Dalton Caldwell’s Whale AMA

Dalton answers questions submitted on Whale.

You can download the app here: http://apple.co/2jV1WrB

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0:03 – What product categories are you most interested in right now? Both as an investor and a founder.

0:50 – What’s your advice to entrepreneurs building content businesses on the internet?

1:37 – What’s the admissions process like at Y Combinator?

2:35 – You’ve been outspoken about being wary about starting startups in the music space. When and how will this change? How should startups in this space position themselves to succeed?

3:29 – For an app like Whale – what would you suggest their North Star, that one metric to improve 10% WoW be? Of course revenue is great, but could you optimize for revenue too early? If not revenue, DAUs?

4:34 – What drew you to YC and how has it changed the way you look at startups? What would you do differently as a first time founder now that you have the background of YC?

5:39 – What are your thoughts on spending time cold emailing investors in SF? Assuming you have a good business and team but you’re from a small town with a limited investor network. What else would you do?

6:38 – Kanye for president? What do you think?

7:31 – For founders that move to Mountain View for YC, are you recommending they hire their founding team in the Bay Area or where they are originally from?

8:26 – How does a great YC application look like?

9:13 – We often hear about success stories out of YC, can you rather tell us about a big failure and what did you learn from it as a partner?

10:11 – How should young founders answer the question “why now?” in regards to them starting a startup while still in school? How can a young founder stand out and separate themselves from their age?

11:01 – We create 3D printed sculptures of real people. I got rejected twice by YC. Should I keep applying?

12:03 – I have a social network of food and I would like to know which specific figures in terms of growth, revenue, users & so on we need to have to get into YC – supposing a potential monopoly & big market

12:42 – Do you think new startups which have the same mission as that of Google i.e. of making knowledge more accessible but a different approach be successful? Also ideas?

13:47 – Should founders say “We found this problem really hard to solve, but we dealt with it by..”” or “”Our MVP works like this because the insight…”?