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
hard secret success work
Everyone is looking for the hack, the secret to success without hard work.
successful people enthusiasm
Study the unusually successful people you know, and you will find them imbued with enthusiasm for their work which is contagious. Not only are they themselves excited about what they are doing, but they also get you excited
successful ideas looks
If you look at successful pivots, they almost always are a pivot into something that the founder wanted. Not a random made up idea.
successful years data
We've seen a lot of data at YC now, and the most successful companies and the ones where the investors do the best... end up giving a lot of stock out to employees- year after year after year.
successful people focus
It's difficult to get large groups of people, to the extreme levels of focus and productivity that you need, for a startup to be successful.
team successful goes-on
... we talk to a team, they've gotten new things done, that's the best predictor we have that a company will go on to be successful.
successful needs
You need this sort of a tailwind to make a startup successful.
mission
It's so important for startups to get their culture right at the start. They need to feel unique and that they are on their own important mission in the world.
biggest experience
The biggest part of Loopt is about discovering the world around you, never replacing a social experience - only adding to it.
bad compete diagram famous good great ideas lie people secretly thus totally until
There's this famous observation that I totally believe: Great startup ideas are the ones that lie in the intersection of the Venn diagram of 'is a good idea' and 'looks like a bad idea.' So you want most people to think it's a bad idea and thus not compete with you until you get giant. But for it to secretly be good.
cost life
The correlation of quality of life and cost of energy is huge.
lose model money plenty
I have plenty of investments that I wish I'd never made. But the model is to lose money on a lot of investments and then make 1,000X or 10,000X on an investment.
early love maybe outcome runway stage
I love working with really early stage startups where the outcome is still in doubt. Maybe they'll go on to greatness, or maybe they'll never get off the runway at all.
family handful hundred low prefer priority
Never put your family, friends, or significant other low on your priority list. Prefer a handful of truly close friends to a hundred acquaintances.