sama

That's ok--at least you're taking action. We'll probably have some questions about how you'll develop the in-house technical talent you'll eventually need.

Top 3.

Wait to apply until you have launch data if you think it will be significant (but still apply before the deadline, the bar for late apps is definitely higher).

Yes.

1) This is where effectively all of our returns come from.

2) These companies are the most fun to work with.

3) It turns out that it's harder than it sounds to capture the full value of a smaller market for a bunch of reasons, and so the failure rate is much higher than expected.

I think the payoff, at least in our case, is well worth it.

The same way every other item on the RFS got there--a partner was passionate about it and chose to add it.

You can come to Demo Day and invest in YC startups there! Or did you mean invest in YC itself?

Yes I expect we will, but haven't figured out details yet.

It depends on the particular situation for each founder--people we fund apply for lots of different visas.

We try to help as much as we can.

It's usually a good idea to leverage other platforms, at least as the start, as long as you're not entirely dependent on one.

Thanks!

I'd guess less than 10% are pre-accelerated.

A much larger percentage have raised some (usually a small amount, but not always) capital.

Predicting the future is hard. I don't have a great general answer for this, other than to look for highly engaged users. IE, when the iPhone came out, users loved it and used it all the time. Even though the market was small in absolute size, you could be confident it was going to grow quickly.

It could be good or bad depending on details, but it's certainly not always bad.

Slightly against--we're not sure why it is, but 5 or 6 founder companies have (with some notable exceptions) significantly underperformed our average.

No preference here.

by something...

QQ1: It does not matter.

RQ: In general I think waiting is a mistake, except that you should wait long enough to have a good idea about what you're going to do.

If you want to be a farmer, why do you want to be in YC?

We are the best in the world at helping people be some things, but probably not that :(

The "we have a plan to be a multi-billion dollar company if this works" stage.

Yes, mostly via referrals, but some internally.

For non-profits, we're looking for large impacts on the world. A lot of the evaluation criteria--how good the founders are, how good the idea is--are the same.

It would be surprising if they don't change, but I haven't thought enough about it to have any strong belief about where they're going.

What matters here is what _you_ deem most important--don't live someone else's life.

But for fun, here is my list:

•AI

•Biotechnology, especially anti-ID and anti-aging.

•Energy

•Better governance

•Education

I guess I'm not opposed, but I'm not sure we've done it before. Generally we don't like complexity though, so we'd want to be sure you're truly an independent subsidiary.

No, that's fine.

If you haven't spent significant time together in person, that's a red flag for us, as we've found those teams often (usually, even) fall apart.

A recent one that is top of mind because Chad just spoke at Startup School is Rigetti Quantum Computing. He had nothing but an idea when YC funded him in Summer 2014, and now is one of the leading QC companies in the world.

They are read by some alumni and YC staff. We try hard to keep things confidential but the group of readers is large--I wouldn't put nuclear launch codes in them, just because of the risk of accidental breach.

I'm going to work on the course plan next month. It will hopefully be more 'hands-on' and like a YC batch.

At least one founder has to be 18 or older, otherwise no one can sign the legal documents. But we've funded teams with 15, 16, or 17 year olds on them before.

I think in future versions of the MOOC we will explore ways to give some funding.

Though I think the answer to this is just to apply to YC. We fund lots of very, very early companies all the time.

Only if the founders wanted to eventually monetize in the future.

If not, it would be more appropriate for something like YC Research, which is a non-profit.

It happens but big companies are often slow. We can usually but not always help with it.

Great! No, please just do that.