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- Sam Altman explains how he decides to invest in a startup after 10 minutes
Sam Altman explains how he decides to invest in a startup after 10 minutes
Y Combinator accepts or rejects a company after just a 10 minute interview.
Sam admits he didn’t think you’d be able to do much better than random with only 10 minutes, but he doesn’t think that’s true anymore.
“It turns out that in 10 minutes if the only question you’re trying to answer is: Does this person have the potential to be the next Mark Zuckerberg?… [You don’t get to] 100% accuracy, obviously, but it’s good enough that our business model works.”
Sam continues:
“The obvious thing is intelligence… You can tell that really quickly, much less than 10 minutes… The hardest trait that we’re looking for is determination, and when we’re really wrong one way or the other on a founder, it’s because we were miscalibrated on how determined that founder seemed.”
As Sam explains in the clip, he also looks for clarity of vision, communication skills, and non-obvious brilliance of the idea.