
I am Sam Altman, President of Y Combinator – AMA - sama
The application deadline for our winter 2016 batch is next Tuesday, and people frequently have a lot of questions about applying.  Also happy to talk about anything else!<p>EDIT 11:15 AM PDT: I have to go.  This was fun!
======
tmalsburg2
I think you mentioned somewhere that you are aiming for early-career
researchers, not so much for established group leaders. Being an early-career
researcher myself (postdoc), my first thought was that your program could
easily turn out to be a trap. At first, it looks like a fantastic opportunity
because freedom and independence, etc. However, I'm sure that you are looking
for high risk / high reward projects. So there is, by definition, a very real
possibility that some of your funded projects will fail. What happens with the
PIs of those projects? It will be very hard for them to return to a more
traditional career stream in academia because they will lack a strong
publication record and teaching experience. Researchers are in this respect
different from start-up founders, because a failed start-up is not the end of
the world and you can start over again. In contrast to that, there are usually
no second chances in academia, at least not at that career stage. So it seems
that you are asking people to stake everything on one card. My question is:
How are you going to manage the individual career risks associated with this
approach to science funding?

~~~
sama
Well, that's fucked up about academia. All the more reason to create
alternatives. Do you really want to be part of a system that does not allow
for failure?

At a minimum, I expect YCR researchers to be turning down job offers from YC
companies all the time.

~~~
tmalsburg2
I fully agree with your analysis of the shortcomings of the academic system,
but that's really a lame response and suggests that you didn't think this
through. We're not talking about people in their early twenties who can invest
some years in crazy experiments without fearing the consequences. Researchers
at that stage have invested a substantial chunk of their lives in their
careers and many of them have families to support. It would be foolish of them
to take such a risk. If your attitude is, fuck them, it was their mistake to
take up a career in academia, you will not attract the best people.

~~~
tlb
The world would be a better place if more people took career risks. The
evidence is that the majority of interesting stuff was created by people
taking big career risks, even though they're a minority of all researchers. So
people who take career risks are more likely to create something great.

It sucks to lose at a career gamble but, at least in Silicon Valley, most
people who fail but keep trying, end up doing pretty well.

~~~
tmalsburg2
Increasing risk alone does not increase the expected outcome of an enterprise,
it reduces it. Risk is one important factor in the equations determining
whether or not a business proposition like YCR's funding scheme is attractive,
and for this reason the topic needs to be addressed. You are right that people
who take more risks are more likely to create something great but the
likelihood of a failure increases even more. Increasing risk therefore comes
at a high price.

~~~
avz
At the level of an individual increased risk does indeed reduce the expected
outcome of an endeavor. However, societies where individuals are willing to
take higher risks end up reaping the benefits that are only accessible by
taking higher risks. One example of such benefits are scientific discoveries.

The current combination of risk-aversion and the focus on publications, tenure
and positive results that permeates academia is antithetical to the
uncertainty inherent in scientific research.

It seems to me that building new research institutions like YCR with a culture
that resembles the one in tech which accepts and encourages risk-taking should
be a priority if we are to continue to make progress in science.

------
mindcrime
1\. Would / will you ever consider opening an East Coast branch? I understand
all the "stuff" about why SV is great for startups, but there will always be
people who can't /won't get up and travel completely to the other side of the
country for an extended period of time. And while the EC might not be _the_
startup hotbed that SV area is, it's quite clear that there is a LOT of
startup activity and some great startups being formed out here. Wouldn't you
want to tap into some of that?

2\. In regards to YC Research, can you tell us anything more about the
(general) topic area(s) you will be interested in? And maybe expand a little
bit more on what kind of mechanisms might be put in place to facilitate
working with outside researchers (hopefully including independent researchers
and / or other startups).

~~~
sama
1\. Never say never, but no current plans (and honestly, it might make more
sense to do something outside the US next). The hardest part would be
convincing some of our partners to move out there, or finding new ones we
could train out here first.

2\. Not ready to talk about specific areas, but I promise they are interesting
ones :)

It will be super super easy for our researchers to collaborate with outsider
researchers because of our IP stance!

~~~
michaelmurray
Canada perhaps (specifically Kitchener-Waterloo)?

~~~
cperciva
Vancouver might be better. It has less of a tech sector, but frankly nowhere
in Canada has enough of a tech sector to matter much; however Vancouver has
the important advantages of being much closer to the bay area (2.5 hours
flying time to SFO, 7 flights/day each way), being large enough to have a tech
boom without completely unbalancing its economy, and actually being somewhere
people want to live.

~~~
giarc
I beg to differ. On the issue of tech sector, U Waterloo obviously puts out
many great students. UBC isn't really known for it's tech streams. In
addition, there's likely many smart tech people from RIM looking for jobs in
the KW area.

As for the issue of where people want to live. Vancouver is likely even more
costly to live than SV. KW (and southern Ontario in general) is a great place
with warm weather 6 months per year and access to the 3rd largest city in
North America.

In my opinion, KW would make a better YC V2 location.

~~~
cperciva
_On the issue of tech sector, U Waterloo obviously puts out many great
students._

I absolutely agree. But YC doesn't need to be where the university is. I mean,
people apply to YC from all over the world, not just from the bay area.

 _Vancouver is likely even more costly to live than SV._

Relative to average income, yes. But that's just because Vancouver doesn't
have much in the way of high-wage industries. In an absolute sense, Vancouver
is much cheaper than SV.

 _KW (and southern Ontario in general) is a great place with warm weather 6
months per year and access to the 3rd largest city in North America._

Assuming you mean Toronto, it's only 3rd if you take "North America" to mean
Canada+USA and take "largest" to mean "population within city limits"... a
definition which says that Vancouver is smaller than Winnipeg, and San
Francisco is smaller than Jacksonville. Based on metropolitan populations
Toronto ranks 8th, between Washington DC and Houston.

But I would say that Toronto would be my second choice out of Canadian cities.
The size definitely helps; I don't think it compensates for being three time
zones away and twice as hard to reach from SFO though.

~~~
RCra
+1

My team is moving to Vancouver in 2 weeks for the reasons you've listed. So
pumped for cheap roundtrips to the Bay.

------
cperciva
Is there a place for Tarsnap at YC?

Applying for YC funding doesn't make sense for several reasons:

1\. I want to be king, not rich; everything I hear tells me that YC pushes
companies to grow fast and increase their valuations, and that's something I
fundamentally don't care about. I know that I'm stubborn enough that this
would just result in a lot of frustration on both sides.

2\. Tarsnap doesn't need the money. It's solidly profitable, and I honestly
have no idea what I would do with investment money.

3\. I don't want to live in the bay area -- not even for 3 months. Granted,
this seems like it may be less of an issue now that it's possible for people
with pre-existing conditions to get medical insurance; but the bay area is
fundamentally not somewhere I can ever imagine myself wanting to live.

4\. Converting Tarsnap into a US corporation would eat a lot of time and
money. I completely understand why it's necessary for companies YC is going to
invest in; but it's another reason why having YC invest in Tarsnap doesn't
make sense.

I think YC and its portfolio companies are doing great and interesting things,
and I'd like to be part of the community... but as explained above, taking
funding doesn't make sense; when I applied for the YC fellowship (I know it
was a stretch) you told me to apply for funding instead; and you haven't asked
me to be part of YCR.

Is there some other option here?

~~~
chubot
I think YC is the wrong place for this, for all the reasons you say. I don't
see any reason that Tarsnap fits in YC besides "community", and even then it
would be more of an outlier than a peer. It seems like it would fit in a
community of people that are interested in lower risk, slower growing, but
more personally lucrative businesses.

YC companies do technically interesting things for sure, but a lot of the
community is probably more about hiring, office space, fund raising,
financials, and that sort of thing. These are all different for high risk
startups.

I heard about this "Micropreneur" thing several years ago. This is something
that interests me, and I've been working part time on projects in this vein.
It seems to me that people who want slower growth and less personal risk are
inherently a little less "collaborative". That describes me and there's
nothing wrong with it. Still, I understand the need to bounce ideas off of
others, quickly fill in gaps in your knowledge, etc.

~~~
wslh
> It seems to me that people who want slower growth and less personal risk are
> inherently a little less "collaborative".

Could you please expand on this? I am in the same vein as cperciva but it
doesn't have any relationship with collaboration. Sometimes you have a
relatively successful company where more capital and fast growth would cause
more harm than good BUT because right now you can't see a path for growth.

~~~
chubot
It wasn't a very important comment, but I would say that there are some people
who get a "high" from collaborating with many people on problems (working
really hard with a small team), and some people who get a "high" from learning
things on their own and applying them, with the help of experts.

One person you could take as an example is the Pinboard founder. If you read
all his blog posts, I wouldn't call him a "collaborative" person. Is he a
highly intelligent, productive, and respected member of society? Yes.
Collaborative? No.

My impression is that cperciva is like this, but I could be wrong. I'm more
like this too, as mentioned. But you still need community if you're in this
camp.

I think there is potential for higher overall growth when you have the right
team, simply because there are too many things for one person to do, requiring
many different types of expertise. Though there is not necessarily higher "per
capita" return.

But growth compounds, so that explains why YC prefers co-founders over solo
founders. But YC also acknowledges that there is a big downside to working
with teams: co-founder disputes are one of the biggest, if not the biggest,
reason for startups failing!

~~~
wslh
> It wasn't a very important comment...

I will reply anyway! I don't know the details about Tarsnap but in my case I
work with a co-founder and several employees. We work collaboratively.

In this context we don't have the potential for higher overall growth because
the specific niches where we do business are not growing enough. In the past
we tried some new areas with great expectations but they never took off. This
doesn't mean that we would not prefer a more favorable market sector if we
"discover" it in the future.

------
FlyingLawnmower
Hi Sam,

I'm a graduating college senior, and I've accepted a job at a very big company
in the tech industry. Right now, it makes the most financial sense for me to
join a big company and pay off my debt quickly, but at some point in the
future I'd love to scratch that entrepreneurial itch and apply to YC.

How do I maximize my time at a big company to gain relevant skills to keep the
possibility of a startup open in the future?

~~~
sama
The best things you can do there are meet great potential cofounders, and get
better at writing software.

Also don't get sucked into living an expensive lifestyle when you get that
high-paying job--this has killed many people's once-promising futures.

~~~
slantedview
Which begs the question - how does one avoid living an expensive lifestyle in
the bay/SF?

~~~
brotoss
Cook all of your own meals. Don't buy drinks at the bars if you go out. Don't
buy expensive shit, you don't need the newest iphone every year or name brand
designer stuff. Get a roommate. Not rocket sciene

~~~
OmarIsmail
If you can get very efficient at it or you find the activity a source of
leisure, then cooking your own food is a great cost savings. However, for
someone in the tech industry the opportunity cost of not investing in
themselves (i.e. coding, reading about code, meeting people, etc) for the same
amount of time they are cooking (grocery shopping, food prep, cooking,
cleaning, etc) usually isn't worth it.

To me cooking your own food seems like a penny-wise, pound foolish thing. Of
course eating out healthily multiple times a day gets insanely expensive, so
that's not really an option either. That's why I'm a big advocate of soylent.

~~~
jsutton
Is this Soylent advocacy just a running joke? I can't imagine eating all my
meals via a plain, liquid, meal-replacement.

~~~
OmarIsmail
It's an efficiency tool. Does every single one of your meals have to be "the
best meal ever" where everything is made from scratch from ingredients you
sourced yourself from the farmer's market? Of course not. There are definitely
times where you don't care to enjoy your meal and just need some nutritional
sustenance. Traditionally in those cases your options were fast food, or maybe
some kind of protein bar. Soylent is a better alternative in my mind to those.

One pleasant side effect of the "blandness" is that it has made me really
enjoy the meals that I do eat. I've noticed that the flavors pop a lot more.
So now I have the best of both worlds.

------
superfx
Couple questions regarding YCR:

1\. Will the model be group-based where there's a head PI setting the research
agenda for a group and researchers working under the PI? If so, what level of
independence do you expect individual researchers within a group to have? I.e.
is it more like the academic model with postdocs enjoying a fair degree of
independence, or more akin to national labs where the research agenda is
reasonably fixed and everyone is expected to contribute to the same research
program? Or, are you coming up with an entirely different model?

2\. In general how hands-on will YCR be in terms of intra-group management?

3\. Do you expect to subscribe to all the major publishing houses so that YCR
researchers have access to journals like they would at a top-tier university?

~~~
sama
1\. Great question, we've spent a lot of time cycling on this. There will be a
"PI" for each group, but the sort of PIs we will bring on will be people who
will give large amounts of autonomy to their teams--ie, each group will have a
goal, and everyone in that group will be directed to work towards that goal in
whatever way they see fit. But given the quality of the PIs we are planning to
bring on, if they think a particular direction is really unfruitful, it is
likely worth considering.

2\. Not very unless asked.

3\. Whatever the researchers want.

------
berpasan
Hi @sama, I'm From Brazil and CEO of an EdTech startup. We're profitable, with
60 employees and a lot consumer traction/revenue, but didn't raise a Series A
yet. Questions:

1) What advice would you give to applicants from Brazil and other large
countries (India, China, Russia), whose products initially target their local
markets?

2) What advice would you give to post-Seed and pre-Series A applicants? When
(if at all) would you consider them "too big for YC"?

3) If you select a post Seed startup, would YC invest at their latest
valuation, or would it only offer the standard deal, even if it would be a
"down round" for current investors?

Heard you are visiting India and know you've been to Mexico not long ago. Ever
thought about coming to Brazil? Best regards, Bernardo

~~~
sama
1) No specific advice--we fund lots of companies whose products target far-
away markets and are particularly interested in doing so. The only different
question we might ask you is "How will you handle being away from your users
for 3 months?"

2) We have funded companies that have raised more than $10 million, and
they've said they still got a lot of value out of YC. If anything, it's
usually the existing investors that have a problem with it.

3) Standard deal, BUT we buy common stock, so it doesn't trigger any anti-
dilution stuff. Most investors understand that YC is mostly "sweat equity"
anyway.

I might come to Brazil for New Years!

~~~
berpasan
Wow, that would be great! Please, let us know if we can help in any way during
your visit. Lots of interesting things for you to see in the Brazilian startup
ecosystem. We are close to São Paulo (where Embraer, the 3rd largest airplane
manufacturer in the world is located). Regards

~~~
cfontes
That is my home town! What do you guys do? I currently live in Campinas but
would love to know Startups in SJC!

~~~
berpasan
Plz, come visit us: [http://redealumni.com](http://redealumni.com)

My email is bernardo ARROBA redealumni PONTO com

------
jrpt
The cost of rent in the Bay Area is getting really high, both SF and down
south. The archetypal startup in a garage in Palo Alto is not as affordable as
it once was. For various policy reasons it's really hard for new people to
move to the area without paying an arm and a leg in rent.

Do you or YC have any thoughts on things you could do to help this, if any?

~~~
sama
The bandaid is we increase the amount of money we give to teams.

We do have some longer-term thoughts if the area can't get its act together
and fix the problem.

~~~
Hydraulix989
Pre-YC startups could benefit from the Bay Area ecosystem while they are still
building their MVP and getting initial traction to the point where they have
something that they CAN apply to YC with.

I know very promising founders personally that were stuck working in parents'
basements in the midwest because they did not yet have the resources to move
to the Bay Area.

How can YC help during this critical "early development" (or should I say,
exploration) stage for founders building companies? Is there a way it can help
insulate early founders from learning the hard lessons the hard way?
Traditional VCs would call these bets way too "risky."

~~~
DanFeldman
This is sort of what the YC Fellowship sought to address, or at least
addressed as a byproduct. There's a few companies in the current batch from
the midwest/east coast at the 'early development' stage who moved to the bay.
If YC can scale YCF up, it should help.

------
rdl
Is there anything YC could do to help YC companies with housing? It's not
trivial for teams during YC to get housing in SFBA, but they have enough
upside to put up with a lot, and usually figure out something.

It's _really_ hard for employees 1-N, especially at sub-market salaries, but
without 10% equity stakes, to move to SFBA. It pretty much restricts you to
people already-here, people who will live college dorm style, or people who
are already well off. Too much of the money raised goes out the door in salary
(taxed) to pay for housing.

~~~
sama
Yes, I think we will have to do something here. I keep hoping the local
governments will fix this and keep being disappointed.

I was really excited by Campus, and hope we see a lot more startups with
similar ideas.

~~~
stbullard
As a non-YC founder living in SF, I'm really disappointed by this answer.

Above, you mentioned a "bandaid" solution of increasing funding for YC
founders to account for skyrocketing rent - but this only exacerbates the
problem for everyone else, including YC companies' employees and the entire
ecosystem that supports them.

Tech workers' willingness and ability to pay ever-increasing rent,
underwritten by salaries drawn from irrationally exuberant venture capital
investment in tech (low interest rates elsewhere), is driving a housing bubble
that, in a vicious cycle, is then further fueled by property investment
justified by ever-increasing rents.

I guess I was looking more for YC to take a leading role here in proposing
solutions, rather than passively hoping for a fix. The simplest, as it seems
to me: open a bleeder valve by providing incentives for successful YC
companies to "settle" other startup hubs, or even just acting as a broker for
bidding by those locations. I'm sure there are smarter fixes, but I can't see
the harm in enacting these.

~~~
rdl
Those are good ideas. (I'm a YC alum; I'm looking forward to applying and
doing another YC startup at some point in the future, and I personally dislike
SFBA.)

YC has done a little bit of this informally (Alexis as "Ambassador to the
East"), and a lot of YC founders are from other places and retain
hiring/offices/etc. in those other places. There are lists, support networks,
etc. I know of for YC companies resettled in Seattle, and probably in other
places.

There are also some YC companies which are explicitly "X for India", "Y for
Brazil" where they obviously are based in those other places.

There ARE a lot of YC companies which want to remain in SFBA, though, so
looking at options like Campus (RIP; wonder what happened; would love to talk
to the founder for a post-mortem) makes sense, too.

------
antognini
Very broadly speaking, fundamental research can be divided into two
categories: (1) developing techniques to accomplish some very difficult, but
useful task; and (2) answering questions which are intrinsically interesting.*
Research in fusion and developing self-driving cars are examples of the first
category. Finding exoplanets and the Higgs boson are examples of the second.
Will YC Research be funding research in both categories, or just the first?

* (I know some people like to call the second category "pure" research, but I think that betrays a bias against working on more practical problems.)

~~~
sama
Honestly it will mostly be category 1 to start, but there is at least one
category 2 project we want to pursue.

------
grownseed
Hi Sam,

the YC Research announcement got me very excited, particularly as someone who
experiences the pain points you described first hand on a daily basis.

First question, would YC Research be limited to the US or would you consider
other countries (e.g. Canada in my case)?

Also, would you ever consider partnering with existing Public/Government
institutions? There are lots of very good people already working on some
really interesting projects (yes, even in the public sector :) ), and I
believe they need support and direction (and some actual business sense). So
to re-phrase my question, would YC Research ever consider some sort of
support/consulting platform for existing (possibly public) organizations?

Thank you very much for taking the time!

~~~
sama
Limited to the US for now but maybe not forever. Someone in Canada should
start something similar!

Yes, very happy to collaborate with outside orgs.

~~~
grownseed
Thank you Sam! Follow-up question: would you be interested in helping me start
something similar in Canada, or know people who would? :)

~~~
HelgeSeetzen
TandemLaunch (www.tandemlaunch.com) is a close proxy, though still oriented to
ultimately build technology companies (but still very deep tech focused). We
are obviously not in the same scale league as yc, but we are in Canada :).

~~~
RCra
Hey hey - another Canadian here. :)

Just sent you a LinkedIn add; I'm working on a product designed to accelerate
tech transfer and generally would like to support scientific research in any
way I can. Can we connect?

------
raziel2702
If YC research is a success, would you consider establishing a website onto
which researchers can publish the data and the analysis they did to reach
their conclusions?

Often I see people say what they used to take the data and then the end result
of the analysis, but never do I see any details whatsoever about the specific
techniques or steps they took to transform the raw data into what ends up
being published.

It's a very frustrating thing for me and I don't see a mainstream or more
easily accessible way for me to post my raw data + analysis other than making
a blog for myself, which I have no easy way of promoting in a paper.

I think it would be great to be the ones that set the tone for transparency
and it would be a fantastic way of teaching others how to analyze data, or how
to catch errors in someone's analysis.

Right now there's a huge wall of obscurity in that we have to take the
author's word for it. I know many things cannot be reproduced in experimental
science, but the analysis of the data should be. I can't see a reason why
people would not want to share their data in academia since most people are
funded by DOE, NSF, NIH and DOD and hence by the taxpayer. I think it would be
great for pedagogical purposes, it would encourage best practices and it would
help us be honest.

------
pavornyoh
@Sama,

So my question is about YC Research. You said in that earlier thread you will
be hand picking the people. How exactly do you intend to do that if you don't
me asking? Are you partnering with schools? Are they going to be recommended?
Do you already have a database?

~~~
sama
Mostly the algorithm was to ask very smart people "who are the top 3 smartest
people you know in area X" and then go after the people whose names kept
coming up.

~~~
cryoshon
This approach won't work if you are looking for academic diamonds in the
rough. The names that will get mentioned are probably already scoring big
grants and pumping out well-received publications.

If you are really actually looking for long-shots by talented people, you're
going to have to access the people nobody is going to mention for fear of
marking themselves as a radical or an urchin-lover. Science is packed with
these humble types, but they are invisible because of how brightly the
superstars (who frequently stand on the shoulders of the more humble) shine.

As an aside, smartness is certainly helpful for research endeavours, but
pridelessness is actually what separates the people jousting against windmills
and people traveling the hero's journey. The smartest are frequently targeting
windmills thinking that they'll be the ones to finally succeed, whereas the
prideless are more interested in understanding and exploiting molehills or
anthills. Pridelessness allows for maximum flexibility in following reality,
preventing ego-driven attachments to incorrect interpretations.

------
invisible_dust
Hi Sam I've used this site forever it's cool. But I'm not like these other
guys who want a job or to make a startup I just like tech news so my question
is what is the best kind of coffee, as in what's your favorite kind.

My top pick is called "Black Cadillac" it's from a local shop and also reminds
me of the modest mouse song of the same name.

~~~
sama
Philz Philharmonic, made into espresso.

------
lhfaria
Hi Sam, I read a post of you guys saying that a lot of founders think they're
too early to apply to YC. That's my case. We're just in our first thousands of
dollars in revenue, and honestly when I think of YC - no matter how much
confident we are with our business - I believe we don't really stand a change
against other applicants. Any specific advice/thoughts on this?

~~~
sama
Every batch, we fund some people with just an idea. And lots and lots of
people with just a prototype. The bar is higher but it's clearly possible.

~~~
lhfaria
Glad to hear that. Thanks!

------
aakashnigam
What would be the right time for an idea that involves some technical depth to
apply to YC?

In other words, hypothetically, if YC had existed during the 90s, at what
stage should Google Guys have applied to YC (Between 1995-1998, A) when the
idea struck (mid 1995) B) When it started crawling the web (around 1996), or
C) when they bought the domain (1998). Thanks!

~~~
sama
A or B.

~~~
aakashnigam
Any advice on differentiating such idea in the YC application, from the herd,
building services (an app/website where good design, paired with user traction
stands out)?

Shall we focus on? A. Research side (the actual research ideas, tough to
explain in 300 words, can be discussed in brainstorming session) B. The
product it will enable. (UI based concept demo, with product/market fit that
will it will enable)

------
DanBlake
Is there any intention of adding a new type of incubator that isnt so location
specific?

For instance, I would love to be in YC- But just like many older (30+) folks,
I have a family and simply cannot move to SF. The 'move to SF' restriction is
the one thing I hate about YC- Its also why I think some competing incubators
are picking up steam, who focus on global teams.

This may be disagreed upon- But I truly feel the 'move to SF' restriction is
almost prejudicial against older folks. I get there is immense value in being
in the valley (I just moved from SF), but I just dont think thats a reason not
to find a way the system couldn't work either remotely or satellite based.

~~~
sama
We know moving is hard, but startups are hard. So much of the value of our
program comes from in-person interactions. As you said, there are lots of
other options for people who don't want to move, so I don't feel that fixing
this is our most urgent problem.

That said, we are trying remote teams in the YC Fellowship, and we'll evaluate
how they worked at the end of this first batch.

------
jayzalowitz
Looking at who you accept now and some of YCs biggest hits, its seeming like
your earlier investments (Dropbox, airbnb) probably wouldn't make it through
today's YC filter. Do you guys think this is an issue, if so how are you
working to correct it?

~~~
sama
Disagree. No one at YC could interview the Airbnb guys and not fund them. I
didn't know Drew back then but I expect it would have been the same thing for
him.

~~~
baristaGeek
I think he is not referring to the interview process, but rather to the
"skimming through the application" process.

~~~
jayzalowitz
Yeah, I am sure having met them they would have gotten in, im talking purely
getting to interview.

------
davidcaseria
Hi @sama, you've been outspoken about the potential long term side effects of
prolonged 0% interest rates. What do you think will be the worst side effect?
Do you have any general advice for individuals to avoid the bad effects?

------
adenadel
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 Y Combinator 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?

------
wlamont
Recently a plethora of startups working on new nuclear energy technology have
been created: Transatomic power, Flibe, Helion and UPower (to name a few).
These startups, respectively, have technology based on molten salt reactors
(MSR), new fuels (Thorium), or new modalities (small distributed scale and
fusion). Most of these startups face a huge challenge (and capital
requirement) to go from idea/concept to pilot/demonstration plant. As Chairman
of Helion and UPower how do you see these new startups commercializing their
technology? Will they require partnerships with existing utilities and what is
the expected timeline?

~~~
sama
I think they should just try to raise large amounts of money rather than
partner with large companies for development. However, they will need to
partner with utilities for pilot plants.

I can't speak to the other companies, but my hope is that UPower and Helion
have prototypes in ~3-5 years.

~~~
djhn
Nuclear energy faces a challenging PR environment.

Letting the public perception get so bad should be considered one of the
costliest PR mistakes in recent history in terms of human and environmental
cost. The problem is highlighted by the fact that many will disagree with this
statement.

How do you see the way out of this?

------
fgimenez
Regarding the research program, what sort of research projects are you looking
at? While you are putting a considerable amount of money into the project, it
obviously won't be able to fund experimentally expensive projects.

Also, many research projects (like bioinformatics) require enormous amounts of
difficult to obtain data (e.g. Hospital records, blood samples, etc...). Do
you have a plan to help those kinds of labs build collaborations, or do you
expect to bring in researchers who will be able to "figure it out"?

Finally, are you looking specifially for trained PhD researchers, or is this
open to anybody?

~~~
sama
View my donation as seed capital. I expect we'll commit $100M+ to some
projects over time.

We do have plans for collaboration with some institutions for our first group.

Open to anyone great! No PhD required.

------
Fede_V
Hi sama,

First of all, thanks for the 10 million dollar donation for YC research.
That's an amazing gesture, and I'm really looking forward to seeing the
scientific research model get completely disrupted - it's in a terrible state
and it needs a big shove.

\- Given your donation, what are your thoughts on philanthropy?

\- Most of your advice is for founders, however, what should an employee look
in an early stage start up when deciding whether to join? Obviously, the
decision is much easier if the company has started growing exponentially, but
before that?

~~~
sama
1) I generally believe in trying to find the most-impactful areas to donate,
and also concentrating on areas that are important to me personally, and also
areas where I am uniquely suited to make a difference. This seems like a good
intersection.

2) A controversial thing I believe is that unless you are getting multiple
percent of equity, it's usually a bad deal to join an early-stage startup that
hasn't yet found product-market fit and the resulting growth (there is a big
exception here for hard tech startups that will take a long time to produce a
product but be incredibly valuable if they're able to).

We've noticed that the best startups tend to not hire employees for awhile.
One of the reasons, it seems, is they are able to convince much better people
to join once things start working.

------
Danilka
Your talks and latest actions suggest that YC is now more dedicated to making
a better future, rather than helping individuals succeed. (thank you for that)

Our startup is a for-profit company. However, as a part of our strategy we are
making a lot of medical data open sourced. Even if we completely fail, we will
move the leave an extremely positive footprint on traditional Chinese medicine
industry. Q: 1\. How would you suggest balancing good intensions for the
industry with making money? 2\. Should we reflect this in the application and
how?

Thank you!

~~~
djhn
Sounds interesting. Link?

~~~
Danilka
Not finished yet, but I'm happy to show sketches and explain everything. Ping
me any time at d@spaceherbs.com or just call 415.960.9373 (Dan)

First versions are:
[http://spaceherbs.com/client/old/client/index.html](http://spaceherbs.com/client/old/client/index.html)
[http://spaceherbs.com/herbs](http://spaceherbs.com/herbs)
[http://spaceherbs.com/client/new/client/index.html](http://spaceherbs.com/client/new/client/index.html)

------
anonymous1212
I am a solo founder with strong technical and design chops. I am a high-level
thinker, and I spend much of my time with big picture problems, establishing
the vision, and figuring out a practical plan to get there from where we are
now. But I can also execute on that vision, and build the entire system end-
to-end. And I have an abnormally high level of standard. I strongly believe in
quality software that just works.

I am torn about submitting an application. I have a list of 20+ customers
waiting for the first beta release and who are actively asking about progress
(and willing to post payment!) The idea and particular niche market has been
churning in my mind for several years, and over the past 18 months, the vision
has materialized into a real product. Market trends are pointing upwards, it
is ripe for disruption and could be a winner takes all game.

I am weeks away from private-beta depending on my productivity (this has been
a side project). I have a wife, 7 month old daughter, and a cushy full-time
salary with little work demands. I have been in two long-term employer
relationships (4 and 5 years) and at each made huge impacts on molding the
product, despite not being hired for that. But I am bored and want the freedom
and flexibility to work on my own ideas. But one thing I have always lacked is
a talent network. Is this something being accepted into HN would help with? I
honestly get the feeling that most applicants are searching for direction and
help with flushing things out, things that I am already confident in. What do
you make of a solo guy like me, with a solid product that is almost ready for
market? I'm a proud guy, and there is that part of me that wants to just
continue being a Lone Wolf.

~~~
ScottBurson
I'm not sama, but here are some thoughts anyway.

If this is really something you think could be big (a "winner takes all game"
as you say), you're going to have to grow a company to address the opportunity
-- which will mean giving up the lone wolf thing. That's a choice you have to
make personally. I'm sure being the lone wolf is more comfortable, and it's
entirely possible that you could build yourself a nice little business that
way, but you won't be able to own the market.

Once you decide which way you want to go, applying to YC or not will be an
easier decision. I do expect that YC could help you with your network.

------
Rainymood
Name the most influential person in your life! I'm really curious!

~~~
sama
No huge surprises here, but probably Paul Graham, Peter Thiel, and Elon Musk
have done the most to influence my thinking about investing and technology.

~~~
giarc
You obviously interact with PG quite a bit. Does the influence from Peter and
Elon come from working in person, or from what they've done/wrote/speak about?

------
dchichkov
It seems like YC had done a great job on standartizing YC startup documents
that protect both founders and investors from each other and promote
cooperation. Are there any plans to do the same thing to standardize contracts
for early employees?

(i.e. shouldn't early employess, investing their under-market salary/time
receive the same conditions/protection of their investments as VCs?)

~~~
sama
For stock compensation, yes!

~~~
dchichkov
Thanks for the answer! I'm glad that YC is paying attention to that area.

I hope that any under-the-market-salary investments from employees would start
getting the same treatment as any other investors money (e.g. dilution cap,
not vesting cliff).

------
rrhoover
Hey, Sam! You recently announced HN is being split off from YC. What changes
will we see to the site/community in the next 6 months?

~~~
sama
Well, per the announcement, this is a question for dang not me :)

------
dshchung
Hi Sam, you have previously mentioned in an interview that University of
Waterloo comes to mind when you think of a school that produces great YC
alums. As most of these founders were unproven and untested individuals at the
time of applying to YC, what qualities do you feel has made the difference for
them throughout the program?

~~~
jkaunisv1
Not a YC applicant or alum, but as a Waterloo CS grad - the co-op program was
invaluable. 4 months study alternating with 4 months work in a real job = 6
different workplaces to learn from, and coming out of the degree with 2 years
real experience. A lot of students, especially on the CS side, are getting
jobs at startups for their co-op terms.

~~~
ghufran_syed
Anyone aware of well-regarded US-based computer science programs with similar
co-op programs? They seem pretty sparse when I google...

------
misterbwong
Hi Sam! Random question but I've read in a couple articles that your mom said
by about 10, she would have been comfortable dropping you off alone in NYC.

As a new parent, I'm intrigued by this. What kinds of things did your parents
do with/for you to foster this level of independence? What had the biggest
effect on you, personally?

~~~
sama
I really lucked out big-time on the parent lottery.

My parents were and are incredibly supportive of anything I was interested in.
But they were never "hovering". That's a great combination.

~~~
aliakhtar
Funny side story: When I was 13, I flew from Pakistan to Australia by myself,
changed the flights in transit, etc.

------
bcjordan
What are some of the biggest pain points you see early YC companies struggling
with (esp. during batches)?

Are there any unsolved problems for growing companies you wish someone would
apply to solve?

~~~
sama
The biggest problem is failing to make a product that some users love, but
then thinking they will solve their problems by doing everything else well.

The second-biggest problem is probably cofounder fallouts.

Internal communication and management structure are always big problems for
growing companies that I wish someone would solve.

~~~
ajju
Hey Sam, re: solving internal communication, you should checkout a non-profit
called [http://www.helloinnerspace.org/](http://www.helloinnerspace.org/)
funded by this group called YC ;)

Seriously though - after attending their cofounder communication workshop, we
invited them to do it for our whole team. I think Innerspace is the best tool
I have seen to prevent cofounder fallouts and improve internal communication.

------
pnathan
Hi Sam,

I'm not on the shortlist of anyone for "smartest people in the field", but I
have a keen interest & passion for research. I suspect there are many people
like me. Do you anticipate that YCR will have a track for people like me to
participate, or will it be aiming for the creme de la creme as a rule?

------
srunni
I'm interested in your opinion on the potential for the disruption of the
academic publishing system, and what role YCR can play in that. For example,
making it easy for 3rd parties to reanalyze data generated/published by
another group, then make that available so that others can easily compare
different analyses of the same data. This is already happening to some degree,
but getting raw data can still be quite difficult.

Will YCR researchers' publications be required to be open access?

Should it be possible for the peer-review process to happen in a more open
forum than the judgment of a couple of handpicked reviewers? Some fields (such
as mathematics) have seen this happen already, but it's not very common in
other fields, such as the life sciences.

------
zeeshanm
Any advice for single founder applying? Most of the people I talked to advice
me to find a co-founder to increase my odds of getting in.

I don't necessarily agree with them. I have been doing this startup for over
an year now. It has growth with a strong potential for more.

~~~
sama
This sounds obvious but "have a good startup". If you can show us you're
making great progress as a solo founder, we're much more willing to believe
you can handle it going forward.

------
rslater
I was wondering about the new open ip effort for the r&d lab. I work in the
air force research lab and am working to do the same for us and other gov
agencies. How do you plan to release/license ip... Marketing strategies, etc

------
cvursache
Hey Sam! A question about your career path. Can you think of a specific point
in time when you made the decision to focus more on the business side of
things and less on writing code? If so, can you describe why you made that
decision?

~~~
sama
In the very early days of Loopt, I sat down with @kogir and Alok and said "ok,
who is going to do what?" I was definitely not the best coder for large
projects on the team, although I can crush either of them in topcoder
competitions 10 times out of 10 :D, and I seemed the best at the 'business'
stuff, so I focused on that.

~~~
kogir
> _although I can crush either of them in topcoder competitions 10 times out
> of 10 :D_

Them's fightin' words.

------
bnchrch
Hey Sam, given your position I imagine you see numerous unique, novel ideas
and the trends that drive them. Having said that is there any particular trend
that you're seeing today that has you particularly intrigued or excited?

~~~
sama
The relentless progress of domain-specific machine learning over the past
year.

------
harryh
How far do you think new Silicon Valley companies (and YC companies in
particular) have progressed in providing fairer equity grants to employees? In
particular I'm interested in what the norms are for "if you leave the company
you must exercise in 90 days" type terms.

I know that you've been working on this problem personally and a few high
profile companies have publicly announced changes. But what's going on with
new small companies? What are the current norms?

I know that YC takes care of a lot of the legal work when setting up new YC
companies. What do you currently recommend for employee option grants?

~~~
sama
I mostly only know about YC companies other than what I've read in the press
about large companies, but it seems like this has gotten much better.

We want to create a new employee option plan with all of our recommended
fixes. We've been busy, but we'll hopefully get to it soon. We'll open-source
it, of course.

------
tkiley
You've mentioned that co-founder fallouts are one of the most biggest problems
facing companies at YC stage.

Do you see any useful correlates to this problem? What types of teams tend to
have infighting vs. those that don't?

~~~
sama
The biggest correlation is that teams that met recently fall apart much more
often.

The shared history seems to be valuable for keeping teams together through the
very though times of a startup.

------
jbverschoor
I currently have no 'unicorn'-ideas. Applying doesn't seem useful at this
moment. Is there a list of startups that need help? If so, why did they get
funded when the team isn't right yet?

~~~
giarc
I wonder if the AirBnB team thought they were a unicorn when they started?
Likely not.

~~~
eonw
i would think not, considering there were already others operating in the
exact same space... they were probably just hoping for at least a small piece
of the pie.

------
giis
Considering the fact that we are more than 1-billion people with booming
economy (some redtapes are there but..), do you have plans for purely India
(/subcontinent) specific programmes in near future?

~~~
sama
I'm coming to visit soon! We fund more and more Indian companies (they come
here for 3 months and then go back to India).

~~~
giis
nice! please do visit the 'Silicon Valley of India', Bangalore.

------
markvitals
Hi Sam. If you have a startup that is relatively easy to launch with traction
and the one which is hard to launch and without traction, which one will you
choose? And how important is to have users?

------
ivankirigin
I was excited about the research announcement!

I've been thinking about this for a while:

    
    
      - small companies rarely fund university research
      - the grant application process is complex
      - grad students get paid so little compared to tech workers
      - hiring a PhD student before they finish means abandoning their research
    

Do you think universities and research can be changed to get more companies
funding research? I can imagine startups can get some great work done
efficiently while increasing private funding of research.

~~~
sama
Maybe, but I'm not sure small companies are the best funders for this.

One of the nicest surprises about the YCR announcement was how many very rich
people and large organizations reached out saying they wanted to give money.
It seems there is a lot of potential energy here that's been looking for
something to do.

~~~
ivankirigin
That's awesome.

They want to give money outside any specific research initiative? That YC
brand is strong!

------
karlosferra
Hi Sam, Have YC considered doing a lower tier of funding?

Funding 120k is good for early startups, but I think YC could have far more
reach and impact if it had an option to provide less capital to a greater
number of startups. The purpose being to allow founders to support themselves
and fully focus on their startup without having to worry about daily jobs.

I see two major benefits: 1) YC would have greater and broader impact since
for the same amount of seed would be possible to found 12-15 more companies
that are ready to move from the idea to execution stage.

2) (this touches me personally) For non US founders, we have to worry about
rent, food etc. I believe that if founders had the oportunity to fully focus
on their startups for 3 months without a daily job, it would have tremendous
impact for the early startups, and as a nice side effect YC could have another
pool of really good candidates/ideas. At the end of the 3 months the founders
would have had a chance to demonstrate themselves, their execution level,
etc., at a very low cost.

I truly believe the ROI on something like this would be considerable.

I know that capital is not the only (and arguably not even the most important)
advantage of been admitted to YC, but personally speaking, if I had this
option 3 years ago I'd have pursued it no questions asked. I feel that there
might be other founders that would be in the same boat.

Do you have any thoughts on this? Thanks! Carlos.

~~~
arjunnarayan
This is the entire point of the YC Fellowships, and their plan for that is to
scale it to an order of magnitude plus beyond normal YC. They're doing a trial
run this year of YCF, and it sounds like that's going well.

------
smurfysmurf
Hi Sam, I am a recent transplant from FL to seattle to work for a tech company
- it was a big move but I feel like it was worth it. Currently I work in more
of a technical position but eventually I want to move to more of a leadership
position as I see myself interested in driving business and solving logistical
and business type issues. My questions in, what can you recommend for someone
who wants to transition from a technical background to that sort of area?
Thanks!

~~~
lacker
Move up in your technical position til you get to be a tech lead or a manager.

------
JJC1138
I'm considering applying for YC but I think my idea (a fairly simple time
management app for smartwatches) might be a bit too modest. How small of an
idea is too small?

~~~
sama
We don't mind ideas that start off sounding modest if you have a great answer
to how it could possibly develop into something huge. In fact, we like ideas
like that.

~~~
bcjordan
From pg's How to Get Startup Ideas[0]:

> Just as trying to think up startup ideas tends to produce bad ones, working
> on things that could be dismissed as "toys" often produces good ones. When
> something is described as a toy, that means it has everything an idea needs
> except being important. It's cool; users love it; it just doesn't matter.
> But if you're living in the future and you build something cool that users
> love, it may matter more than outsiders think.

[0]:
[http://paulgraham.com/startupideas.html](http://paulgraham.com/startupideas.html)

------
susiwbkpagwjs
Sam, should everyone's genomes be sequenced? Will most Americans have their
DNA sequenced by 2025,2030?

When will we see the peak of the commercial and medical results of having a
sequenced population?

What could prevent us from getting all our genes sequenced? Shouldn't we try
to facilitate mass sequencing, for all the medical benefits it could provide?
What can YCombinator do to influence corporate and political entities to
collaborate and reach a solution to expedite this process?

~~~
sama
Yes, I think so, and I'd be surprised if it's not commonplace by 2030.

I think the best thing YC can do is fund startups enabling this (and offering
good applications on top of it).

------
wirddin
Hey, I know it is recommended that you move to the bay area during the 3
months, but what happens to the companies which target local markets? Is it
possible to gather knowledge about the local market and also the product while
staying away from your core user base, and also, how do the partners take care
of different kinds of market the startups target?

Example, Indian market/users/plans are considered to be a lot different than
other countries.

Thanks :)

------
jordanbartow
What's the most important question on the application?

~~~
sama
The first thing I read is "What is your company going to make?" Then I scan
everything else quickly for evidence of something exceptional--something the
founders have done, a great insight on this idea, or something impressive
about progress to date.

------
tkkk
In 3 years I will move to US and apply to YC, but that's forever away. I want
to start doing now.

Is there a checklist, or a blueprint, or a list of topics, or a list of books
that you can recommend that will cover the most important/basic/low-level
aspects of building a company? What should I be thinking about?

I'm looking for the backbone; I can work on figuring out the proper shape of
what I'm building along the way.

~~~
sama
I took a stab at this here:
[http://startupclass.samaltman.com](http://startupclass.samaltman.com)

I'm working on a sort of startup playbook. It's long but will hopefully be
helpful.

~~~
bambang150
I have read and watch all of the videos. It is amazing to think this is for
free, thanks Sam

------
hollaur
Hi @sama !

I submitted our application, and I wrote YC this letter on Medium
([https://medium.com/@laurenholliday_/dear-y-combinator-we-
wro...](https://medium.com/@laurenholliday_/dear-y-combinator-we-wrote-this-
for-you-160c4820a68b)).

What else can one do to stand out? I'm so worried our application will get
lost in a pile of all the others.

Also, is it possible that we'll hear from you before the 28th?

Thanks!

Lauren =)

------
tmaly
@sama I am about to launch a beta version of a service I find very useful in
the food industry. I have spoken to a decent number of people during my
customer development phase and everyone is excited about the service. However,
I have not thought a lot about monetizing it. Right now I am just
bootstrapping it and will release it as a free service. What is your take on
free services and monetizing them?

~~~
sama
It's ok as long as you have a plan to make money eventually (i.e.
[http://blog.samaltman.com/unit-economics](http://blog.samaltman.com/unit-
economics))

However, why not charge on day 1? It sounds like something people should pay
for. And charging always makes it clear if people really like your service or
not.

~~~
gull
> why not charge on day 1?

Some of the most successful companies, like Google, Facebook, Twitter, and
Reddit, didn't charge on day 1.

~~~
trcollinson
This is a pretty common fallacy of an argument.

Some of the most successful companies, like HP, Microsoft, Apple, and Adobe,
changed on day 1.

------
msvan
Hi Sam. There's a million questions and I have not read them all; so if you
have answered this question already, please feel free to ignore it.

It seems that much of what YC funds these days lies in combinations of
software with other disciplines such as biology, law, hardware, energy, and so
forth. Is there any room for the pure-software/sales startup anymore, or does
the future lie in interdisciplinary startups?

------
creolabs
@sama We were interviewed last year but we were not selected. We then followed
all your advices and we invested all our time developing and finalizing the
product.

We'll launch our first beta version within a month and we are receiving a
tremendous amount of interest. However we can't really yet prove a traction.
What should we prove (or what should we have done) in order to try to apply
again?

------
pforpineapple
My startup is based in Paris, and it would be logistically tedious to move to
SF (remote management, current customers ...)

YC and the Bay area would be an immense deal to us :

=> Regardless of the product I'm building : Are the advantages of moving to SF
enough to balance the immediate difficulties of leaving ?

PS: We are building an AI (currently for students) that plugs into messaging
apps. 150k messages exchanged already.

~~~
arthurquerou
Hey, CEO of MotionLead here (YC W14), feel free to reach at arthur -at-
motionlead.com, I'm currently in Paris.

------
Thriptic
Hi Sam,

I have a number of ideas for companies which I would like to explore, but I am
constantly hamstrung by the fact that I don't have the technical skills
required. I wouldn't go so far as to say I am non-technical (I'm a bioengineer
transitioning into data science) but I certainly am not a developer per say.
Do you have any advice on how to find potential technical co-founders?

------
pratim
Sam, we launched Asqway app on 29 September this year
([https://itunes.apple.com/app/asqway/id1039694793?ls=1&mt=8](https://itunes.apple.com/app/asqway/id1039694793?ls=1&mt=8))
and we have been extensively talking to our initial users, we have gathered
user’s feedback and updating Asqway app accordingly. Next version of the app
will be released in 1 week of time. Up till now we have almost 50 users. So my
question is, shall we wait to get more users (I mean at least 1000 users) and
then apply for YC Summer 2016 batch or apply now for YC Winter 2016 batch??
What’s your recommendation? Do number of users for the start-up product counts
while applying for the YC?? Also, we don’t have monetary model at the moment.
So what will you recommend in terms of having monetary model for the start up?
We are measuring our growth on the basis of daily active users. Thanks Pratim

~~~
sama
Don't wait.

------
DanGPhoton
Hi @sama. Are there any technologies that you would not consider funding?

~~~
sama
We will not invest in something that we think will be bad for the world even
if we think it will make lots of money.

~~~
bryang
Like lightsabers?

~~~
ChicagoBoy11
He said "bad for the world", not "the most amazing thing the world has ever
seen." :-)

------
mesimoniv
How long does it typically take the YC team to review an application?

~~~
sama
It honestly hugely varies. Sometimes 2 minutes. The longest I've ever spent on
a single application (where I had to do background research) was probably an
hour. But I try for my normal cadence to be 6 per hour.

Some applications that are really great or really bad are reviewed by only one
of us, most are reviewed by about 3, and the ones near the cutoff are reviewed
by a lot.

~~~
mesimoniv
Thanks Sam. Really appreciate all the time you spend helping the community.
It's amazing & inspiring.

------
Uhhrrr
You said before co-hosting an Obama fundraiser that you would ask him about
surveillance issues[0]. Did you get a chance to do this? Were you able to give
input on any other issues?

[0]
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7612471](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7612471)

------
kohanz
What is your take on the value proposition for an older, experienced engineer
(e.g. 10+ years) joining a startup as an early employee (e.g. non-founder)? I
get the sense from what I read and hear that there is romance and then there
is reality. Would love to get an honest take from someone with your
perspective.

~~~
sama
It totally depends on the company. Are you going to get as meaningful (i.e.
more than 1%) equity grant and real responsibility? Do the founders seems
good, and good to work with?

Obviously if you can join the next Facebook as an early employee, that's
really great :)

------
blt
Besides self driving cars, what robotics applications do you see as fundable
now or in the next few years? Thanks!

~~~
ju-st
Not sama, but industrial robots with an intuitive programming interface, like
simply showing the robot how to pick & place a part and the robot will repeat
it forever. Market it for small business owners. Or you could call it "KUKA
robots for everyone".

~~~
tylerhwillis
Check out
[http://www.rethinkrobotics.com/baxter/](http://www.rethinkrobotics.com/baxter/)

------
rybosome
How will success be measured in YCR? Given that you mentioned decades-long
efforts being acceptable, how will you differentiate between fruitful and
fruitless research? Finally, are there any technologies you're particularly
interested in and into which you're hoping to fund research?

------
waterlesscloud
What do you think about the economic disruption that is being caused be
increased automation? As we develop broader and broader forms of automation,
it seems like that disruption can only increase in both speed and quantity.

What can YC and Silicon Valley as a whole to mitigate the problems this will
cause?

~~~
sama
I think that technology increases wealth but also concentrates it. We are all
better off, but the inequality is likely to get worse over time. This has been
going to some degree since the first tools were developed.

I'm not ready to talk in much detail yet, but I do think YC/SV/me personally
can and should help address this.

------
mesimoniv
Hi Sam,

Thanks for supporting us all with your time & insights.

Given the rise & success of things like Hack Reactor and Nano Degrees plus the
YC RSF for Education.

1) Do you have any specific thoughts on innovations you would like to see in
Secondary Education, specifically Jr. High and High School?

2) What about Elementary Education in the US?

------
bcjordan
Do you think a startup could realistically end up being the entity to develop
some of the earliest significant AGI?

What would look like promising, realistic starting points for -- or even
attributes of -- such a nascent startup? e.g., chat bots, development
platforms, intelligent agents for games?

~~~
sama
Yes, for sure.

I think the starting points you mention are very promising ones.

------
devy
Sam, in regards to the YC research, do you actively go out to recruit
scientists or do they have to come to YC to apply? Can you give a little bit
more details on the recruitment process?

I have a friend who's a physicist working on graphene and he would really like
to apply.

~~~
sama
For now we are recruiting them.

Someday we'd like to have a way for them to apply.

------
brenschluss
Are there technologies or startups that you haven't funded, despite the
team/tech/product/strategy being great, simply because it was a decade or so
too soon? (For example: funding VR in the early 00s vs. funding VR in 2013,
etc.)

------
larrys
1)I made a comment elsewhere that I felt that YC (and you in particular) had
it's hands in to many pots and appeared to be doing to many things. With all
of the things that you are doing (yc research just added for example) how do
you feel that you will be able to keep up the high quality base purpose of YC?

2) You just gave 10m to fund YC Research. Was that because no other partners
wanted to get involved in the project and in order to get their agreement (and
show how important you felt it was) you decided to put your own money where
your mouth was? It just seemed odd to me that it is a YC project yet you put
your personal money in it (is the reason for the question).

------
roc123
Would you consider opening a branch of YC in Manchester, UK? Huge amount of
talent there being wasted in banks and consulting companies. Low living costs,
excellent universities, large pool of engineering talent, growing startup
community.

------
bcjordan
What was your first personal investment like?

~~~
sama
It was /dev/finance, which became Stripe.

(This was sort of funny years later, when I was sorting through my stock
certificates. I momentarily forgot that Stripe was originally called something
else, and put that stock cert in the "lost cause" pile.)

~~~
giarc
How big is that 'lost cause' pile? If you don't mind sharing.

------
raymondgh
Hey Sam! Much respect. Sometimes when I watch an interview with you (such as a
recent Stanford class), it seems like the discussion is very one-sided. I
don't perceive you normally as stating your opinions authoritatively, but I
fear that many are afraid to contest your claims or disagree with you, even in
violation of their own beliefs. My questions are first whether you have
noticed any kind of mass-submissiveness to or blind acceptance of to the YC
Philosophy, and second, who do you think are the proponents of the most
compelling contrasting views?

~~~
sama
Interesting. It feels like people disagree with me all day! I've noticed that
the best founders are the most likely to disagree (and have well-reasoned
arguments).

I really hope I never get to the point in life where people stop disagreeing
with me.

------
pixelpanic
How did you learn to code? What would you recommend to aspiring developers?

~~~
sama
Self-taught to start, then I took an amazing CS course from Georgeann Kepchar
in high school who is one of my personal heroes.

I guess I'd recommend the same path--start studying yourself, and find a great
teacher at some point.

------
ideathing27
Y Combinator has a record of supporting innovative ideas which come from the
relative margins of the tech community, beginning with its invention of the
startup accelerator as a concept.

\- Do you feel that Y Combinator's increasing visibility has helped your
mission to attract a wide range of applicants beyond established tech industry
insiders?

\- How do you manage the risk that your corresponding increase in
competitiveness could lower the chances of acceptance for less polished but
still innovative applications from people with fewer industry connections?

~~~
sama
1) Yes! That's really helped up expand into new areas.

2) The partnership talks about this all the time. We're very focused on not
letting it happen. Far, far worse for us to miss one Airbnb than to fund 10
decent (and credible-sounding) companies.

~~~
ideathing27
Thank you for sharing your perspective. It's very encouraging to hear that!

------
mtoecker
Sam, are you seeing any VC interest in industrial devices, such as those that
enable better predictive maintenance, monitoring, and collaboration in
industrial facilities like power plants, chemicals, etc?

@mtoecker

------
haaen
Will YCR accept donations from outsiders?

------
pcmaffey
With YC's network growing bigger and bigger, how do you keep alumni involved
and engaged so you don't lose/dilute the benefits of that network? (arguably
the best thing about YC...)

~~~
sama
This seems to be getting better not worse...

------
jordanbartow
I'm having trouble with the what are you making portion of the application. I
know the product speaks for itself but no matter how I try to explain it to
people they get confused without seeing it which means I'm not doing a great
job of explaining it. Trying to compare it to existing technology doesn't work
well with the product, or I can't find the right comparison. What's your
advice on how to best answer this question, aside from being concrete and
matter of fact?

~~~
sama
You have to learn how to do this. If you can't get good at explaining what
your product does, you will struggle in all aspects of your business. Make
this your number one priority (though also consider that if people have a hard
time understanding what you're doing, it may be a sign that it's not a good
idea).

~~~
jordanbartow
Thanks for the feedback. I think my product is an idea that sounds bad or
confusing but is really solid or has the capability of transforming into
something really brilliant. I just need to focus in. Ive shown large groups of
people the product and they immediately understand it and always have one or
two use cases for the product.

------
cbhl
Is there anything you think we (hackers/techies living in SF) can (or should)
be doing to make housing in San Francisco more affordable, apart from voting
no on Prop F and Prop I?

~~~
sama
I think there is a great startup waiting to be started to figure out a new way
for people to live in cities.

------
Jemaclus
Two questions:

* Would you consider investing in a company that invents a toilet paper holder where the TP can only be inserted in the OVER position? This is a huge problem world-wide that should be solved immediately. The market is huge! B2B, B2C, you name it, there's toilet paper!

* All seriousness aside, do you have any advice for building an app that has no clear money-making potential? I've had this idea brewing for years, but no matter how much I think about, I have no idea how to monetize it.

~~~
jayzalowitz
All good investors know it goes under, thats where the market is.

~~~
Jemaclus
Categorically not true! All investors who put their toilet paper on the roll
in the under position have such poor judgment that they're technically just
gamblers!

~~~
ScottBurson
I was a dedicated "over" guy until one of my cats discovered how easy and fun
it was to unroll it. I had to switch to "under".

------
akshxy
Hi Sama, I'm the founder of nanowe. We're launching an IoT product this year
and have a great team working all days and nights on it.

I get the feeling our startup can't be that bad not to be a part of YC as we
have everything in place but need a great platform & community to showcase
what we're building. Hardware is tough and takes more money and we're about to
raise a convertible note using YC SAFE docs. Does this make our case weaker to
be accepted into YC?

~~~
sbierwagen
The link on your front page pointing at
[https://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/city/ahmedabad/Ahmedabad...](https://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/city/ahmedabad/Ahmedabad-
becomes-incubation-hotspot/articleshow/34750990.cms) returns a TLS error due
to an akamai misconfiguration.

All the press releases in [https://www.nanowe.com/newsroom/press-
releases/](https://www.nanowe.com/newsroom/press-releases/) just show
headlines, no content.

From your website, I'm having a hard time figuring out what your company
actually does.

~~~
akshxy
Thanks for reporting the error, some more bugs might be there, we will fix
them before hitting the market.

Well our company is just our people - and what we do best is we don't give up!
[https://www.nanowe.com/timeline](https://www.nanowe.com/timeline) We also
build products, some of them have failed and some we killed recently in order
to focus on one big thing.

------
just_to_ask_sam
Hi Sam!

I'm the CEO & Founder of a 4-person SaaS company – profitable as most of our
employees are outside the US. We're 4 years old, and are now doing ~$30k/mo in
revenue. I started the company young and have learned a lot.

I question whether this is just a waste of my time, and whether I should just
sell and start something new, but my worry is that by the time the new thing
kicks off, THIS company will be making far more.

What are your thoughts on WHEN to sell a startup, and whether to even sell?

------
davidhhenu
Hello Sam, I am Honduran and applying for the winter 2016 batch with other two
co founders. One of my co founders (Venezuelan) and I have student F-1 Visas.
Since we cannot work yet until we are at OPT we won't be able to make any
profits until January or February 2016. Beta for our platform is due tomorrow
so we can have a demo but users won't be able to use it for now. Is this going
to affect our application? If so, what would you recommend?

~~~
sama
That's ok; we understand.

~~~
davidhhenu
Great! Thanks.

Have you had any other successful Honduran entrepreneurs at YC?

------
baristaGeek
Based on the current performance of the first YC Fellowship, will you have
future editions of this programme? You guys mention that it's for founders who
haven't raised any money at all (although something such as a free-equity
grant from a university is ok).

If you do plan to invest in YC Fellows via an equity deal in the near future,
how acceptable would a -very small- investment from FFF for exchange in equity
would be before getting the Fellowship?

~~~
sama
We will probably make it an ongoing program, and if so we will make it an
equity deal.

I'm not sure what our ongoing stance on having already raised money will be,
but likely there will be some sort of carveout for a very small amount of
friends and family money.

------
robotnoises
Hi Sam,

In your opinion, what is the greatest impediment to getting better software
into government. Second, is there a market opportunity in alleviating
this/these impediments?

~~~
sama
Selling to government is just very slow, and the NIH problems are often
intense.

I do think it's getting much better though. We've become very interested in
startups producing software for government.

------
Noureddine
Hi Sam, I am applying to the winter 2016 batch and I would like to ask you
this:

\- what is the exact purpose of the company description in the application, is
it a mission statement?

\- do you have examples of "something surprising or amusing that one of you
has discovered"

\- is it important for the evaluation process if another company has already
succeeded in another market but with a similar approach as the one we propose?
Should we talk about it in the application?

Thank you for your help

------
throwaway41597
How much love from the programmer for their language and stack do you
recommend for a software-heavy product ? I mean should one launch a v1 ASAP in
language X even though this clearly isn't a language they love or should they
spend more time looking for something they want to work with in the long run
because the product will require a lot of work.

Thank you for spending time on HN on a regular basis! Would love other
partners to do the same.

------
spanacus
Hey Sam, I am very interested in hearing more about the office hours
initiative ran by Michael. Do you guys plan on scaling that up? I strongly
believe in democratizing access to people and believe YC is doing this with
all the effort it has put into Starup School , Fellowship and all these
programs. We are actually building products towards the goal of democratizing
access to people so very expected to hopefully work together

~~~
sama
Yes.

Though I'll remind everyone that literally anyone can apply to any YC program.
One of our biggest differentiators is that you don't need an intro to talk to
us.

------
qunicorn
Hi Sam (&all),

We curated all interesting YCombinator Q&As and created a wiki.
www.askmeanything.me/brands/ycombinator

Some of these are from HN and some from the 'How to start a startup' course.

1] Help us curate more. Just submit link to pavan@askmeanything.me and we will
have it posted with due credits to you and the source.

2] We will soon categorize them as 'application Q&A', 'co-founder Q&A' etc to
make it more easy to read.

Def look for feedback.

------
Danilka
Many people suggest showing drafts of YC applications to founders of YC
companies. The whole point of the exercise is to help founders pass the YC
filtering mechanism. I feel like it's a waste of everybody's time.

Instead, I am asking YC founders to do quick office hours with us and refer to
YC if they liked what they saw. (which I have no control of).

Am I doing the wrong thing and going to get rejected for not polishing the
application enough?

~~~
sama
That sounds like a good plan.

------
dave1619
Can you expand on your tweet that said you don't think selling software is a
good business? Why isn't it a good business? What makes it so tough?

------
firloop
Does YC ever raise capital from outside investors like a traditional company,
or is the equity you take from companies you fund liquid enough to sustain YC?

~~~
sama
Sort of complicated. The short answer is yes, we do have some outside
investors.

------
gregdsouzaa
I read in an article that you are planning a trip to India towards the end of
this year. It would be great if I could take your through an unique tour
through the city which you plan to be in. I would love to shed light on
'Design for Culture' and explain how there are few startups actually designing
businesses around unique cultural behaviors.

If possible, how can we make that work?

------
thewhitetulip
Hi Sam, I am from India, do you accept Indian startups? If so do you have the
rule of minimum two founders? Do you need the startup to have a product first?
Also what do you recommend for a person wanting to start a company, I have an
idea which seems good, but right now I do a job and can't sort of jump to YC,
I'd like to do it sometime later though. Any thoughts?

~~~
sama
Yes.

No--we will fund single founders, but it's harder.

No.

The best thing is just to do it--there is no pre-startup thing really.

------
susiwbkpagwjs
Sam, what do you think about microexposure to artificial toxins such as
pesticides and antibiotics in the modern American diet, which recent research
has demonstrated to have significant effects on our health as compared to the
diets of our grandparents?

We've mainly left this problem in the hands of the FDA. Is it time for a
deeper quantitative investigation?

Is this an area YCResearxh might look into?

~~~
AngrySkillzz
what is a toxin

------
DrNuke
Hello @sama, do you see -as mr president- YC (with YCR, YCF, alumni and
partners) acting more and more as a self-sustaining network in the coming
years? How do you think big corps and govs will react? It's extremely
interesting to see this emerge but also scary, if you think of unpredictable
consequences. How do you feel? Thanks and good luck.

~~~
sama
What about it do you find scary?

~~~
DrNuke
You as a network are starting putting hands into matters that are under
control or direct influence of politics, very big corporations, state-driven
industries and even geopolitics: AI, energy, medicine, automation, food, space
and so on. It is not dropbox anymore. In 20-30 years, your boost may lead to
the disruption of human society as it is organised now.

~~~
sama
I certainly hope for the better.

------
meeper16
What do you think about a startup that builds its own hedge fund to finance
itself through its own machine learning and AI algos?

------
viahartdotcom
Is it reasonable to view YC as a startup whose goal is to become a monopoly?
If so, what competition is most worrying to you?

------
bt3
Hi Sam, thanks for doing this.

Is there any advice you can give to young founders trying to get into YC or
raise a seed round? It’s worth noting we’re students with graduation quickly
approaching. I fear my previous applications weren’t seriously considered
since my team and I lack true industry experience, which leaves us seemingly
unqualified.

------
dzlobin
Hey Sam, hopefully this still finds you. Are you guys considering creating
more RFS? Did they work out for you initially?

------
waterlesscloud
Hi Sam. What's an example of the most heretical research YCR might pursue?
Just trying to get a feel for the scope.

------
qrasi
@sama - Based on my friends who have previously applied to YC .. it seems as
if applications submitted in the last 3-4 days before the deadline, don't
really get reviewed.

When submitted early, they would notice YC related views to their website and
Youtube video. Unfortunately, when submitted close to the deadline, there were
no views.

~~~
sama
The YouTube counter has never seemed to work well with our reviewing software,
so I'd ignore that.

That said we do get to spend more time on applications that get submitted
early (as we've always said) so there is a slight advantage to submitting
early.

~~~
byoung2
We submitted early for last winter, and we noticed 4 complete views of our
video, which was comforting.

------
gailees
In your interview with Kara Swisher on Decode, you talked about how investing
in the stage of companies that YC invests in requires a very different
skillset and a lot more hands-on work than traditional later-stage VC funds
are willing to do.

How did YC gain such a huge advantage in doing this over the other
incubator/accelerators?

------
cvinette
Hi Sam, thanks for doing this!

Say you are working on a project that is really similar to another product
that has been validated and successful in another part of the world. Would you
see it as a good indicator, or does it mean nothing given the culture
differences? What would be the best way to take advantage of that intel?

Thanks and have a good day!

------
tedmiston
Hi, Sam. Big fan of YC itself, the blog, and your tweets.

How long, or to what sort of benchmarks, do you think a startup engineer
should marinate in the startup scene before being taken seriously as a
technical founder?

And follow up: Do you give extra consideration to an application for founders
that have been employees at another YC company prior?

------
crazypyro
Hi Sam,

I have a question relating to AI and YCR.

I remember your blog about AI mentioning how many of the best private
companies are very secretive about their advances and research.

Was YCombinator Research heavily influenced by this secrecy in specifically
the AI fields?

Is YCR going to have a focus on AI, at least initially?

Can you give any insight into the fields of research you are focusing on?

------
choppaface
sama: Jacqueline Novogratz (CEO of Acumen) once said that a major challenge of
building modern finance in developing nations is that developing communities
often have lots of trust (within themselves) but not much accountability.

In your position at YC, founders and investors alike trust you with lots of
information. You have a unique view of where money is flowing and how equipped
companies are to compete with each other. I'm sure you'd have amazing answers
for Peter Thiel's "tell me something you believe is true but nobody else
agrees with" and you'd probably be right on a lot of the points due to
information available uniquely to you.

As YC grows, what actions do you plan on taking to ensure its accountability?
In particular, how do you plan to help founders who for whatever reason don't
directly participate in YC?

~~~
sama
I think we're pretty accountable--if for example we started misusing
information that would quickly become known and founders would stop applying
to YC.

I think most things we do to help YC startups help the community in general.
Think how much better the ecosystem for founders is now than 10 years ago! We
take our responsibility as a sort of flag-bearer for the startup movement
seriously.

------
philippnagel
Hi Sam,

Any tips on balancing uni, research there (pre-doc) and a startup (co-founder,
CTO)?

Do you think it is necessary to give up one for another?

~~~
sama
I don't think you can do all 3 well at the same time, nor should you try.

Pick what you most want to excel at for now and focus on that.

~~~
philippnagel
Thought so too.

Right now I am more drawn towards the first two occupations I mentioned.

The startup involves a very interesting business model. However it is
technically not very challenging (B2B marketplace). It just seems to be very
hard to wind down my engagement there.

My main interest lies within AI (Philosophy/CS student). My thirst for
knowledge hasn't been fulfilled yet and so far I really enjoy the academic
atmosphere.

I really have to set priorities now. Thanks for your quick response.

------
6thSigma
Will there be a Startup School this year?

------
rhabarba
Given that there are regions in my country which have no good local events
calendar yet but it would be easy to implement such an aggregator: would you
recommend me to found a company for such a product? (Let's call it
"WhatHappensInHannover.net" so we both know what is intended.)

------
zachwooddoughty
Hi Sam -- do you think YC has a role or responsibility in addressing social
issues in the bay area or the US?

------
tedmiston
I've been watching the SF startup scene from afar. In the midwest (Cincinnati,
OH) we have growing scenes, but my biggest problem is finding true senior
engineers and real technical mentorship. Do you think this is something one
needs to be in SF to attain or are there other ways?

~~~
sama
I certainly don't think you need to be in SF for it, though it is easy to find
here.

If I had no family ties and wanted to be in tech, I'd still move to the bay
area even with the cost of living being what it is. But I don't think it's as
critical as e.g. moving to LA to be in movies or moving to DC to be in
politics.

------
jules
I'm curious why YC chose to include a video in the application. Have you done
any tests regarding bias towards people that present themselves well or are
simply attractive? Or would such a bias be intentional since other people
(i.e. investors) are going to be biased the same way?

------
gotothrowaway
Is YC positioning itself to become a competitive alternative to traditional
universities with YCR?

------
arkhanguelski
Hi Sam. One of the questions in the application says: "If you have an online
demo, what's the url?"

Do you expect a video walkthrough like what Drew Houston from Dropbox did in
his 2007 application or do you expect a link to a live demo that you can click
through?

------
jacomienvdm
How does YC determine the need and market fit of startups focused on
underserved communities and emerging markets within developing countries (such
as Africa) and what expertise do the YC partners have to offer with regards to
startups focused on these markets?

------
tdbryant2
1/With the rise of nuclear energy and space startups, What will become the
dominate source of energy: nuclear, rare elements in space (Helium 3)or a
combination of both depending on the use cases? 2/How will this affect the
global energy industry?

------
akhilgupta82
Hi Sam, I was wondering how one can get involved in helping out at YC during
the batches. Sort of a role where you can work and help out the companies with
any questions / requests they have. Basically additional hands on deck for the
YC partners.

~~~
sama
One of the things that differentiates us from other programs is we don't have
outsourced 'mentors'. The advice you get during YC is from the full-time
partners and a small group of part-time partners.

I think this is important to maintain--we give good advice largely because we
think about advising startups all the time. Bringing people in and out to do
it occasionally hasn't worked that well for us.

~~~
akhilgupta82
I appreciate the reply and why YC is structured as such! Thanks!

------
v-java88
Hi Sam,

Thanks for engaging with the HN crowd :) I have spoken to Jessica (Livingston)
about this, but wanted to get your thoughts as well.

My question is simple, yet complex at its nature:

How important is the relationship of the founders? (For simplicity let's
assume there are two of them).

------
ThatMightBePaul
For YCR, have you considered grants from other foundations?

For instance, the Bill and Melinda Gates foundation is basically just looking
for opportunities to have the biggest possible impact.

I think a lot of your future goals may line up: clean energy, global
healthcare, etc.

------
s0l0fndr
I saw the other reply but - specifically in regards to the Application :

What tips do you have for a solo founder to make his application most useful
to you?

What information would you like to see to give you some confidence in the solo
founder to move past this disadvantage?

------
bicknergseng
Hey Sam, what's the status of the YC Fellowship? Are you going to do another
round?

~~~
sama
Very likely yes.

------
oemerax
Sam,

we've applied to YC Winter 2016 within the first five days, but thinking about
making minor changes to the application. Does "editing" have a negative-
effect? Do you read the whole application again or just the edits? Thanks in
advance!

~~~
sama
No negative effect, but partners that read your application before the edits
won't read it again.

------
networked
How relevant is the old RFS 5 (Development on Handhelds,
[http://old.ycombinator.com/rfs5.html](http://old.ycombinator.com/rfs5.html))
today compared to 2009 when it was published?

~~~
sama
Certainly hasn't happened yet. It may be that human/phone I/O is just too
slow. It's not the area I'm most focused on, but would be interesting if it
happened.

------
susiwbkpagwjs
Hey @sama. Are there any emerging technologies or research areas you think are
in peril at this time, due to lack of funding, political climate, or diverted
focus? How will YCResearch identify the fields to support basic research in?

------
bennalle
As a student I feel my interests are outside the traditional lines of what is
taught in the classroom so was wondering what you thought the best way to
bring entrepreneurship to schools was, particularly middle and high schools?

------
bputano
Hi Sam,

We're a startup in a non-technical industry. We are high-growth minded, with a
growing platform of users and plans to create connected hardware devices. What
metrics would you need to see from a company like ours to make it into YC?

------
annie_ab1
Hi Sam! Nice to connect with you here. I am an Indian woman. I am a
Biotechnology and Management graduate with around 5 years of managerial
experience. How can I break into tech industry with no background in computer
science?

------
crabasa
Apologies for the meta comment, but this post has been banished from the HN
front page [1]. Any ideas why?

\----

Update: It has been restored as of 9:33am PST. No sure why the downvotes, I
found this is be somewhat amazing given whose post this was.

[1] as of 9:28am PST at least

------
geezsundries
I'm mid-application for the YC Winter 2016 cycle, but I'm concerned because
neither my cofounder nor I come from a technical background, yet our idea is
technical. Do you see this as a deterrent to being accepted?

~~~
sama
Honestly yes, that's a negative. It'd be possible to overcome with a really
good answer on how you will get the technology built, but it's harder than
ever to be an entirely non-technical team--recruiting engineers is just so
difficult and expensive.

~~~
geezsundries
Got it. Thank you for the reply. We both work in technology, so we do know
people but were honestly hoping YC could help us with a sort of road map. The
idea is worth what we may have to overcome.

------
andreasklinger
In your opinion: If global human society would be a startup.

What could/would be our 10x growth lever in innovation/living quality.

(reason i ask - in the end YC is one of those companies shaping global
innovation that could help move towards above)

------
akhilgupta82
Most startups have a good mix of technical co-founders and sometimes a non-
technical, business athlete. What are some of roles and responsibilities YC
has advised the non-technical founder hone on during their time at YC?

------
vexir6369
What is YCs (and your) opinion on the casual gaming startups? Has YC received
many applicants in the past of that nature and if any at all, what were the
things that concerned you and what did you wish you saw more of?

------
dnautics
Do you think ycr will host public lecture series for interesting research
topics?

------
csentropy
What is the best way to get connected to the YC network if you are not a YC
alum?

~~~
berpasan
Find something you can offer then and help them with... And be a hustler.

~~~
csentropy
That's what I intended to ask, my question wasn't clear. Is there a way
someone could contribute to the YC community as an outsider? Ideas welcome.

~~~
berpasan
Look at what specific YC companies do, so you can infer what they might
need... Lots of founders have blogs, Twitter, etc, and will speak their minds
up out there. If you think you can create your own startup, you probably can
do something of value to another, specially early stage ones... It can be as
simple being an user of one of their products and offering feedback. I
personally looked at YC company lists, saw ones that were on a similar space
as mine, and, since I am from another country (Brazil), offered help. I ended
up knowing a couple of YC founders that way.

Just remember to give first and always be nice... Startup founders usually
have their hands full, won't always be able to help or even reply to you. And
be resonable, don't think Drew Houston will become your best friend and take a
bullet for you just because you sent him an email saying you like Dropbox...

------
pyankoff
Hi Sam, what skills would you learn today to maximize your "founder
potential"?

Web/mobile development is kind of commodity already. One can learn nuclear
physics, but it doesn't feel like you can hack on it a lot.

------
yongshin
What are some qualities of a CEO that you wish to look for in a startup
founder?

~~~
sama
The only universal job description of a CEO is to make sure the company wins.
We look for people who are going to make their company win--compelling vision,
clear communication, determination, intelligence, "good at business", etc.

------
baristaGeek
As of 2015, how common is it that Y Combinator is the first money for a
startup?

------
joeyspn
What are your views on the singularity and transhumanism? Do you think a day
will come when we'll have to _somewhat_ trascend our human existence in order
to keep up with the pace of tech advancements?

------
raymondgh
Would you like to speak at HackingEDU (San Mateo, October 23-25), the world's
largest education hackathon?
[http://www.hackingedu.co](http://www.hackingedu.co)

~~~
sama
Ok sure that sounds fun, could you email my office (SArouter@ycombinator.com)?

~~~
raymondgh
Done. Looking forward to it!

------
mukulsud
Hey Sam, would it be okay to use third party links to prove our market exists?
- would the software that you use to scan through apps create a hyperlink and
allow the partner reading the app to click thru?

~~~
mukulsud
A follow up to this would be that if we use market numbers should we use
attribution links to show where we got them from?

------
bakztfuture
Hey Sam!

Just wanted to ask:

1) how does being a single founder eventually impact the dynamics of a
company?

2) any heuristics for finding the one metric that matters to optimize on?

3) any tips for projects less iterative and more focused on a "complex
coordination" modality

Thanks!

------
DBCerigo
Could you tell us more about YC Research? Such as (but definitely not
restricted to);

\- Initial starting size

\- How you will be picking researchers

\- Any particularly novel initiatives/methodologies that will be encouraged

\- How you will measure the group's success

------
jdcarluccio
Hi Sam, thanks for your time. Appreciate it.

Wanted to ask you what do you think about Chamath comments about the lack of
diversity in VC partners affecting the companies they invest? How do you see
this affecting YC?

------
erosa01
@sama What are some things that you have approached differently from PG?

------
rrrichter
As a CS student from Brazil, what opportunities do you think Brazil has in
terms of startups that is different from silicon valley and which methods that
work there would work here as well??

~~~
berpasan
I'm not Sam, but I'm a Brazilian enterpreneur. The bad side of Brazil,
compared to SV, is we have way less capital available to fund startups,
specially earlier and more innovative ones. Our government doesn't help
either, definitely way harder to be an Enterpreneur here (not only for
startups, the same is true for small businesses as well). The good part is you
don't have as much competition when doing a product that targets the local
market. And there are much more unsolved problems and needs to be tackled
here.

I believe most of YC's advice is universal and fits Brazil's startups well.
Some are even more important here: try to make money from day one and spend as
little as you can - you can't count on investors money here, no matter how
good your KPIs are.

------
brayton
What are you looking for in block chain / bitcoin applications?

------
Danilka
What are your thoughts are on the whole concept of living on Mars? How
feasible is it; how important is the fact of sustainable life on another
planet; how would you approach such a problem?

Thank you!

------
susiwbkpagwjs
Hi @sama. We've recently seen Google and NASA among others open their patent
pools to startups. What are your thoughts on this, and YC's stance on
intellectual property?

------
erosa01
Hi @sama. Since anyone could have applied to YC Fellowship, do you think that
it finally became just a small "seed round" for the startups that would win YC
Winter 2016.

------
mbhambry
1) Indian Startups are also welcomed? 2)The application process is a bit
change. Founders are asked to provide a video of their own? What do you think
is the reason for that?

------
tyrick
How will the size of the W16 batch compare with previous batches?

~~~
sama
We never plan this in advance. Depends how many companies we fall in love
with.

------
jhamar
Check us out . . . .
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sTsvDc959-s](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sTsvDc959-s)

------
ph0rque
What do you recommend founders with families do when moving to the SV area for
the duration of a YC batch? Take their families with them, or just move by
themselves?

~~~
sama
Personally I'd want to take my family with me if at possible. One of the
reasons we upped the amount of money we give companies was to help make this
possible.

------
waliurjs
Can a 'yc interview invitation' be used in the embassy the same way a regular
'visa invitation from a relative living in US' to get a B1 visa?

~~~
berpasan
I would get the Visa right away. I got a B1/B2 (tourism and business). I just
showed my application form and the interview dates and it was enough. At least
here (Brazil) the hole US VISA process takes much longer than the 2 weeks of
head start YC gives the founders it invites to the interviews.

------
pbreit
Do you think venture investors ought to have higher "hit rates"? (Note: I do
not believe things like Dropbox and Airbnb sounded crazy in the beginning).

------
simonebrunozzi
Hi Sam, thanks for your time with us today!

How do you see an application from someone with clear track records in a
field, but applying with an idea in a quite different field?

~~~
sama
We like that.

We are looking for impressive people. I think intelligence is somewhat
fungible--if you were great at one thing, you can probably learn another
thing.

------
pedrotp
Hey Sam! What are you (and YC) doing to enable more founder diversity? Any
initiatives to reach out to black/latino founders to invite them to apply?

~~~
sama
We do a lot of different outreach, but to your specific question, we recently
did this: [http://blog.ycombinator.com/yc-open-office-hours-for-
black-a...](http://blog.ycombinator.com/yc-open-office-hours-for-black-and-
hispanic-founders)

------
kayuque
I wasnt invited to the Fellowship, I'm still working on the idea but my
cofounders lost interest. Should I apply or wait till I find new cofounders.

~~~
viahartdotcom
An application preceded by what you just wrote is DOA

------
azinman2
Hi Sam,

Non-YC question here. I remember years ago at some of apples events loopt was
featured on stage by Jobs (I think?) How did you manage to get that kind of
promotion?

Thanks Aaron

------
glxc
Hi @sama

TELL US MORE ABOUT Y COMB RESEARCH

What area of research will you be conducting?

------
ramkumarceg
like we have mentioned here
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10360682](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10360682)
we have curated the AMA at
[http://www.askmeanything.me/brands/ycombinator](http://www.askmeanything.me/brands/ycombinator)

~~~
qunicorn
While the link has __* Many other Q &As related to YCombinator at one place
____

The Q &A for this thread itself can be found in a separate tab on the page
labeled as "Winter 2015 Application" on the link
[http://www.askmeanything.me/brands/ycombinator](http://www.askmeanything.me/brands/ycombinator)

------
CrackpotGonzo
Hi from Chicago @sama!

You guys have been talking about your investments in HW startups.

What are the top 3 things that you look for in a hardware startup application
at YC?

------
znt
Could you give advice on how to find like-minded co-founders? And what do you
think makes someone "good co-founder material"?

~~~
sama
The best way to do this from what I've seen is to meet people at school or at
work that seem interested in building things. Work with them on interesting
projects, and see you seem to work well with.

------
baristaGeek
Any book recommendations for really early stage entrepreneurs? (The best thing
to do is execute, but a book or 2 will never hurt).

------
Laaw
When looking at founder groups, do you shy away from or gravitate towards
founders who were friends before the company/idea?

------
suyash
Hi Sam,

Please list your 3 most favorite book for Entrepreneurship, business. I'm an
software engineer but have very little entrepreneurship experience.

Thanks

~~~
sama
I don't really think you can learn this from books--you need to just jump in
and do it.

You might find some of these videos helpful:
[http://startupclass.samaltman.com](http://startupclass.samaltman.com)

------
joez
Do startups, and if so how, need to execute differently in today's frothy
funding environment?

What are some technologies that excite you?

------
coltonrobtoy
How involved is YC going to be in 3D Printing?

~~~
sama
We've funded a number of startups working on this and I expect we'll fund
more.

------
jenskanis
Hi Sam. Do you have any regrets when it comes to certain companies you turned
down? If so, can you give any examples?

------
rdl
Where outside-USA would make the most sense for YC NONUS 1.0? Or at least,
what factors would go into the decision?

------
coltr
Do you personally work 'startup-like' hours everyday, or is it a little more
relaxed? 8 hours/day?

~~~
sama
I work a lot. But I love what I do.

------
jwgaryhen
Can I hack please it's like the coumputer won't give me no money so can you
let me hack to get money

------
susiwbkpagwjs
@sama Sam, what are the barriers to a successful IoT in coming years? Will
there be a war of standards?

------
rokhayakebe
Will YC invest in companies that never plan to go public or get acquired, but
could pay dividends?

------
ddamico
Hi Sam! Best actionable advice you can give to a room full of entrepreneurs in
30 seconds? Thanks.

~~~
pcmaffey
"Build something people love." ~sama

------
mrdrozdov
Hi Sam,

Do you have any suggestions that would help non-technical startup employees
get visa entry to the US?

------
ddamico
Hey Sam! Best actionable advice you can give to a room full of entrepreneurs
in 60 seconds?

------
sahawneh
Hello Sam,

Which application questions do you think best measure determination and
flexibility of founders?

------
wlamont
If you were just starting out again what industry would you focus your efforts
on now?

------
billconan
Will we have another startup school this year? I haven't seen any information.

~~~
sama
Not this year, but we will next year!

------
billconan
I'm currently on H1B, if we get accepted, will my working visa be a problem?

~~~
sama
We will connect you to lawyers that can help, but it can be a real challenge
unfortunately :(

~~~
billconan
sigh. I wish YC could become an umbrella company who can accept immigrants
working on their startups on h1b under the name of YC employee.

~~~
aakashnigam
This can be a good hack around the broken immigration system, if it ever
happens!

No matter how good the founder or team is, an idea requires at-least 3-4
months of nourishment to crystallize into something promising.

Unfortunately, on H1B if one quits his job, he needs to leave the country.
Around me, I see many good ideas by good people not being pursued because of
this.

------
mmccord
Hey @sama! How many applicants on average get the opportunity to be
interviewed?

------
sarciszewski
What is the weirdest or most outlandish application you've seen to date?

Did you accept it?

Was it successful?

------
steven2012
What makes you qualified to run Ycombinator above any of the other partners?

~~~
sama
I believe any of us could do it.

~~~
steven2012
Thanks for the response. I'm just curious about what process pg went through
to choose you, if you're privy to that. Obviously, he spent many years doing a
lot of experimenting to get to his "finished product". And when he decided to
leave, he chose you. Do you have any insight as to what in particular he felt
you had that felt you would be the best choice?

~~~
runesoerensen
Maybe there's more to add, but pg did explain why they felt Sam was the best
choice: [http://blog.ycombinator.com/sam-altman-for-
president](http://blog.ycombinator.com/sam-altman-for-president)

------
pcmaffey
Are you ready to talk about which domain you intend to start with for YCR?

------
edanm
Hi Sam,

Thanks for doing this.

1\. What do you consider your best professional accomplishment?

2\. Have you ever visited Israel?

------
pcmaffey
Any advice for single founders applying? (other than get a cofounder...)

~~~
sama
The burden of proof to show us you can handle starting a startup is higher. So
some evidence that you can execute by yourself (i.e. progress) goes a long
way.

------
johnewu
Isn't raising money a form of validation of your product/idea

~~~
pavornyoh
@Johnewu, No, it is not. There have been several companies that have done that
and failed. Think Quirky, think Webvan among others.

Being able to make money, showing clear metrics of how that is going to be
done, customers keep coming back etc.. is validation of your idea/product.

For example, if you told your parents you were going to start a company and
they decided to help you with money, do you consider that a validation of your
idea/product? I am curious to see your answer.

------
rokhayakebe
How did you come about being President of YC (post your own startup)?

------
pcmaffey
How is the remote aspect of YCF going? Something to explore more?

~~~
sama
Too early to say. We really won't know for another month at least.

------
jmtame
What's the best book you've read on poker strategy? :)

------
mooremo
Star Wars or Star Trek?

------
erosa01
@sama Would you call yourself a statistician or a visionary?

------
jwgaryhen
I'm the president

------
ausjke
What is the "success ratio" about YC graduates?

------
neurotech1
Would you consider funding a Public Benefit Corporation?

------
tomrod
Sam

I don't have any particular questions for you. I just want to let you know
that I appreciate for the work you put in, both to HN and to Y Combinator.

Perhaps I speak for the whole community on that point. Best of luck.

-tomrod

------
baristaGeek
Any plans for an international college tour?

------
kskc
Do you have African startups joining YC?

------
krstck
What (or who) are you currently reading?

~~~
sama
The last two books I read were Sapiens and The Supermen (given to be by
@dang). Highly recommend both.

~~~
Paul_S
Please, you have to also tell us the authors if you really want to recommend
them.

~~~
pavornyoh
@Paul_S, I may be wrong and if it the same book I am thinking then see below.
I hope this helps.

1)Sapiens (A brief history of humankind). The book authored by Yuri Noah
Harari

2)TheSupermen (The story of seymour cray and the technical wizards behind the
supercomputer). The book authored by Charles J. Murray.

------
thecosas
Which came first: Hacker News or Reddit?

~~~
sama
reddit by a lot.

------
philip1209
What's the future of YCF?

------
paulomartins
Great AMA, thanks Sam.

------
viahartdotcom
Did you read our winter 2016 application?

Thanks :)

------
erosa01
@sama If you had yourself and your startup Loopt apply now for YC, would it
win?

------
alexperezpaya
Do you have anything against Spaniards?

I have seen lot of Spaniards applying to YC and they got rejected/ignored with
awesome projects.

Do you even read all applications? Posted applications with all urls tracked
and we saw 0 clicks... How can you judge our product without testing it? Did
you even watched our pitch?

But in the other hand, I saw a lot of stupid companies backed by YC (Uber for
X, Airbnb for X, Tinder for X, Y for X startups) I don't mind about it, it's
your money, just asking for solid reasons.

This is going to blacklist me for YC but I don't care.

Kind regards, Alex.

~~~
sama
a) Definitely not.

b) It's possible if something was deeply wrong in an application we wouldn't
even watch the video, but the counts never seem to work. Sometimes if an
application is clearly a no after watching the video and reading the text, we
don't look at the product, but it's rare.

c) Barcelona is my favorite city!

~~~
alexperezpaya
Nice to hear that, we'll keep trying.

You are welcomed in Spain :)

