sama

You raise very good points.

The future will either be great or terrible--I think an intermediate outcome is unlikely. I think it's a super exciting time to be alive, but I feel the shared sense of responsibility most others do to do everything I can to get safely through the other side.

I understand the desire to save enough for a scary world ahead, and I think it's prudent to do that. Beyond, that, if you're nervous about these things, probably the most satisfying and reassuring thing you could do is figure out how to use your talents to maximize the chance of the a good outcome.

I honestly think it's a valid comment. If I see something from someone I don't think has anything to teach me (though I try to be charitable in that determination), I just don't read it.

Thank you for telling me!

As a very rough guess I'd say around 6000. I expect we will interview around 450 in person and video interviews with more.

That's really a tough one. I've spent a lot of time thinking about this without a good answer.

Sorry :(

I think it's good that different people try different approaches, but also good that we do what we're good at what we believe in.

If it turns out it's better to offer part-time startup accelerators, then the market will speak.

We all use different orders.

You should apply if you think the company will be worth ~7% more if you do YC that it would be worth if you do it on your own.

If you could make a $10B company on your own, but doing YC could make it be a $20B company, then it would obviously be well worth it.

We do this in exceptional circumstances, but maybe only once per batch (as far as I know, we didn't do it at all last batch).

I think YC adds far more than 7% of value to companies we fund. And I hate negotiating/conflict.

I think it's a consequence of technology but a real challenge for society. I think the right goal is probably to eliminate poverty--conceptually, I like the idea of a guaranteed floor but no ceiling.

I'm very interested in basic income and we're running a large experiment on it. If that doesn't work we have some other ideas.

I think China is probably the second most interesting startup market to me in the world right now (after Silicon Valley).

I generally have very broad but very shallow knowledge. It's helpful because I can screen a lot of different kinds of companies very quickly. If I feel out of my depth I usually know a smart person I can ask to go deep.

But one of the advantages of our model is mistakes of inclusion are cheap.

We'd be delighted to fund an Indian company trying to build something for the entire world.

My general criticism of non-US startups (this is very general and there are important exceptions) is that too many are building the <<US Company>> for <<home country>>.

I think it's more exciting to build something brand new that someone in the US will copy.

The East Coast is not the first place I'd go to find more people who want to focus on solving larger problems. If anything, I think I'd probably go further west...

The decline has been pretty precipitous.

I'm still fairly bullish myself and hold a lot of bitcoin. I think this is a far, far better time to go long bitcoin or start a bitcoin company than 2014, for many reasons including that the hype is gone.

The first thing I look at for people reapplying is still the video, but the second is what has changed since the last application.

Alumni recommendations are useful if they're strong, but neutral or slightly negative if they're weak. If someone isn't excited enough to give you an independent recommendation with you asking, it's probably not worth requesting.

One of the most important life skills is to get good at taking rejection and failure and then picking yourself back up and continuing.

If you are going to run a big company, far, far worse things will come your way than a YC rejection. Try again. And again. And again.

Giving up too early is one of the biggest causes of failure I know.

In terms of the two models--it really depends on your company and market, and what you want to do.

No particular shape, but in general we'd rather see it be overweight tech.

If no one on the team is good or is willing to get good at sales and 'business', that's a problem.

Pick a different market.

1. No

2. Definitely not!

I'm supportive, obviously.

I think in some ways diversity in tech is very bad (e.g. very many, or perhaps nearly all, of the CEOs of 'unicorns' are white men).

I think YC has made good but not great progress here. I don't pretend to know all the answers. About 11% of the founders that apply to YC are women, and I've heard that's a fair bit higher than what other investors see.

We fund women (and Black and Latino founders) at very nearly the rate they apply. In addition to a pipeline problem, I think there are further problems once women and underrepresented minorities start companies that make it unwelcoming.

I also think the conversation has become so polarized by the extremes on both sides that I feel uneasy participating, and I know other people feel the same way. But I'll certainly keep doing whatever I can do to get YC to help.

We're always open to advice about what to do here.

What's important to us is business defensibility.

Sometimes the way to get that is with a user experience. Sometimes with technology. Often it's something else entirely. It really depends on the company.

We've funded several cannabis companies. Some YC partners are customers.

If there is data, I try to decide with data.

If there is not data, I am very happy (probably too happy) to make the best guess I can.

An incomplete prototype is ok. Obviously more is better, but we've funded companies with no prototype at all. You have little to lose by applying.

Here are 5 out of ~200 that fit this category:

Helion Oklo Rigetti OpenAI Gingko Bioworks

I think that's a great application of AI. It's a very crowded market at this point, so my biggest question would be "why will this one win?"

Many YC companies post job ads for engineers on HN. That's a great way to start. Nearly all are constrained in how quickly they can hire great engineers, so you can also probably just email the CEO directly.

Our advice is: Hire slowly Be very generous with equity *Have a very high bar for early employees

Yes! I love A Pattern Language.

What doesn't work about our process for this?