YC new masters: Silicon Valley entrepreneurship does not have to be tall

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Lead: Interview Sam Altman, he is the Silicon Valley entrepreneurial godfather eyes of the steed.

Where is Sam Altman? He was chosen by the Silicon Valley entrepreneur, Paul Graham, as the new kingpin of Y Combinator, the Silicon Valley's first incubator. He was one of YC's first founders in 05, with YC's roots only one months less than Graham, who was a dropout at the Stanford Computer Department, and the Loopt (location service) he had created was bought by Green Dot for 43 million dollars; he's an angel investor. and a Superman blog writer. Oh, yes, he's going to be over 29 years old.

Note: Left is Paul Graham; right is Sam Altman.

In Paul Graham's eyes, Sam Altman was a "very clever and rare talker", and he was the perfect candidate for YC's new masters. Recently, I was fortunate enough to contact this energetic one at YC's event, asking him to give us a ring of Silicon Valley in the changing world.

Note: Left is Sam Altman.

' Entrepreneurship ' becomes commonplace

Know some cliché, but small series originally or Jiabuzhu want to ask Sam to talk about entrepreneurial trends, the results just ask the exit, directly by the Sam to ber back ...

"The media always like to write about this trend, but really promising startups tend to have nothing to do with all the visible trends," he said. If you want to talk about trends, I'll tell you this: when we sit down with YC partners to discuss which company is expected to enter the 1 billion dollar club, we find that there are more and more companies with this potential, and there are more and more entrepreneurs-this is a trend and the reason for YC's expansion, "Sam told me."

Earlier, Paul Graham had expressed a similar view: "We are at the beginning of a start-up business." Now, anyone with a bit of ambition will at least consider the ' entrepreneurial ' thing, in other words, entrepreneurship is becoming more and more sakong. PG argues that it is not the number of good thought that ultimately limits the number of startups, but the number of outstanding founders. Cattle in the heap of choice to start more and more, accordingly, excellent entrepreneurs more and more. If YC wants to shove money into these hands, we have no choice but to scale it up, "Pg told me."

Writing here, Xiao Bian can not help but quickly recall the past year I have contacted in the Silicon Valley of Chinese entrepreneurs, really all kinds of what kind of. To sum up, the situation is probably the case: today's Silicon Valley, while the school side of the business is not rare, graduated from the industry do not go to entrepreneurship is not rare, when a few years it workers save enough to venture capital and then come out alone people everywhere. Chinese people who are not fluent in English run to Silicon Valley to start a business, but also have ABC (banana people) to run back to China Wade Muddy Water. Google gives engineers that (median) 200,000 dollars in annual pay is being seen by more and more young people as ' Can bear the opportunity cost ', they give up the offer of big company is not because the business is more profitable, just because want to accumulate a little more than the experience of the young, seize the time to do something that they really feel valuable things, failed on the right to pay tuition fees, success on the brewing next venture.

' Entrepreneurship ' is really evolving into a normal career.

Non-tech entrepreneurship = The New Sexy

On Demo Day, a total of 68 startups appeared on the stage, which is the largest number of YC recruits since its inception in 05.

A lot of startups don't sound cool at first, they find some micro-innovation opportunities in a vertical field, such as the aptdeco of second-hand furniture trading, the Sketchdesk of PPT design Services (Counselor level), and the gobble of customized meal delivery services for the extended family. , specifically for children camping equipment, electric platform Camperoo and so on. We're in the middle of a ' web-thinking ' refactoring ' the traditional world '. In Sam's words, "The value of a startup is not whether the idea is cool or whether technology is subversive, but whether it provides a better solution to an existing problem".

It is worth mentioning that this demo day, there are many female founder-led start-up companies are very eye-catching, such as the provision of collective dating service dating ring (can be called the most), to help expectant mothers tracking fetal heartbeat of the small hardware bellabeat, Let the girl realizes the wardrobe to realize the fashionable goods Exchange platform Stylelend, for the nightclub ticket platform Shoobs and so on. On the stage pitch these girls confident full, confidently, their entrepreneurial ideal mostly with sophisticated technology has nothing to do with, but so what? No one said only ' technology entrepreneurship ' is called entrepreneurship is not?!

Of course, there are still many ' technology Daniel ' and ' science fiction ' types in this issue, such as Batteryos, which can increase the life of the battery by 4 times times, fingertips The unstructured web site into the kimono Labs of the API, and synchronize the pushbullet of push notifications on all devices, Provides the algolia of the millisecond real-time database search service and so on.

Sam told me he was particularly keen to increase the ' diversity ' of YC admissions and entrepreneurs ' (diversity). "As far as I know, YC is already the VC company that invests the highest proportion of female founders." You know, the founders we enrolled in this period were from 22 different countries.

Many investors were surprised at the ' diversity ' of YC's investment projects: from the edge of the "cutting-edge" cool technology, to the subdivision of the 2B Services, to non-profit medical rectification projects, to the vertical field of new business models to explore, and then to the simple reality of local services .... Today's YC is more of an entrepreneurial cauldron.

"As YC expands further, we will have some energy to butt in with the ' non-tech stream, '" says Sam. I plan to go to more universities to recruit entrepreneurial talent, not limited to computer majors; I want to talk to students in other fields about entrepreneurship, those who study biotechnology, mechanical engineering, marketing, data analysis, etc.

Does YC consider opening a Chinese class?

By the way, Xiao Bian was surprised by the number of Chinese investors who attended demo day! You know, it's not easy to bump into an Asian face at YC. It seems YC is really going to carry the ' diversity ' (diversity) to the end. I couldn't help asking Sam: "is YC trying to snare VC from China?" he told me categorically: "No effort has been made." Of course, we also want YC to have a higher degree of awareness in China. In addition, we will receive a project application from China in each issue, hoping to see the continuation of this phenomenon.

Activity day, small series see a ticket YC entrepreneurs scrambling to find Chinese investors accosted, a kind of ' cultural datong ' illusion. Sure enough, money is the most common language in Silicon Valley!