Harjeet: I'm a partner at Y Combinator. Ask me anything. | Hacker News Reader

Harjeet: I'm a partner at Y Combinator. Ask me anything.

anyasq.com

88 pointsfrankdenbow69 comments

There's no way in the world I'm going to sign up for this, regardless of who you have on there.

This application will be able to:

    Read Tweets from your timeline.
    See who you follow, and follow new people.
    Update your profile.
    Post Tweets for you.
    Access your direct messages until June 30th, 2011.

Why does this application need this much access?

There's a checkbox to tweet to your followers when you post an AMA or when you ask a question.

I don't know if there's a way to request just the ability to tweet. But we don't use any of those other permissions.

If you don't use them don't ask for them

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

agreed, who'd be dumb enough to sign up for that...I could see doing that if that was required for actually using some app...but in this case it's just a way for them to spam your followers to promote their site

You give Twitter all those permissions too.

I am not willing to grant anyask the ability to modify my twitter profile and post as me so I'll just ask here.

1) Age-wise, what ratio of accepted YC applicants are over 35? 40?

2) What ratio of them fall into the "married with kids" category?

My impression of YC is that you strongly (exclusively?) prefer under 30 people who are unattached or, at least, are married with no other obligations.

Can you dispel that impression or is it close to the truth?

(I hope this doesn't come across as trolling or as an accusation. If you think it is, I welcome suggestion on how to word it better)

I'd have to guess, but maybe 4% and 1% respectively.

What percentage are married and/or have kids I couldn't even guess, because we don't ask and it's not the sort of thing that comes up unless it's related to what they're working on.

All we care about is whether the startup seems likely to succeed. Think how stupid we'd have to be to miss out on a great startup because they failed to meet some arbitrary constraint.

What percentage are married and/or have kids I couldn't even guess, because we don't ask...

Is this something you don't ask because you don't think it's a useful question, or because your lawyers told you to not ask it?

I would expect that "what does your significant other think of this" would be an illuminating question where relevant, both in terms of demonstrating an ability to recognize problems and demonstrating an ability to overcome them. Certainly if a startup founder was planning on moving across the country and answered "I haven't told her yet" it would be a big red flag to me.

IANAL but I think it would be legal to ask; we're investing in people's startups, not hiring them. The reason we don't ask about such things is that we don't care. Interviews are only 10 minutes long. We need to spend that time talking about the startup.

We need to spend that time talking about the startup.

Huh. Given how much people keep talking about how the team matters more than the startup idea, this surprises me.

Or is it that talking about the startup is the fastest way to learn about the people?

Exactly.

Like with female founders, the apparent predominance of <30 single males is probably better explained by number who apply than the proportion selected.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

By "graduates" do you mean "people who have just graduated"?

This was the case early on (when YCombinator was marketed using the whole "drop out of college and do a startup meme).

I believe they have stated that the age distribution is much wider now. Having said that, it's probably easier to live on the YCombinator investment if you are young don't have kids than if you do.

>>2) What ratio of them fall into the "married with kids" category?

There were at least 14 founders from our batch (W2010) that were married or engaged and about 6 of those had kids. I think there were about 65 total founders.

I am guessing anyasq is a YC company that just launched? Rationale: Harjeet doing an interview at a relatively unknown company/project.

Also, how does anyasq beat reddit ama?

> Also, how does anyasq beat reddit ama?

* Better moderation. Seems like there are no unverified AMAs on anyasq. Trolling is a major problem on /r/iama.

* By leveraging the YC network to get AMAs with people who would never do a Reddit AMA.

These two things are relatively straightforward and simple, but I think it's a winning combination. The popularity of the AMA concept certainly has been validated by /r/iama. Backed by a company, I think it has a lot of potential to form the basis of a small successful media company. For example, I have a binder saved of useful advice mined from /r/iama. The value of this advice is great and would normally be unavailable to me. If someone put out a curated book, I'd buy it in a second.

Devil's advocate: Reddit is getting better at the trolling with confirmations from moderators. Reddit AMA gets a surprising amount of important people to pass their way. And technically reddit is in the YC network (though the founders have left). But agreed that there are some people who would never do a AMA on reddit that might come from YC.

Also, let's say that anyasq isn't a YC company (not sure if they are or not). Then all they have going for them is better moderation. To me that just sounds like retweeting on twitter without the character limit and a cleaner interface. I am not so sure that is a winning combination. One would think that YC would pick a company that didn't need to be in YC to succeed.

> One would think that YC would pick a company that didn't need to be in YC to succeed.

I don't think that holds up here. Like it or not, reputation is the name of the game when it comes to media. It doesn't matter if you are as good of a writer as those on staff at the Times, you simply wont get the same opportunities. I think it would be silly for YC to discount this fact when funding media companies.

what moderation?

Unverified IAMAs tend to be the I am a doctor etc...which can't be verified.

The ones where it's a person, /iama/ already verifies those.

Seems like this is a money grab...and at least reddit doesn't require that you allow it to spam your twitter account.

> The ones where it's a person, /iama/ already verifies those.

Trolls have successfully gotten fake IAMAs from celebrities like Emilia Clarke verified by the moderation team. The fake Emilia Clarke IAMA got close to 1,000 comments before the ruse was discovered. [1]

> Unverified IAMAs tend to be the I am a doctor etc...which can't be verified.

It's an incorrect assumption that verification is only useful for specific people. There was an amazing AMA by a Navy Seal a week or two back [2] and verification was crucial in that case (for some odd reason, lots of people like to claim to be a SEAL). Verification is certainly possible for most AMAs, including professions like doctors. Another example that comes to mind was an AMA by a law school professor [3], which was verified as well.

> what moderation?

Successful moderation is a critical part of running a community in this area. The moderation in /r/iama is extensive and they do good work there. I'm simply saying someone who is getting paid to do it will do a better job.

> Seems like this is a money grab.

Well that's because it is. It's a company. It's not like the /r/iama moderation staff couldn't have spun off a company a long time ago. That's what the moderation staff of /r/starcraft ended up doing and it seems to be working. There's nothing wrong with someone trying to make money off of a value added service. When you think about it, AMAs have the appeal of books like Founders/Coders at Work. People like to read that stuff and I can see the benefit is someone trying to start a company around it, rather than do it as a hobby.

[1] http://www.reddit.com/r/IAmA/comments/huqug/the_emilia_clark...

[2] http://www.reddit.com/r/IAmA/comments/i3s61/iama_former_navy...

[3] http://www.reddit.com/r/IAmA/comments/hnhia/iama_attorney_an...

I am not sure I accept the proposition that moderation staff who are paid will always do a better job. Unpaid moderators do it for their various reasons, one of the most common I've seen is a deep passion for the topic. Being paid to do something changes that dynamic incredibly. The best moderated forum I ever was a member of was done completely on a non-profit basis. There were paid competitors, every other site in the niche had some sort of monetization, except this one. The mods loved the area and were deeply respected in the niche. The community was strong. They eventually did quit and sold it to a company, the site died nearly instantly with a paid staff taking over.

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

Ways we hope AnyAsq beats reddit ama:

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

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

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

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

Neat! Good answers.

How do you make money though? Who is paying for what?

Interesting. A couple of points:

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

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

reddit already has the capability of allowing the moderators do a different domain with a different interface -- the mods just have to decide to do it, so be careful here.

Otherwise, you make some interesting points. I'm curious though, what is your advantage over Quora, which is also a clone of Iama, designed to be a standalone Q&A site?

Feature request: don't force me to sign in with twitter. I understand having the option and even encouraging it, but I don't actually like twitter and don't want to use it as my identity/login. I don't want to use Facebook for that either, though I'm sure it would be wise to offer that as an option.

Please support OpenID and good old non-social username/password logins.

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

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

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

That's true.

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

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

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

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

You're taking something that works and breaking it.

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

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

I think you underestimate the value of a giant community interested in reading about stuff in general. They are the consumers of knowledge and content and are there to consume pictures, videos, AMAs, etc. While I don't always want to read AMAs, the most popular do make it through to my front page or I can see what's going on when I feel the urge, without ever changing sites. That value proposition alone is why I don't think I'd regularly use a dedicated AMA site.

As an early user on anyasq (http://bit.ly/iQYjXb), I'll say anyasq already has a much better user experience than reddit AMA. The twitter integration for both questioners and submitters (and the emails when you get new questions) are key. Once they get a few prominent people on there I could really see this taking off.

I think it's competing more with formspring, than reddit.

Apparently we accidentally launched AnyAsq!

A little off the track but do you intend to have a "Follow AMA" style button or A favorites button like StackOverflow to follow the interesting ones? It'd help to keep a track of all the conversations flying around the site.

Yes, I wish we had already built that feature.

Hi, there's a question here about AnyAsq:

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

Super excited to see this concept. I had a prototype of this style of idea last year, but decided it was tertiary to my actual passion (video).

Wish you huge luck! Would love to sit down and debrief a part of this you might attack later, namely live events and conferences. I've got some good ideas of how to integrate this to those in a visually appealing manner, and would love to chat.

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

First, thanks to Harjeet for doing this.

The biggest question I had for a while about YC has already been answered. That is, how much does the educational background of an applicant impact the analysis of an application.

I know a few former and current YC founders and they all seem to have the same thing in common: CS degrees from elite universities.

Harjeet put my concerns to rest with his answer that it is only relevant if it directly relates to the problem being solved.

I'm sure a PhD in Machine Learning from Stanford doesn't go unnoticed even if the problem being solved is technically somewhat simple. However, it is nice to see that everyone is treated equally at least on paper.

Nobody wants to be portrayed as elitist so I'm not so sure about this. Given 2 people who both have done impressive projects I would bet the one with the Stanford degree would be more likely to get in. It might even be a sub-conscious decision.

1. Does YC have any plans to hire associates/interns?

2. What 3 early-stage startups excite you most that haven't been funded by YC?

3. Do you personally invest in startups?

4. What do you like most about your job?

5. Do you have some cool YC-related stories you could share?

6. What's a typical day like for you? (If "typical" doesn't apply, what'd you do today?)

1. No. 2. Square and Quora. Can't think of a third. 3. I've done a bit but don't have enough money to do more. 4. The people I work with. 5. Nothing springs to mind. There's probably some but I find it hard to just pull things out of my brain without context. 6. No typical day. Today I cleared out my inbox in the morning, did office hours in the afternoon and the weekly YC dinner is about to start now.

How are you ensuring that you are not missing Square and Quora kinds again? Is there a reason why you passed on both?

I don't think those guys applied to YC, having been founders/early at Twitter and Facebook. Plus, they probably wanted to raise more than $20k or whatever.

   I wouldn't completely rule out us ever doing something in NY, 
   if we *had* to open another YC branch it would almost certainly be in NY.

Wow, as someone who lives in Boston, this makes me realize how much NYC is eclipsing us. We're #3 (hopefully :-).

Its probably between Boston and Austin,Tx for #3

Dont know which one it would be though

1- Who have you passed on you wish you hadn't?

2- What is one of the assumption you had about the entire process that ended up not being true?

3- Who is one entrepreneur (or team) whom you really thought had it wrong, but invested in anyways because they had that je-ne-sais-quoi?

1. I shouldn't say specifically because YC applications are supposed to be confidential, but if you look at the more successful startups funded by YC's competitors, there's a large overlap.

2. How predictable outcomes would be.

3. Airbnb.

More or less predictable?

Less predictable. We thought we'd learn how to pick winners. What we learned instead is that it's impossible. Not just because luck is such a big factor, but because founders change.

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

Yes: become tougher and more ambitious, and less self-indulgent. Probably the single most important change is to overcome the fear of failure that makes one accept early, small acquistion offers. It's hard to turn down an early offer for a few million, but every successful startup has.

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

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

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

Can you elaborate on toughness? I.e. not pushed around as much by potential buyers, users?

"I've noticed a trend in people listing employees (i.e. people with sub 5% equity stakes) as founders so they don't seem like they're a single founder. We see through this and mark it in the notes"

Interesting. Can't help but wonder if this factored in the rejection of Decal since my two "co-founders" were technically employees of Working Software at the time of the application (although we've since come to an equity sharing agreement so it's more of a traditional startup now).

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

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

To me, it looks like an accessible-to-normals version of r/IAMA and I see the appeal clearly.

Reddit's not exactly having trouble attracting a mainstream audience. It attracts a far more "normal" crowd (as in, broad and varied) than any other social news site, with the possible exception of stumbleupon and twitter, which are completely different kinds of sites and not conducive to AMAs anyway.

Also, the (apparent) lack of ability for follow-up questions and conversations based on answers seems to be a big downside. Be it reddit, HN, or Wikipedia, nested conversations are a no-brainer in 2011.

To be fair, I've often "read" reddit IAMA's by just looking for the original submitter's answers; the followup discussion is not necessarily equally valuable.

If you weren't actively involved in YC full-time, what type of company would you be starting? Alternatively, what overlooked/underhyped opportunities do you see in the market?

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

I'm not seeing where you did that. Which AMA or question or username is it?

I'm not seeing it show up either - strange. I wonder if there's an approval system before the questions are public.

I did the same thing. Posting a question doesn't make it at ALL clear if it's done so. Do you NEED to tweet it? Otherwise, posting a question just leads to a form where you can submit (another?) question.

The UI could be a bit clearer there.

The same thing happened to me and I'm still not sure if my question was entered or not. I can't find anywhere that lists the questions I've asked.

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