
Harjeet: I'm a partner at Y Combinator. Ask me anything. - frankdenbow
http://anyasq.com/29-im-a-partner-at-y-combinator
======
jdludlow
There'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
There'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
If you don't use them don't ask for them

~~~
GraffitiTim
I didn't see a way to do that, but if there is one I'll implement it soon.

------
Sukotto
I 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)

~~~
jimmyjim
I recall seeing a spreadsheet of ycombinator graduates (sorry, can't seem to
find it now - will link it when I do) and noticed that a significantly large
percentage of its founders were ivy league/1st-tier school graduates. I bring
up this point because you seem to think age is a factor that brings you
down... but the statistics would have it that even a candidate in his mid-20s
from a non-prominent school could not get accepted to yc.

~~~
wheels
It's a large percentage, but probably less than half (at least in our batch).
Also most weren't fresh grads. It seemed like the median age was 25 or so.
Most had had jobs post-college.

So, basically a mid-20s candidate from a non-prominent school is closer to the
median than a fresh Ivy League grad.

I was 29 and my co-founder 34 when we went through; we both went to good, but
non-elite universities and I didn't ever feel out of place.

Note that Paul and Robert were 31 and 30 [1][2] respectively when they founded
Viaweb and Paul has written on how elite universities are a bad predictor of
success [3], so it's unlikely that what's being seen is causation rather than
correlation.

[1]
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paul_Graham_(computer_programme...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paul_Graham_\(computer_programmer\))

[2] <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_Tappan_Morris>

[3] <http://www.paulgraham.com/colleges.html>

------
ZackOfAllTrades
I 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?

~~~
GraffitiTim
Yes, AnyAsq is a YC company. We hadn't asked Harj to do an AMA though. :) And
we hadn't really intended to launch quite yet but we're not complaining.

Ways we hope AnyAsq beats reddit ama:

-The concept should make more sense to people as a standalone site than as a sub-section on another site. (Easier to explain, easier to link to, etc)

-As a standalone site we can optimize the interface for this concept, which is really a very different idea than reddit.com.

-Twitter integration is really helpful. Acts as both moderation and as a way for people to spread AnyAsq to their followers when they do an AMA or ask a question.

-We're a YC company which will hopefully help us get people like Harj (or pg? Don't do it quite yet though please) on there and maybe help with press.

~~~
mtogo
_The concept should make more sense to people as a standalone site than as a
sub-section on another site. (Easier to explain, easier to link to, etc)_

Should isn't very strong. I don't think the 15 seconds it takes to get used to
an /r/IAMA thread is worth a whole new product.

 _As a standalone site we can optimize the interface for this concept, which
is really a very different idea than reddit.com_

That's true.

 _Twitter integration is really helpful. Acts as both moderation and as a way
for people to spread AnyAsq to their followers when they do an AMA or ask a
question._

Twitter has a text box where i can tweet anything i like. Your twitter
integration makes it harder to sign up and adds almost no benefit. That's a
negative, imho.

 _We're a YC company which will hopefully help us get people like Harj (or pg?
Don't do it quite yet though please) on there and maybe help with press._

So is reddit, and reddit doesn't need any help with press, given it's 15
something million users.

You're taking something that works and breaking it.

~~~
edanm
"I don't think the 15 seconds it takes to get used to an /r/IAMA thread is
worth a whole new product."

I don't know what to think about this product, but I have to disagree with you
on this point. It might take 15 seconds to explain Reddit AMAs to techies, but
if the aim is to make AMAs more popular with non-techies, I can definitely see
that there might be an advantage.

------
GraffitiTim
Apparently we accidentally launched AnyAsq!

~~~
desigooner
A 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
Yes, I wish we had already built that feature.

~~~
fttechfounder
Hi, there's a question here about AnyAsq:

<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2710226>

------
randall
Super 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
Thanks! Would love to talk once this rush dies down a bit.

------
MatthewB
First, 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
Nobody 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
1\. 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
1\. 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
How are you ensuring that you are not missing Square and Quora kinds again? Is
there a reason why you passed on both?

~~~
grinich
I 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.

------
cschmidt

       I 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
Its probably between Boston and Austin,Tx for #3

Dont know which one it would be though

------
rokhayakebe
1- 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
1\. 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
More or less predictable?

~~~
pg
Less 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
Given that founders change, is there something one can do as a founder to
change into one whose company is _more_ likely to succeed?

~~~
pg
Yes: 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.

~~~
staunch
You said in FAW that you would have sold Viaweb for peanuts if you had the
opportunity. Luckily the low offers fell through.

Why not add a new fund to YC for the purpose of partially cashing out
founders, as an alternative to them selling early? This seems to be a missing
component from the "what would have helped us at Viaweb" strategy.

~~~
pg
We have been actively encouraging later stage investors do to this, and it is
now very common.

------
dools
_"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).

------
GraffitiTim
Side note: IE is 2.5% of visits. Chrome is 58%.

------
redthrowaway
Ok, this site just seems like a worse version of r/IAMA. I can't really see
the appeal.

~~~
yarone
To me, it looks like an _accessible-to-normals_ version of r/IAMA and I see
the appeal clearly.

~~~
redthrowaway
Reddit'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
To 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.

------
minmaximalism
If 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?

------
Shenglong
I just #interfacefailed there. I think I asked the same question like 7 times
before I realized what was going on. #fml

~~~
e1ven
I 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
The 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.

