Office Hours with Sam Altman [video]
blog.ycombinator.com
blog.ycombinator.com
Some follow up questions came to my mind after listening to this. I am going to list them here. If you see this @craigcannon, please consider them for the next one.
1. One disadvantage of being young is that they are usually inexperienced in managing people and conducting business. How would you recommend young people to improve their skills in people management and business? What kind of books should they read? What kind of habits should they inculcate? Is there anything else you would recommend?
2. A non technical founder needs to be a product guy. It is also easy for a n00b to pick up coding skills as there are so many great resources on the internet, many of them operated by YC companies. The follow up question here is the converse: how can a technical founder learn product skills? What kind of resources are available and which ones would you recommend?
3. Sam mentioned AI and computer security as two areas that he thought was important. With AI, we are already seeing hints of disruptive technology (deep learning). What is the situation with computer security in comparison?
4. Stickiness of a new platform can be taken as an indicator of whether it is worthwhile to develop things on it. How would you rate voice platforms like Amazon Echo, Google Home, Apple Siri in terms of stickiness?
There's a whole industry here.
It would be great if YC actually did "eat itself" and usher in the crowdfunding era. This is certainly contrary to the exclusive club they are today but it beats being subsumed. And YC does have good things to teach people and is quite generous. It would be good for the world if they were the ones that did this. "Kickstart with equity" is clearly the model of the future. Indiegogo is working on it.
""Kickstart with equity" is clearly the model of the future. " Clearly? I would disagree.
Crowdfunding seems to work well when you've already got an experienced team, have an advanced prototype of your product/service, and just need funding to scale up that prototype.
If you've got an inexperienced team, an MVP-style prototype, and could use extra guidance and support, then going with crowdfunding would probably end up being problematic.
How does the crowd determine the difference between your type 1 and your type 2 companies?
I can talk about successful crowdfunded products, including products made by companies.
To give one example to start with, Formlabs has used crowdfunding to help generate money to manufacture their 3D printers:
>"How does the crowd determine the difference between your type 1 and your type 2 companies?"
I'd suggest it comes down to experience. With experience in crowdfunding you can spot the campaigns that are likely to succeed, and which ones are likely to fail. The main problem I see is when campaigns are too ambitious based on the background of the people involved. For example, high volume manufacturing in China without prior experience of working with Chinese manufacturing companies.
This probably helped give them some runway to put together a series A. However they still raised an additional 50MUSD.
So, I don't think they're a great example of a company bootstrapping from crowdfunding. It's more of a traditional play, with some validation (and some runway) from crowdfunding.
I want crowdfunding to work, but your claim that Sam can't see straight about it isn't supported by the video.
And his response of current signaling coming from well-known investors does jive with my own experience, esp. for seed stage.
But, a lot of this starts to disappear once a company is looking for Series A+. Because now you have actual financials/product+market to look at. I would also argue the value of "smart" money is more towards the seed stage anyway.
So, shift focus away from seed stage, and into crowdfunding Series A+.
In other words, enable a) bootstrappers who have found product/market fit to take things to the next level b) the common man to invest in a way a bank might.
Sam's comments on Meetups mirror my experiences, though I'm not in a tech hub area. It depends really heavily on the person organizing and what kind of outreach they've done to people, existing groups, and organizations in the area. I've seen a few groups flare up really enthusiastically, then dwindle over a few months. I've also tried joining some existing meetups that feel most like people are sticking around more to hang out with the other people than because of value from the meetup.
Likewise for finding a technical cofounder. As a technical person I've spent some time thinking about the other direction, and (after a rough experience) there's no way I'd try to get funding with somebody I didn't know very well.
[1] "You could parachute [Sam] into an island full of cannibals and come back in 5 years and he'd be the king"
[2] “But I have guns, gold, potassium iodide, antibiotics, batteries, water, gas masks from the Israeli Defense Force, and a big patch of land in Big Sur I can fly to.”
[2] "Graham said, “I asked Sam in our kitchen, ‘Do you want to take over YC?,’ and he smiled, like, it worked."
So in the context of Yishan's comment, it demonstrates to me that the "joking" was a subtle nod that he wouldn't have any qualms with back room dealing and manipulation to reach a goal.
While that might sound like a hit on him, it's actually not. I relate to that approach strongly, and think it's actually the right way to play it.
However I think it's actually a bad comparison to say he's the "nicest guy in the valley." That title goes to Steve Wozniak.
[1]http://paulgraham.com/fundraising.html
[2]http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2016/10/10/sam-altmans-man...
[2] These are for survival in the case of an apocalypse, not aggression
[3] Graham loved Sam Altman, so he put him in charge of YC.
None of these really related to Sam making a joke about Reddit. Conde Nast is extremely happy with Reddit. It's growing (#7 site in the USA), and valuable.