<story><title>I Am Sam Altman, President of Y Combinator.  AMA</title><text>Applications for YC for Summer 2016 are due next Thursday 3&amp;#x2F;24.&lt;p&gt;People often have questions about YC, and I&amp;#x27;m happy to answer those (or questions about anything else).&lt;p&gt;EDIT: Ok, I have to run.  Thanks for the questions!</text></story><parent_chain><item><author>newjersey</author><text>Oh wow. I wish they said that the bar was so low. I would like to apply as well if that&amp;#x27;s the case.&lt;p&gt;Edit: I still think the idea of Dropbox is pretty stupid and I wouldn&amp;#x27;t have given Drew Houston a penny if I was an investor. But I never thought the average application would be so far worse if Dropbox got funded and succeeded.</text></item><item><author>beachstartup</author><text>EDIT: i should emphasize this is only my experience as a startup hiring manager.  maybe YC attracts nothing but geniuses, i dunno.   i&amp;#x27;m just a guy on the internet.&lt;p&gt;since yc is obviously not going to talk shit on their own applicants, i&amp;#x27;m going to go out on a limb here and guess that it&amp;#x27;s just like every other job application process when six figures (or more) of money is on the line.   big paychecks attract plenty of, shall we say, &amp;#x27;aspirational&amp;#x27; applicants.&lt;p&gt;1. apps where spelling and grammar is clearly not a priority (sure, i&amp;#x27;ll give you 5 figures a month to spell shit wrong)
2. the wrong kind of company will apply, i.e. a restaurant
3. bullshit artists gonna bullshit, even when they stink
4. people simply not smart enough to do the job.  just plain dumb is a real thing, folks.
5. people with too little real world experience
6. really stupid ideas (who&amp;#x27;s to judge?  well, the people with the money get to judge, that&amp;#x27;s sort of how applications work)&lt;p&gt;the fact that you can use the term &amp;#x27;anonymized data&amp;#x27; in a sentence that actually makes sense is going to put you in the top 10% automatically - yes, the bar is &lt;i&gt;that low&lt;/i&gt; when you&amp;#x27;re dealing with the general public.  the trick is getting into the top 1% though.  it&amp;#x27;s a power law distribution of difficulty.&lt;p&gt;every job advertisement attracts applications like these, and yc is basically just a really, really fancy and structured super-duper college&amp;#x2F;job application process combined, but for crazed entrepreneurs (like me).  you are going to get a lot, maybe even mostly people on the left hand side of the normal distribution of iq, talent, and work ethic&amp;#x2F;experience.  the easy thing is the dipshits and fakers are easy to spot-and-drop almost immediately.  i can basically glance at a resume and disqualify it in 10-15 seconds if it&amp;#x27;s not good enough.  you just can&amp;#x27;t bullshit someone far smarter, more experienced, and better at bullshitting than you.  CAVEAT: there are extremely smart and experienced bullshitters out there though -- that&amp;#x27;s the real danger area.  that&amp;#x27;s what you&amp;#x27;re really worried about.&lt;p&gt;basically the only thing you can count on is that they want your money!!</text></item><item><author>gogopuppygogo</author><text>Can you elaborate on what makes a company &amp;quot;not very good&amp;quot;?&lt;p&gt;Would you ever consider releasing anonymized data on companies that apply and are accepted along with those who apply but aren&amp;#x27;t accepted into a batch?  That&amp;#x27;d give future applicants much more insight into the process.</text></item><item><author>sama</author><text>We do talk about that every once in awhile, but the average company that applies to YC is not very good and thus the experiment would hurt the network (and be painful for us to work with).&lt;p&gt;What we&amp;#x27;ve more seriously considered is randomly funding some companies just below the threshold.&lt;p&gt;Also, we do look at our ranking to see how companies at the top vs companies near the cutoff do.  It&amp;#x27;s rare (but not unheard of) for a company very near the cutoff to be one of our most successful companies.</text></item><item><author>krstck</author><text>Has YC ever considered having a control group by randomly pre-accepting certain applicants into the program automatically? I&amp;#x27;d be curious to see the stats on how successful that group would be versus the group that&amp;#x27;s actually picked by the committee.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>dang</author><text>It&amp;#x27;s been a few years since I&amp;#x27;ve reviewed applications, but yes, you should apply. Put it this way: if you simply (a) answer all the questions (b) coherently, you&amp;#x27;re well ahead.</text></comment>
<story><title>I Am Sam Altman, President of Y Combinator.  AMA</title><text>Applications for YC for Summer 2016 are due next Thursday 3&amp;#x2F;24.&lt;p&gt;People often have questions about YC, and I&amp;#x27;m happy to answer those (or questions about anything else).&lt;p&gt;EDIT: Ok, I have to run.  Thanks for the questions!</text></story><parent_chain><item><author>newjersey</author><text>Oh wow. I wish they said that the bar was so low. I would like to apply as well if that&amp;#x27;s the case.&lt;p&gt;Edit: I still think the idea of Dropbox is pretty stupid and I wouldn&amp;#x27;t have given Drew Houston a penny if I was an investor. But I never thought the average application would be so far worse if Dropbox got funded and succeeded.</text></item><item><author>beachstartup</author><text>EDIT: i should emphasize this is only my experience as a startup hiring manager.  maybe YC attracts nothing but geniuses, i dunno.   i&amp;#x27;m just a guy on the internet.&lt;p&gt;since yc is obviously not going to talk shit on their own applicants, i&amp;#x27;m going to go out on a limb here and guess that it&amp;#x27;s just like every other job application process when six figures (or more) of money is on the line.   big paychecks attract plenty of, shall we say, &amp;#x27;aspirational&amp;#x27; applicants.&lt;p&gt;1. apps where spelling and grammar is clearly not a priority (sure, i&amp;#x27;ll give you 5 figures a month to spell shit wrong)
2. the wrong kind of company will apply, i.e. a restaurant
3. bullshit artists gonna bullshit, even when they stink
4. people simply not smart enough to do the job.  just plain dumb is a real thing, folks.
5. people with too little real world experience
6. really stupid ideas (who&amp;#x27;s to judge?  well, the people with the money get to judge, that&amp;#x27;s sort of how applications work)&lt;p&gt;the fact that you can use the term &amp;#x27;anonymized data&amp;#x27; in a sentence that actually makes sense is going to put you in the top 10% automatically - yes, the bar is &lt;i&gt;that low&lt;/i&gt; when you&amp;#x27;re dealing with the general public.  the trick is getting into the top 1% though.  it&amp;#x27;s a power law distribution of difficulty.&lt;p&gt;every job advertisement attracts applications like these, and yc is basically just a really, really fancy and structured super-duper college&amp;#x2F;job application process combined, but for crazed entrepreneurs (like me).  you are going to get a lot, maybe even mostly people on the left hand side of the normal distribution of iq, talent, and work ethic&amp;#x2F;experience.  the easy thing is the dipshits and fakers are easy to spot-and-drop almost immediately.  i can basically glance at a resume and disqualify it in 10-15 seconds if it&amp;#x27;s not good enough.  you just can&amp;#x27;t bullshit someone far smarter, more experienced, and better at bullshitting than you.  CAVEAT: there are extremely smart and experienced bullshitters out there though -- that&amp;#x27;s the real danger area.  that&amp;#x27;s what you&amp;#x27;re really worried about.&lt;p&gt;basically the only thing you can count on is that they want your money!!</text></item><item><author>gogopuppygogo</author><text>Can you elaborate on what makes a company &amp;quot;not very good&amp;quot;?&lt;p&gt;Would you ever consider releasing anonymized data on companies that apply and are accepted along with those who apply but aren&amp;#x27;t accepted into a batch?  That&amp;#x27;d give future applicants much more insight into the process.</text></item><item><author>sama</author><text>We do talk about that every once in awhile, but the average company that applies to YC is not very good and thus the experiment would hurt the network (and be painful for us to work with).&lt;p&gt;What we&amp;#x27;ve more seriously considered is randomly funding some companies just below the threshold.&lt;p&gt;Also, we do look at our ranking to see how companies at the top vs companies near the cutoff do.  It&amp;#x27;s rare (but not unheard of) for a company very near the cutoff to be one of our most successful companies.</text></item><item><author>krstck</author><text>Has YC ever considered having a control group by randomly pre-accepting certain applicants into the program automatically? I&amp;#x27;d be curious to see the stats on how successful that group would be versus the group that&amp;#x27;s actually picked by the committee.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>argonaut</author><text>You&amp;#x27;re making the mistake of judging the idea too much and forgetting that Drew Houston went to MIT, and had worked as a tech lead at a company. That already puts him in the top 10% of applicants, regardless of his idea.</text></comment>