Sam Altman
Sam Altman
Samuel H. "Sam" Altmanis an American entrepreneur, programmer, venture capitalist and blogger. He is the president of Y Combinator and co-chairman of OpenAI...
NationalityAmerican
ProfessionBusinessman
CountryUnited States of America
rewarding
The whole concept of rewarding customers is a big trend.
scale
The way to really scale a venture firm is with software.
billion build companies dollar love people shortcut
The way to build billion dollar companies is to first build something people love. There isn't really a shortcut there.
amount companies generally possible small spending time work worth
Companies generally work better when they are smaller. It's always worth spending time to think about the least amount of projects/work you can feasibly do, and then having as small a team as possible to do it.
business companies point technology
The point of an accelerator is to teach you about companies and business, not about technology.
I think you can say a lot of evil behavior by companies is short-term optimization.
heartache invest kinds people product recipe throw totally
I think the mistake people make most often when they invest in other kinds of startups is they say, 'This is totally different.' And so the things that matter, like making a product that people desperately want, like talking to customers, they throw this out the window. That is a recipe for heartache and tears.
bad exactly extreme far few list secrecy sign technology though
I think extreme secrecy is a bad sign in all startups. Very few startups die because they tell you exactly how their technology works. On the long list of startup killers, that's pretty far down. Though on the list of entrepreneur fears, it's pretty high.
people speak
People appreciate when you make an effort to speak their language.
calling mistake people small stupid understand
People always make the mistake of calling an idea small or stupid because they don't understand how it's going to evolve.
I think that inexpensive sources of planet-friendly energy are one of the most important things for us to pursue.
caught complex email few head leave meetings office review roughly schedule top work
I get up late, have an espresso, and immediately start work. I try to get roughly caught up on email before I leave the house, then if I need to write anything or review a complex deal, I do that, and then I head to the office and work on my top few priorities for the day. I try to schedule my meetings in the afternoon.
billion companies difficult fund job partners worth
I always tell my partners that our job is to fund all the companies we can that can be worth $10 billion or more. That's such a difficult constraint, we can't have any other constraints.
Startups on the inside are always badly broken.