this batch is probably in the late 20s, wi
660.
by sama 12y ago
for last batch, more than 40% of the founders were born outside the US.

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