paul

"under certain conditions". There is an enormous amount of unimproved land in the world, and most of it is quite inexpensive.

I do like the idea of a land tax though, and believe that it's a good way to fund BI (along with carbon tax).

I have them fairly often. I think it's an interesting metaphor for life too -- how many parts of ourselves have we simply forgotten about?

I wonder when Google will do a writedown on this deal? $3.2B seems like a lot to pay for a thermostat company.

That assumes a fixed supply of housing, which is only true in deeply dysfunctional places like SF. In most of the US, housing cost is close to replacement cost, so if landlords try to raise rents, people can just move someplace cheaper, especially since they are no longer dependent on a job to support themselves.

Yes, exactly. The body language is often more telling than the words :)

Read the post. Jeremy was never a part of YC, and did not make any meaningful contributions to the company.

If this action scares other people like Jeremy away from YC companies, that would be wonderful :)

The good news is that by the time they are finished, the whole thing will be obsolete. Self-driving technology is going to completely change urban transportation.

Yeah, I was super impressed as well. Obama understands AirBnb better than many people in tech do.

Yes. I was one of the first Justin.tv investors. I think my final return was about 97x, so that's pretty good.

From my perspective at least, Twitch was essentially a re-branding. Basically, they saw that gaming content was popular on Justin.tv, so Emmett decided to move that on to a dedicated site. Ultimately Twitch far eclipsed the justin.tv site, so they shut that down to focus entirely on the Twitch side.

Yes! Fixed.

Justin doesn't just work with the media. Justin IS the media.

I think it's worth pointing out that Justin.tv led to the two largest YC exits to date, Twitch (Justin.tv pivot), and Cruise (founded by Justin.tv cofounder Kyle Vogt and Justin's brother Dan).

In 2008, Justin.tv co-founder Michael Seibel found Brian Chesky crashed on the floor of a hotel in Austin, offered him space in his room, began coaching him on how to build a startup, introduced him to the rest of the Justin.tv team, and ultimately brought them into YC! (and look where he is now: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hP6TH3pBPi8)

I look forward to more of the same :)

Yes

Yes, the SAFE is designed to make seed funding very cheap, easy, and fast (and it has proven very successful at doing so).

Does nuclear fusion count as a "hard problem"?

http://techcrunch.com/2014/08/14/y-combinator-and-mithril-in...

Accelerators are actually a terrible business because you only make money if you get a big hit (which most won't), and even then it can take 10 years or more to realize the gains. I predict most will disappear in the next 5 years.

This is a good example of how bad many accelerators are, but extrapolating based on that experience to thinking that he knows anything about YC is a major error. This is a bit like saying, "I had a bad time drinking bleach, therefore you should avoid all liquids."

Most common is just wasting their time with low-ROI things such as meeting with a large number of low-value mentors. We try to keep startups focused on talking to customers and building product.

A crazy one I remember was telling a pre-product startup that they needed to focus on defining their brand.

There are hundreds of accelerators with more appearing all of the time (plus significant management turnover in many of the programs). Evaluating them all would be a full-time job for several people. I'd rather put that effort into finding more ways to help more startups.

A simple way of thinking about this is that acceleration only helps if you are pointed in the right direction!

One of the common problems with many accelerator programs is that they are run by people who are not themselves experienced founders. Not surprisingly, their advice is often counterproductive.

I agree. This is part of the reason that we are making more of our advice freely available online (e.g. http://startupclass.samaltman.com/ and http://playbook.samaltman.com/).

The problem with a bad accelerator is that they can actually harm your company with bad advice and unnecessary distractions.

If AirBnb was such an obvious win, why didn't anyone want to invest? https://medium.com/@bchesky/7-rejections-7d894cbaa084

One of the challenges with this business is that our decisions look foolish at the time, and then obvious and easy with hindsight :)

It's all easy with hindsight. It was much less obvious at the time: https://medium.com/@bchesky/7-rejections-7d894cbaa084

AirBnb was almost dead when they got into YC. Nobody would fund them, and Nate had moved to Boston to get a real job.

YC funds approximately 0% of the new companies started every year, so it's not like there's a shortage of other options :)

As for returns, the average value of YC companies that are more than two years old is over $100M. I'm not aware of any other model that even comes close to that.

If anything, I'd like to find more ways to fund even more extreme moonshots (e.g. http://techcrunch.com/2014/08/14/y-combinator-and-mithril-in...). Funding an actual, literal moonshot would be wonderful.

Actually, I did fund it. I personally invested shortly after the ZP pivot :) (and it still wasn't clear they would be successful)

Nevertheless, the fact that yc invested pre-pivot only reinforces my point, as ZP wouldn't even exist had YC not taken a chance on the team and then helped them find a more promising idea.

ZenPayroll was far from an obvious winner when we funded it. This job is so much easier with hindsight. If you can actually pick the winners better than we can, there's a giant fortune awaiting you :)

Taking fewer risks and only investing in "sure things" is in neither our interests nor the founders. The "safe" option is to not fund them at all, like a bank or other conservative organization would.

They are exceptionally good at getting things done. A regular person could spend hours or days researching the best way to get something done, Magic already knows. There are real scale effects here.

I actually have a personal assistant, but for many tasks, Magic+ is simply better (and completely responsive 24/7, which I would never demand of an employee).

A lot of skepticism here, which is understandable given the somewhat unbelievable scope of what they are promising.

I'm a very active user of Magic+, so I'll give my perspective. (and of course I've been working with them from the beginning at YC, so you're also free to discard my opinion as biased)

For me, Magic+ is basically the impossibly good personal assistant, kind of like Jarvis in Iron Man, or Emily in The Devil Wears Prada. Unlike a conventional assistant, it's available 24/7, always happy to take on more work, and capable of accomplishing just about anything.

Obviously the $100/hr price point puts it out of reach for most people, but my expectation (as an investor) is that as the tech improves, they will be able to bring down the price while maintaining or even improving the quality of the service (I call this the Tesla strategy).

For me however, $100/hr is totally worth it since it effectively increases my leverage and enables me to get more done in less time. I've used it to plan events for YC founders, answer questions that are hard to Google (they will find the right experts and ask them), and provide unique and memorable gifts to friends, family, and business partners. I'm used to paying a high price for quality professional services such as accountants or lawyers, so $100/hr for the best possible assistant feels completely reasonable and rational.

This is really great! The 90 day window is bad for employees. I'd like to see this become the new standard. (and I hope the IRS doesn't give any trouble!)