Sam Altman born
0 0 Mark Devlin Mark Devlin2014-10-21 19:54:392014-10-21 19:54:39Sam Altman bornLoopt joins Y Combinator
Loopt joins the inaugural batch and receives a reported $6,000. Altman says the money-saving culture at Y Combinator, which extends to things like readymade meals, helps develop the location-based mobile app company develop:
That culture of frugality and discipline is really important for the Y Combinator mindset. The start-ups that do well are the ones that are working all the time.
$5m Series A funding
0 0 reuben reuben2014-10-16 15:49:282015-03-23 01:35:37$5m Series A fundingAnnounces Boost deal
It will allow users of the Sprint subsidiary to share location, status updates, and other information, and is aimed at young and social subscribers.
Boost’s tagline asks the question ‘Where you at?’ And now Loopt’s social mapping service can answer that question for every Boost Mobile user.
$12m Series B funding
Loopt raises a reported $12 million from its two existing investors, Sequoia Capital and NEA. It is reported to call down $2.25 million from the funding.
Startup School talk
Altman tells the Y Combinator event that technical understanding is key to getting a startup funded:
Technical founders…if you can understand what the product should be and how to build it, you are a force to be reckoned with
$7.1m investment round
The company raises $7.1 million from unnamed investors. (SEC filing here.)
SXSW interview
Altman tells CrunchGear about Loopt’s plans, saying the company is aiming to focus on data over the coming year:
[…] we’ve really been focused more and more on [Facebook] Places, this hyper-specific data layer
He says the deals that work best for the company are things like free stuff being given away on a street corner for a limited time, or 50% off a restaurant for one night only:
The things that work the best are what we call flash deals, these are very, very time-limited, high-value, and they are pushed to the user.
Where 2.0 interview
Altman tells O’Reilly Media online managing editor Mac Slocum that Loopt is shifting from its focus on connecting people socially:
A big change over the last year has been an expansion of that to connect people to the places around them as well
Talks about Loopt acquisition
Altman discusses the $43.4 million cash buyout by Green Dot, which includes $9.8 million set aside in retention payments for key Loopt employees. Loopt’s services will be shut down and its Silicon Valley team will develop mobile services for the payments provider. Altman:
Many of the companies in the mobile location space are trying to figure out different ways to tie what they’re doing to commerce … We’ve all realized the critical piece is how you tie in commerce and payments.
New York Times feature
The newspaper profiles the firm’s Demo Day, speaking with Graham, Altman, and Livingston about the company’s strategy for picking startups to support. Graham:
Imagine an assembly line where Facebooks and Googles come along every few years. You can either pick that cookie off the assembly line or not. If you pick it off, it’s market price, which varies. But if you don’t pick it off, you’re out of the game.
Startup School interviews
Graham and Altman host a chat with three Y Combinator startups: George Saines and Nick Winter of Code Combat, a way to learn code though gaming; Karen Cheng and Finbarr Taylor, of giveit100.com, a site where users share their progress at different skills, and Ryan Petersen of Flexport, a digitized customs brokerage.
Y Combinator leadership change
Graham announces that he is stepping down from his day-to-day role, and Altman will take over.
It has nothing to do with the current startup environment. I started trying to recruit Sam to take over back in 2012…I’m just not much good at running the sort of (comparatively) large organization YC is going to have to become. Sam will be much better at that.
He will stay on as an advisor and will work with startups at Office Hours.
CNN interview
Altman talks about meeting Steve Jobs, working with startups in the risky early stages, and the challenge Y Combinator faces in convincing people to start their own companies instead of joining Facebook and Google:
How do we convince that brilliant engineer that has the idea he’s really passionate about, that can change the world, to start a startup and not go work as an engineer at a big company?
Raises funding terms
Altman announces the company is increasing the amount it provides to approved startups. In return, it will take a slightly larger equity stake of 7%.
$97k was about right at the time, but the cost of living in the Bay Area has gone up substantially. So we’re increasing the total to $120k, which we hope is enough for the founders to run their business and pay their living expenses for at least six months, and sometimes longer.
‘Monopoly’
Altman discusses whether Y Combinator has a monopoly on early-stage startups with former TechCrunch editor Michael Arrington. Arrington:
You consider yourself a monopoly
Altman:
Yeah, sure.
Hacker News may be worth $500 million
Altman says in an interview with Arrington that Hacker News could be worth $500 million if sold, but he says that it is worth more to Y Combinator than to anyone who would potentially want to buy it. He adds:
Intermediate valuations are completely made up and silly.
Quora joins Y Combinator
Altman invites the question-and-answer site to be the first late-stage participant:
I don’t know if [Quora] will develop a new product that they did not already have in the works as a result of being at Y Combinator…But we think we can help them with certain areas like hiring… And we think they can help our community a great deal.
Almost missed Boost deal
Altman talks with CNBC partner site Re/Code about working with Y Combinator, and how he pitched Loopt’s deal to Boost, which had already chosen a different partner:
I had one of the many heart-sinking moments in the history of Loopt. Whoever Boost works with, Sprint will work with. And whoever Sprint works with, Verizon and AT&T will as well. So, they told us on the phone — this one thing they really wanted, the partner they were working with was not going to build. To this day, I don’t know who the partner was. So we stayed up all night, and we built that feature. It was status messages. I think I went to sleep at four, I slept till six, I got on a flight at seven to Orange County where Boost was. And I just got to that office and sat there, and the guy was like, ‘Weird, you’re in my office.’ I said, ‘Just meet me for 10 minutes, and let me know what you think.’
Competition for funding in F&B segment
Altman tips tougher competition for early-stage food-and-beverage startups looking to raise money. Dow Jones data show F&B-related companies attracted $1.1 billion in venture capital worldwide in the first half of 2014, while in 2013 the sector received $1.59 billion, up 39% on year. Altman says that wherever there are three or four F&B ventures, there likely won’t be room for another one that…
…does something similar with a small twist