{"url": "https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fAm2TR1GNFE", "page_url": "https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fAm2TR1GNFE", "title": "STATION Featuring: Sam Altman, President of Y Combinator", "show_or_channel": "STATION F", "date": "2017-11-24", "duration_s": 961, "type": "interview", "speakers": ["Sam Altman"], "confidence": "medium", "notes": "STATION F, YC era", "people": ["sam-altman"], "id": "2017-11-24_station-f-station-featuring-sam-altman-president", "audio_duration_s": 961.1668125, "worker": "jc-w21", "transcribe_s": 44.9, "model": "large-v3", "segments": [{"start": 10.29, "end": 37.6, "text": "Hi everyone, welcome to Station F. We're the biggest startup campus in the world and today we're having Sam Atsman, president at Y Combinator. Welcome Sam. Thank you for having me. I'm kind of seeing your video format here, what you do with Welcome to the Future. You do mine, right? It's great. So yeah, I really want to talk to you about what you do at Y Combinator. Maybe can you tell us what is it, how does it work, how do startups get in, what do they get out of Y Combinator?"}, {"start": 37.6, "end": 67.18, "text": "Sure. So we have a program in Mountain View that we run twice a year. Startups from all over the world apply. We try to pick the best ones. We invest in them. We give them $120,000. We take 7% ownership in their company. And then we work with them very intensively to figure out what they're going to do and how to make it better. Work with them to build a product, hopefully, that users love and that starts to grow very quickly. At the end of our program, they then present to a bunch of investors, hopefully raise more money. And we funded more than 1,500 companies."}, {"start": 67.18, "end": 95.54, "text": "Wow. Many different domains, software, hardware, supersonic airplanes, nuclear fusion, people working on treatments for cancer. Among which, Dropbox, Airbnb. Dropbox, Airbnb, Stripe, many companies from Paris as well. And that's really it. We try to keep it pretty simple. Okay. When did you start and why did you start Y Combinator? Y Combinator is 12 years old and it started because..."}, {"start": 95.73, "end": 126.48, "text": "People forget how different the world was 12 years ago, but investors had most of the leverage and technical founders were sort of told they need business people to run the company. And kind of the founding thesis of Y Combinator was that actually engineers can start and run companies and have great success. And we wanted to push the ecosystem in that direction. Interesting. Is it still the same? How has it changed over the past 12 years?"}, {"start": 126.67, "end": 155.3, "text": "Weird is that it was not cool to start a startup. It was certainly not mainstream to start a startup 12 years ago, and now it really is. You think so? So now it's something that people think about as a resume item on their career. Y Combinator is like a thing they want to get into. So that is different, and we have to watch out for that. Okay. Do you see more and more applications, for instance? We do. Every year, more and more. Wow. From everywhere in the world, I guess? That's one of the fun things, is that we get to go around the world and do things like this and meet great entrepreneurs everywhere."}, {"start": 155.3, "end": 184.77, "text": "And many of them want to come work with us, so that's great. That's nice. And so how does it work throughout the year? Is there a selection period followed by the program? Yeah. And then once again? So we run the program from January to March and then again from June to August. And in between we're off doing things like this, meeting people and selecting the companies. Nice. And how is the team structure? Is it only investors in the team managing, selecting startups? So we have about 17 or 18 partners."}, {"start": 184.77, "end": 212.85, "text": "And we're all equal. We all share same economics across all companies, same voting power. And we're the ones that advise the startups. We don't have sort of too many external mentors or things like that. And then there's a large team that does incredible work to just support everything we do. We run Hacker News. We teach classes. We coordinate programs like this. And even just operating the batch takes a lot of people. Yeah. So how big is the team now?"}, {"start": 213.26, "end": 242.05, "text": "Maybe 50 or so, something like that. And who are the partners? Former entrepreneurs, professional investors? Mostly former entrepreneurs. There may be a few exceptions to that, but we have a bias towards hiring former entrepreneurs as our partners. And what is it like to be a part of WhatCombinator? What do you do during three months? What do you learn at WhatCombinator? There's basically three things that partners do."}, {"start": 242.05, "end": 271.76, "text": "Find people and convince them to apply. They select the best companies and they advise them. 80% of the time is probably advising them. So mostly what we do is meet with companies, try to figure out what their biggest problem is, what they should work on, and help them do that. Okay. I've heard that you advise founders who come to do Y Combinator to live together, in a house together, work together, make the most out of the three months that they're going to spend in San Francisco or around San Francisco. Yeah."}, {"start": 271.76, "end": 300.35, "text": "Is this something that you theorized? Well, it started off as a way for founders to save money. When Y Combinator started, we used to not give $120,000, but like $12,000 to a startup. And it started as a way to just be more economical. It turns out, though, that at least especially in the beginning phase of a startup, it really is, it consumes your entire life. And so living together is often helpful. And most startups still do that."}, {"start": 300.35, "end": 327.79, "text": "Interesting. And during their three months, how often do they meet your partners? Do they attend events or do they stay focused on their product? We really try to make it so that people are just staying focused on their product. We host a weekly dinner and companies will come meet us whenever they need advice. And we do have occasional events, but we try not to do too many."}, {"start": 328.18, "end": 356.94, "text": "I think one thing that many startup programs do wrong is it's just non-stop events and you never get to actually work. And startups take a huge amount of work. So, in fact, twice a year we talk through our schedule and we say what events have crept in that we can delete to give our founders more time. And of course there's the big events at the end, the demo day. How does that work? Do all the startups raise funds? Not all of them, but certainly a lot do."}, {"start": 357.52, "end": 378.86, "text": "In fact, probably too many. I think there's sort of this halo on being a Y Combinator company where companies raise money that perhaps shouldn't. Okay, maybe they should show a bit of figures of mid-faceted performance. I think it's a real commitment to raise money, and you want to have some evidence that what you're doing is going to work before you lock yourself into that path."}, {"start": 378.93, "end": 408.53, "text": "You've published a blog post or maybe told something on social media recently about diversity and inclusion. It's something that we take really at heart at Station F. We really want to have as many women, people from different social backgrounds, people from different countries attending the founders program and other programs. Why first did you want to express this need for diversity and what works and what doesn't work when it comes to diversity in startups?"}, {"start": 408.53, "end": 438.22, "text": "A broader pool of startup founders, a more diverse pool of startup founders. That's just more people, and that will lead to more exceptional entrepreneurs. So great entrepreneurs are rare, and the largest possible pool of people from which they can arise is better. So selfishly, financially, that's better for us. And then, of course, I think it's the right thing to do. I think that the world will never be perfectly equal, unfortunately, but we've got a very long way to go and some easy wins in front of us."}, {"start": 438.22, "end": 468.05, "text": "We should push towards as much of an equal world as we possibly can, where everyone has the same chance for success. And have you implemented something in particular to increase diversity in your applicants or during the program? One thing that works really well is just going to visit diverse groups of people. So when we go travel, we try to go to the non-traditional places and meet people from very diverse backgrounds. Another thing that's worked well is having a very diverse set of partners."}, {"start": 468.05, "end": 497.98, "text": "So our partnership is, we have many women, we have people of different races, people of different religions, socioeconomic backgrounds, people born in different countries. And I think organizations are often a reflection of their leadership and having diverse leadership has been something that has attracted diverse employees and diverse founders and that's worked very well for us. And is there something that doesn't work at all when it comes to inclusion? I mean, I think"}, {"start": 497.98, "end": 528.08, "text": "Most things don't have that much of an effect. So I think there's a lot of things that people try and they haven't worked that well. But this is the one that has worked really well for us. Or the two. And do you think there's some kind of cultural difference between the U.S. and Europe? Where, for instance, we would never say that we want different races. That's not something we say in France. Have you noticed some kind of a difference? Well, I think race is somehow much more of an issue in the U.S. than it seems like it is in much of Europe."}, {"start": 528.08, "end": 555.52, "text": "But I think all societies are unjust in their own ways. And although it's different in France and the US, the fundamental principle, which is all people deserve equal opportunity, is still true. And so it may be that the particular issues and the biases in a society are different. The fact that they exist and need to be dealt with is always the same."}, {"start": 555.52, "end": 585.25, "text": "Do you think it's worse in tech than in other areas? No, I mean, I think there's many areas worse than tech. That's just the one that I can feel like I can do something about. Good. So you've selected tons of startups and invested in tons of startups. How to pick a good startup? How can you spot a good entrepreneur? Yeah, I think that the things to look at when selecting a startup are the quality of the founders, the market, and the product or the idea."}, {"start": 585.25, "end": 614.02, "text": "That, unfortunately, there is no way I can give a good answer to those in a short period of time. That has taken me 10 years to learn how to do. You don't want to reveal your secret sauce? I would be happy to reveal it. It's just so complicated. When we hire new partners, I really try to train them myself. And it takes so long to explain how we do this. If there were a shortcut, we'd have a lot of competitors. It's difficult. It is. Maybe a little bit about the founders. What does it take to be a good entrepreneur?"}, {"start": 614.02, "end": 643.97, "text": "How do you build a billion dollar company? Well, I think one big thing that we talk about a lot is that you need a lot of determination. So we look for founders that have shown some evidence for whatever station in life they were born into, that they've been incredibly determined and done very difficult things and not gotten knocked down by the first few failures. So we look for evidence of that for sure. Interesting. Maybe how they interact between co-founders? We look at that too."}, {"start": 643.97, "end": 664.14, "text": "You know, occasionally you see co-founders fight with each other during the interview and that's a very bad sign. Yeah, I bet it is. Maybe I'd like to ask you a bit about your experience as an entrepreneur. Of course, we know you as president of Wacom Internet, but you founded a company called Looped before? Yes. That got acquired? Yeah. When was it?"}, {"start": 664.14, "end": 684.91, "text": "What happened and how did it go? Well, we started in 2005. We were the first company that Y Combinator ever funded. And then we got acquired in 2012. So I ran it for seven years. And then we got acquired. And it was an incredible experience. Learned a ton, worked with great people. And I think it really has helped me be a good investor. And I've been an investor ever since."}, {"start": 684.91, "end": 714.18, "text": "And so what did the product do and how did you come up with the idea? Oh, sure. We made location-based services for cell phones. So I had been, I was really interested in mobile devices since I was a kid. I thought phones were going to be this cool thing. And I had learned about GPS in my studies. And so it was sort of a... What did you study? Computer science. Okay. So it seemed like a great thing to do. So GPS plus mobile phones. Yeah, that was us. That was Loops. Yeah. Did you build it with co-founders? We did. There were three of us."}, {"start": 714.18, "end": 743.98, "text": "And what happened during those seven years? Well, I mean, you know, it's the same thing as any software startup. You continually build product and things go wrong. You get users and then they get mad at you and then they like you. And at some point you just wanted to be acquired? Yeah, at some point a good opportunity came along and we sort of thought it was a good time to get acquired. And how did you know you wanted to become an investor? I liked helping other people. And being a YC partner is sort of like,"}, {"start": 743.98, "end": 777.01, "text": "Being a teacher. I kind of had always wanted to be a teacher. So you've seen startups from everywhere in the world. You're doing this European tour right now. Can you spot some strengths that European startups have in particular? I never like answering that question because I think it's the wrong frame of the question. And the answer is not like, what are these people better in Warsaw than these people? And we sort of have this desire to chunk people up into these different categories. And one of the things that I've learned that's been most surprising is that"}, {"start": 777.01, "end": 804.1, "text": "The most successful entrepreneurs all around the world are very similar. And it sort of makes me happy because we're all pretty similar. And there aren't sort of these regional differences about what makes a good entrepreneur in France or England or the United States. Good entrepreneurs are determined. They are smart. They are aggressive. They have a vision for the future that they're very motivated by. And they think a startup is the way to do that. And that's true no matter where you go in the world. That's good."}, {"start": 804.1, "end": 833.17, "text": "I guess my question is a little more about the context. If you launch a startup in Paris, it's pretty different than in the Silicon Valley. People often ask us, hey, do you compare yourself to the new Silicon Valley, gathering a whole ecosystem at the same place? And we often answer, well, you know, it's just different. We do our own thing and we think this is good for startups. So I guess, yeah, what do you think of the context? Have you seen other very strong startup scenes popping up all over the world? And is it a good thing? Do you think..."}, {"start": 833.17, "end": 860.22, "text": "Silicon Valley is still the place to be for startups? The thing that is magic about Silicon Valley is that it is a place where people believe in the future, they have very ambitious ideas, and no one tells you they're dumb. You know, in most places in the world, if you say, I'm going to start an electric car company, but I don't know anything about cars or batteries, people will kind of make fun of you to your face or behind your back, something like that. And in Silicon Valley, people say, okay, can I invest?"}, {"start": 860.22, "end": 888.4, "text": "So I think that's the one thing that's different about Silicon Valley than other places I've visited. It's just how pervasive that mindset is. Interesting. What are your next goals? Helping more entrepreneurs. I mean, I sort of have one goal. Cool. Growing Y Combinator. Growing Y Combinator. I've become much more politically motivated as of late, so I'd like to try to have influence there. Artificial intelligence is really important to me. Clean energy is really important to me."}, {"start": 888.4, "end": 917.07, "text": "Continued diversity and social equality is really important to me. But the same things. Now a little bit of a Station F. So you just visited Station F, biggest startup campus in the world. There will be a thousand startups here on site. What are your initial thoughts? It's a stunning space. I can't wait to come back when everyone's here. It's really beautiful. Have you ever seen a startup campus like that before? I think this has got to be the nicest one I've seen. Nice. That's very nice of you. Very true."}, {"start": 917.3, "end": 945.38, "text": "What do you think about the concept that we implemented here to gather VCs, prototyping labs, startup programs, experts, and obviously startups under the same roof in the same space? Do you think that's something that's useful for startups? You know, it's very different from how we work, so I will be very interested to see how it works out. I'm sure we'll be able to learn a lot. Would you come here if you started a new startup? I don't know. I like my own space, but this is beautiful, so it would be very tempting. Okay."}, {"start": 945.38, "end": 951.25, "text": "Well, thank you very much for coming. Thank you for having me. And see you back once we open. Look forward to it. Thank you. Thank you."}]}