I Am Sam Altman, President of YC Group. AMA
Two related questions.<p>It&#x27;s known YC prefers teams. Do you have a preferred shape or size for the team (2 tech, 1 marketing, or 1 tech, 1 web, 1 marketing and business etc); is any combination shown to be more likely to succeed within YC?<p>How do you view teams too heavy on tech? It&#x27;s common for a group of tech people to have the idea, but as a team have some gaps on say the marketing side, and probably other areas.<p>A startup I was involved in, years ago, lacked much depth in sales and marketing. Filling that gap was a <i>nightmare.</i> Candidates would happily talk out of their hat, claim allsorts they didn&#x27;t have, and those we trialled failed hard then invent no end of &quot;reasons&quot; why it&#x27;s working perfectly. Suddenly recruiting programmers was easy!<p>Even people we&#x27;ve known in this area suffered from at least some of these habits, sometimes meaning it&#x27;s a case of &quot;nice guy, don&#x27;t trust him as co founder&quot;. Made it hard to resolve, so the least worst techie got stuck with site copy etc.<p>No surprise, I&#x27;ve learnt much more about online marketing since those days. :)