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Sam Altman: YC Makes Investment Decisions in 10 Minutes. Here's What They Look For.

By Sam Altman · Fundraising · 1 min read

At first glance, you'd say there's no way to make better-than-random decisions in 10 minutes. But if the only question is — does this person have the seed of what it takes to be the next Mark Zuckerberg? — you can answer that in 10 minutes.

Key Points

YC makes investment decisions in 10 minutes — and it works better than random
Intelligence is easy to spot. Determination is where they get it wrong most.
You can train new YC partners to spot these traits in a year or two

Does this person have some seed of what it takes to be the next Mark Zuckerberg? You can answer that in 10 minutes.

10 Minutes

Altman: One of the things about YC that people may not know is we make our decisions in 10 minutes. Because of the scale at which we operate and the number of companies we see every year.

At first glance you'd say there's no way to make better-than-random decisions in 10 minutes. But if the only question is — does this person have the potential to be the next Mark Zuckerberg? Not 'are they definitely going to be.' Not 'should we put millions into this.' Just — does this person have some seed of what it takes? You can answer that in 10 minutes.

Does this person have the seed of the next Zuckerberg? You can answer that in 10 minutes.

Intelligence, Determination, and the Middle

Altman: The obvious thing is intelligence — that's really easy, you can tell really quickly. Much less than 10 minutes. The hardest trait is determination. When we're really wrong on a founder, it's because we were miscalibrated on how determined that founder seemed.

Then there are a few other things in the middle — clarity of vision, communication skills, non-obvious brilliance of the idea. You can't always be right, but you can get quite a lot of data. Unlike determination, they're not as difficult to figure out. But not as easy as intelligence.

Intelligence: easy. Determination: hardest. When we're wrong, it's because we misjudged determination.

You Can Train People to Do This

Altman: One surprising thing — not only is it possible to figure this out in 10 minutes, but you can train new YC partners to do it in a year or two. It's not an incredibly difficult skill. Think how much better the world could get at identifying talent.

You can train new partners to spot these traits in a year or two. It's not impossibly hard.