sam altman's blog
http://blog.samaltman.com/
Sam Altman
2022-04-06
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<div><div><p>The most common question prospective startup founders ask is how to get ideas for startups. The second most common question is if you have any ideas for their startup.<br /></p><p>But giving founders an idea almost always doesn’t work. Having ideas is among the most important qualities for a startup founder to have—you will need to generate lots of new ideas in the course of running a startup.</p><p>YC once tried an experiment of funding seemingly good founders with no ideas. I think every company in this no-idea track failed. It turns out that good founders have lots of ideas about everything, so if you want to be a founder and can’t get an idea for a company, you should probably work on getting good at idea generation first.</p><p>How do you do that?</p><p>It’s important to be in the right kind of environment, and around the right kind of people. You want to be around people who have a good feel for the future, will entertain improbable plans, are optimistic, are smart in a creative way, and have a very high idea flux. These sorts of people tend to think without the constraints most people have, not have a lot of filters, and not care too much what other people think. </p><p>The best ideas are fragile; most people don’t even start talking about them at all because they sound silly. Perhaps most of all, you want to be around people who don’t make you feel stupid for mentioning a bad idea, and who certainly never feel stupid for doing so themselves.</p><p>Stay away from people who are world-weary and belittle your ambitions. Unfortunately, this is most of the world. But they hold on to the past, and you want to live in the future.</p><p>You want to be able to project yourself 20 years into the future, and then think backwards from there. Trust yourself—20 years is a long time; it’s ok if your ideas about it seem pretty radical. </p><p>Another way to do this is to think about the most important tectonic shifts happening right now. How is the world changing in fundamental ways? Can you identify a leading edge of change and an opportunity that it unlocks? The mobile phone explosion from 2008-2012 is the most recent significant example of this—we are overdue for another!</p><p>In such a tectonic shift, the world changes so fast that the big incumbents usually get beaten by fast-moving and focused startups. (By the way, it’s useful to get good at differentiating between real trends and fake trends. A key differentiator is if the new platform is used a lot by a small number of people, or used a little by a lot of people.)</p><p>Any time you can think of something that is possible this year and wasn’t possible last year, you should pay attention. You may have the seed of a great startup idea. This is especially true if next year will be too late.</p><p>When you can say “I am sure this is going to happen, I’m just not sure if we’ll be the ones to do it”, that’s a good sign. Uber was like this for me—after the first time I used it, it was clear we weren’t going to be calling cabs for that much longer, but I wasn’t sure that Uber was going to win the space.</p><p>A good question to ask yourself early in the process of thinking about an idea is “could this be huge if it worked?” There are many good ideas in the world, but few of them have the inherent advantages that can make a startup massively successful. Most businesses don’t generate a valuable accumulating advantage as they scale. Think early about why an idea might have that property. It’s obvious for Facebook or Airbnb, but it often exists in more subtle ways.</p><p>It’s also important to think about what you’re well-suited for. This is hard to do with pure introspection; ideally you can ask a mentor or some people you’ve worked with what you’re particularly good at. I’ve come to believe that founder/company fit is as important as product/market fit.</p><p>Finally, a good test for an idea is if you can articulate why most people think it’s a bad idea, but you understand what makes it good.</p><p><i>This is from my notes for a talk I gave at a YC event in China in 2018. Thanks to Eric Migicovsky for encouraging me to post it!</i><br /></p><p><i>I wrote it when I thought mostly about startups; now I think mostly about AI development. I am struck by how much of it applies, particularly paragraphs 5-9.</i></p></div></div>||||I|||| Login

 Sam Altman

 Helion Needs You

 Helion has been progressing even faster than I expected and is on pace in 2024 to 1) demonstrate Q > 1 fusion and 2) resolve all questions needed to design a mass-producible fusion generator.

 The goals of the company are quite ambitious—clean, continuous energy for 1 cent per kilowatt-hour, and the ability to manufacture enough power plants to satisfy the current electrical demand of earth in a ten year period.

 If both things happen, it will transform the world. Abundant, clean, and radically inexpensive energy will elevate the quality of life for all of us—think about how much the cost of energy factors into what we do and use. Also, electricity at this price will allow us to do things like efficiently capture carbon (so although we’ll still rely on gasoline for awhile, it’ll be ok).

 Although Helion’s scientific progress of the past 8 years is phenomenal and necessary, it is not sufficient to rapidly get to this new energy economy. Helion now needs to figure out how to engineer machines that don’t break, how to build a factory and supply chain capable of manufacturing a machine every day, how to work with power grids and governments around the world, and more.

 The biggest input to the degree and speed of success at the company is now the talent of the people who join the team. Here are a few of the most critical jobs, but please don’t let the lack of a perfect fit deter you from applying.

 Electrical Engineer, Low Voltage: https://boards.greenhouse.io/helionenergy/jobs/4044506005
 Electrical Engineer, Pulsed Power: https://boards.greenhouse.io/helionenergy/jobs/4044510005
 Mechanical Engineer, Generator Systems: https://boards.greenhouse.io/helionenergy/jobs/4044522005
 Manager of Mechanical Engineering: https://boards.greenhouse.io/helionenergy/jobs/4044521005

 (All current jobs: https://www.helionenergy.com/careers/)
 Up vote Up voted 218
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 DALL•E 2

 Today we did a research launch of DALL•E 2, a new AI tool that can create and edit images from natural language instructions.

 Most importantly, we hope people love the tool and find it useful. For me, it’s the most delightful thing to play with we’ve created so far. I find it to be creativity-enhancing, helpful for many different situations, and fun in a way I haven’t felt from technology in a while.

 But I also think it’s noteworthy for a few reasons:

 1) This is another example of what I think is going to be a new computer interface trend: you say what you want in natural language or with contextual clues, and the computer does it. We offer this for code and now image generation; both of these will get a lot better. But the same trend will happen in new ways until eventually it works for complex tasks—we can imagine an “AI office worker” that takes requests in natural language like a human does.

 2) It sure does seem to “understand” concepts at many levels and how they relate to each other in sophisticated ways.

 3) Copilot is a tool that helps coders be more productive, but still is very far from being able to create a full program. DALL•E 2 is a tool that will help artists and illustrators be more creative, but it can also create a “complete work”. This may be an early example of the impact AI on labor markets. Although I firmly believe AI will create lots of new jobs, and make many existing jobs much better by doing the boring bits well, I think it’s important to be honest that it’s increasingly going to make some jobs not very relevant (like technology frequently does).

 4) It’s a reminder that predictions about AI are very difficult to make. A decade ago, the conventional wisdom was that AI would first impact physical labor, and then cognitive labor, and then maybe someday it could do creative work. It now looks like it’s going to go in the opposite order.

 5) It’s an example of a world in which good ideas are the limit for what we can do, not specific skills.

 6) Although the upsides are great, the model is powerful enough that it's easy to imagine the downsides.

 Hopefully this summer, we’ll do a product launch and people will be able to use it for all sorts of things. We wanted to start with a research launch to figure out how to minimize the downsides in collaboration with a larger group of researchers and artists, and to give people some time to adapt to the change—in general, we are believers in incremental deployment strategies. (Obviously the world already has Photoshop and we already know that images can be manipulated, for good and bad.)

 (A robot hand drawing, by DALL•E)


 Up vote Up voted 224
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 Helion

 I’m delighted to be investing more in Helion. Helion is by far the most promising approach to fusion I’ve seen.

 David and Chris are two of the most impressive founders and builders (in the sense of building fusion machines, in addition to building companies!) I have ever met, and they have done something remarkable. When I first invested in them back in 2014, I was struck by the thoughtfulness of their plans about the scientific approach, the system design, cost optimizations, and the fuel cycle.

 And now, with a tiny fraction of the money spent on other fusion efforts but the culture of a startup, they and their team have built a generator that produces electricity. Helion has a clear path to net electricity by 2024, and has a long-term goal of delivering electricity for 1 cent per kilowatt-hour. (!)

 If this all works as we hope, we may have a path out of the climate crisis. Even though there are a lot of emissions that don’t come from electrical generation, we’d be able to use abundant energy to capture carbon and other greenhouses gases.

 And if we have much cheaper energy than ever before, we can do things that are difficult to imagine today. The cost of energy is one of the fundamental inputs in the costs of so much else; dramatically cheaper energy will lead to dramatically better quality of life for many people.

 Up vote Up voted 220
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 The Strength of Being Misunderstood

 A founder recently asked me how to stop caring what other people think. I didn’t have an answer, and after reflecting on it more, I think it's the wrong question.

 Almost everyone cares what someone thinks (though caring what everyone thinks is definitely a mistake), and it's probably important. Caring too much makes you a sheep. But you need to be at least a little in tune with others to do something useful for them.

 It seems like there are two degrees of freedom: you can choose the people whose opinions you care about (and on what subjects), and you can choose the timescale you care about them on. Most people figure out the former [1] but the latter doesn’t seem to get much attention.

 The most impressive people I know care a lot about what people think, even people whose opinions they really shouldn’t value (a surprising numbers of them do something like keeping a folder of screenshots of tweets from haters). But what makes them unusual is that they generally care about other people’s opinions on a very long time horizon—as long as the history books get it right, they take some pride in letting the newspapers get it wrong.

 You should trade being short-term low-status for being long-term high-status, which most people seem unwilling to do. A common way this happens is by eventually being right about an important but deeply non-consensus bet. But there are lots of other ways–the key observation is that as long as you are right, being misunderstood by most people is a strength not a weakness. You and a small group of rebels get the space to solve an important problem that might otherwise not get solved.


 [1] In the memorable words of Coco Chanel, “I don’t care what you think about me. I don’t think about you at all.”

 Up vote Up voted 457
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 PG and Jessica

 A lot of people want to replicate YC in some other industry or some other place or with some other strategy. In general, people seem to assume that: 1) although there was some degree of mystery or luck about how YC got going, it can’t be that hard, and 2) if you can get it off the ground, the network effects are self-sustaining.

 More YC-like things are good for the world; I generally try to be helpful. But almost none of them work. People are right about the self-sustaining part, but they can’t figure out how to get something going.

 The entire secret to YC getting going was PG and Jessica—there was no other magic trick. A few times a year, I end up in a conversation at a party where someone tells a story about how much PG changed their life—people speak with more gratitude than they do towards pretty much anyone else. Then everyone else agrees, YC founders and otherwise (non-YC founders might talk about an impactful essay or getting hired at a YC company). Jessica still sadly doesn’t get nearly the same degree of public credit, but the people who were around the early days of YC know the real story.

 What did they do? They took bets on unknown people and believed in them more than anyone had before. They set strong norms and fought back hard against bad behavior towards YC founders. They trusted their own convictions, were willing to do things their way, and were willing to be disliked by the existing power structures. They focused on the most important things, they worked hard, and they spent a huge amount of time 1:1 with people. They understood the value of community and long-term orientation. When YC was very small, it felt like a family.

 Perhaps most importantly, they built an ecosystem (thanks to Joe Gebbia for pointing this out). This is easy to talk about but hard to do, because it requires not being greedy. YC has left a lot of money on the table; other people have made more money from the ecosystem than YC has itself. This has cemented YC’s place—the benefits to the partners, alumni, current batch founders, Hacker News readers, Demo Day investors, and everyone else around YC is a huge part of what makes it work.

 I am not sure if any of this is particularly useful advice—none of it sounds that hard, and yet in the 15 years since, it hasn’t been close to replicated.

 But it seems worth trying. I am pretty sure no one has had a bigger total impact on the careers of people in the startup industry over that time period than the two of them.

 Up vote Up voted 390
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 Researchers and Founders

 I spent many years working with founders and now I work with researchers.

 Although there are always individual exceptions, on average it’s surprising to me how different the best people in these groups are (including in some qualities that I had assumed were present in great people everywhere, like very high levels of self-belief).

 So I’ve been thinking about the ways they’re the same, because maybe there is something to learn about qualities of really effective people in general.

 The best people in both groups spend a lot of time reflecting on some version of the Hamming question—"what are the most important problems in your field, and why aren’t you working on them?” In general, no one reflects on this question enough, but the best people do it the most, and have the best ‘problem taste’, which is some combination of learning to think independently, reason about the future, and identify attack vectors. (This from John Schulman is worth reading: http://joschu.net/blog/opinionated-guide-ml-research.html).

 They have a laser focus on the next step in front of them combined with long-term vision. Most people only have one or the other.

 They are extremely persistent and willing to work hard. As far as I can tell, there is no high-probability way to be very successful without this, and you should be suspicious of people who tell you otherwise unless you’d be happy having their career (and be especially suspicious if they worked hard themselves).

 They have a bias towards action and trying things, and they’re clear-eyed and honest about what is working and what isn’t (importantly, this goes both ways—I’m amazed by how many people will see something working and then not pursue it).

 They are creative idea-generators—a lot of the ideas may be terrible, but there is never a shortage.

 They really value autonomy and have a hard time with rules that they don’t think make sense. They are definitely not lemmings.

 Their motivations are often more complex than they seem—specifically, they are frequently very driven by genuine curiosity.

 Up vote Up voted 469
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 Project Covalence

 Almost every company and non-profit working on COVID-19 that I offered to help asked for support with clinical trials—for companies focusing on developing novel drugs, vaccines, and diagnostics, rapidly spinning up trials is one of their biggest bottlenecks.

 Science remains the only way out of the COVID-19 crisis. Dramatically improving clinical trials, which are usually time-consuming and cost tens to hundreds of millions of dollars, is one of the highest-leverage ways to get out of it faster.

 The goal of this project, in collaboration with TrialSpark and Dr. Mark Fishman, is to offer much better clinical trial support to COVID-19 projects than anything that currently exists.

 Project Covalence’s platform, powered by TrialSpark, is uniquely optimized to support COVID-19 trials, which are ideally run in community settings or at the patient’s home to reduce the burden placed on hospitals and health systems. Project Covalence is well-positioned to tackle the operational and logistical challenges involved in launching such trials, and supports trial execution, 21 CFR Part 11 compliant remote data collection, telemedicine, biostatistics, sample kits for at-home specimen collection, and protocol writing.

 Researchers across academia and industry can leverage this shared infrastructure to rapidly launch their clinical trials. To facilitate coordination between studies, we will also be creating master protocols for platform studies to enable shared control arms and adaptive trial designs.

 If you’re interested in getting involved or have a trial that needs support, please get in touch at ProjectCovalence@trialspark.com or visit www.projectcovalence.com.

 Up vote Up voted 86
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 Idea Generation

 The most common question prospective startup founders ask is how to get ideas for startups. The second most common question is if you have any ideas for their startup.

 But giving founders an idea almost always doesn’t work. Having ideas is among the most important qualities for a startup founder to have—you will need to generate lots of new ideas in the course of running a startup.

 YC once tried an experiment of funding seemingly good founders with no ideas. I think every company in this no-idea track failed. It turns out that good founders have lots of ideas about everything, so if you want to be a founder and can’t get an idea for a company, you should probably work on getting good at idea generation first.

 How do you do that?

 It’s important to be in the right kind of environment, and around the right kind of people. You want to be around people who have a good feel for the future, will entertain improbable plans, are optimistic, are smart in a creative way, and have a very high idea flux. These sorts of people tend to think without the constraints most people have, not have a lot of filters, and not care too much what other people think.

 The best ideas are fragile; most people don’t even start talking about them at all because they sound silly. Perhaps most of all, you want to be around people who don’t make you feel stupid for mentioning a bad idea, and who certainly never feel stupid for doing so themselves.

 Stay away from people who are world-weary and belittle your ambitions. Unfortunately, this is most of the world. But they hold on to the past, and you want to live in the future.

 You want to be able to project yourself 20 years into the future, and then think backwards from there. Trust yourself—20 years is a long time; it’s ok if your ideas about it seem pretty radical.

 Another way to do this is to think about the most important tectonic shifts happening right now. How is the world changing in fundamental ways? Can you identify a leading edge of change and an opportunity that it unlocks? The mobile phone explosion from 2008-2012 is the most recent significant example of this—we are overdue for another!

 In such a tectonic shift, the world changes so fast that the big incumbents usually get beaten by fast-moving and focused startups. (By the way, it’s useful to get good at differentiating between real trends and fake trends. A key differentiator is if the new platform is used a lot by a small number of people, or used a little by a lot of people.)

 Any time you can think of something that is possible this year and wasn’t possible last year, you should pay attention. You may have the seed of a great startup idea. This is especially true if next year will be too late.

 When you can say “I am sure this is going to happen, I’m just not sure if we’ll be the ones to do it”, that’s a good sign. Uber was like this for me—after the first time I used it, it was clear we weren’t going to be calling cabs for that much longer, but I wasn’t sure that Uber was going to win the space.

 A good question to ask yourself early in the process of thinking about an idea is “could this be huge if it worked?” There are many good ideas in the world, but few of them have the inherent advantages that can make a startup massively successful. Most businesses don’t generate a valuable accumulating advantage as they scale. Think early about why an idea might have that property. It’s obvious for Facebook or Airbnb, but it often exists in more subtle ways.

 It’s also important to think about what you’re well-suited for. This is hard to do with pure introspection; ideally you can ask a mentor or some people you’ve worked with what you’re particularly good at. I’ve come to believe that founder/company fit is as important as product/market fit.

 Finally, a good test for an idea is if you can articulate why most people think it’s a bad idea, but you understand what makes it good.


 This is from my notes for a talk I gave at a YC event in China in 2018. Thanks to Eric Migicovsky for encouraging me to post it!

 I wrote it when I thought mostly about startups; now I think mostly about AI development. I am struck by how much of it applies, particularly paragraphs 5-9.

 Up vote Up voted 662
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 Please Fund More Science

 Experts on the COVID-19 pandemic seem to think there are three ways out—that is, for life, health, and the economy to return roughly to normal.

 Either we get a vaccine good enough that R0 for the world goes below 1, a good enough treatment that people no longer need to be afraid, or we develop a great culture of testing, contract tracing, masks, and isolation.

 I wish that the federal government were doing much more—it would be great to see even a few percent of the recent stimulus bill go to funding R+D. But they don’t seem to be funding enough science, and although I think concerns about the private sector and philanthropy doing what the government is supposed to be doing are somewhat valid, there isn’t a great alternative right now.

 On the positive side, I have never seen a field focused on one problem with such ferocity before. The response of biotech companies and research labs is amazing, and the speed they are operating at seems to have increased by more than 10x. It’s the best of the spirit of innovation, and it’s inspiring to see what these companies and research labs are doing.

 Scientists can get us out of this. What they need are money and connections.

 Investors and donors—this is where we can help. Please consider shifting some of your focus and capital to scientific efforts addressing the pandemic. (And future pandemics too—I think this will be a before-and-after moment in the world, and until we can defend against new viruses quickly, things are going to be different.)

 The learning curve is quick, and there are a lot of experts willing to help you with diligence. It feels good to do something that might be useful, it’s interesting to do something totally new, and it will make you more optimistic.

 If you make it known to your network that you want to fund efforts working on COVID-19, you’ll get flooded with opportunities. And it’s always good to invest where the best founders are congregating.

 Up vote Up voted 157
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 Funding for COVID-19 Projects

 I’m trying to fund startups/projects helping with COVID-19, because it’s basically the one thing I know how to do that can help. I think we will soon have enough testing capacity, so now I’d like to start funding more startups working on:

 1. Producing a lot of ventilators or masks/gowns very quickly. This will require a lot of repurposing and creativity but thankfully is an engineering problem not a scientific ones.
 2. Screening existing drugs for effectiveness.
 3. Novel approaches to vaccines (i.e., not doing what the big pharma companies are already doing).
 4. Novel therapeutics that the big pharma companies are unlikely to work on.

 We tried this public spreadsheet but it didn't work that well; please email me instead.

 Also, if anyone knows of a contract research company that can run a viral challenge against SARS-CoV-2 in a humanized ACE2 animal model, that would help a startup I’m working with. Please reach out!

 And of course, I think the best thing to do is still to get people to stay home.
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The most common question prospective startup founders ask is how to get ideas for startups. The second most common question is if you have any ideas for their startup.  But giving founders an idea almost always doesn’t work. Having ideas is among the most important qualities for a startup founder to have—you will need to generate lots of new ideas in the course of running a startup. YC once tried an experiment of funding seemingly good founders with no ideas. I think every company in this no-idea track failed. It turns out that good founders have lots of ideas about everything, so if you want to be a founder and can’t get an idea for a company, you should probably work on getting good at idea generation first. How do you do that? It’s important to be in the right kind of environment, and around the right kind of people. You want to be around people who have a good feel for the future, will entertain improbable plans, are optimistic, are smart in a creative way, and have a very high idea flux. These sorts of people tend to think without the constraints most people have, not have a lot of filters, and not care too much what other people think.  The best ideas are fragile; most people don’t even start talking about them at all because they sound silly. Perhaps most of all, you want to be around people who don’t make you feel stupid for mentioning a bad idea, and who certainly never feel stupid for doing so themselves. Stay away from people who are world-weary and belittle your ambitions. Unfortunately, this is most of the world. But they hold on to the past, and you want to live in the future. You want to be able to project yourself 20 years into the future, and then think backwards from there. Trust yourself—20 years is a long time; it’s ok if your ideas about it seem pretty radical.  Another way to do this is to think about the most important tectonic shifts happening right now. How is the world changing in fundamental ways? Can you identify a leading edge of change and an opportunity that it unlocks? The mobile phone explosion from 2008-2012 is the most recent significant example of this—we are overdue for another! In such a tectonic shift, the world changes so fast that the big incumbents usually get beaten by fast-moving and focused startups. (By the way, it’s useful to get good at differentiating between real trends and fake trends. A key differentiator is if the new platform is used a lot by a small number of people, or used a little by a lot of people.) Any time you can think of something that is possible this year and wasn’t possible last year, you should pay attention. You may have the seed of a great startup idea. This is especially true if next year will be too late. When you can say “I am sure this is going to happen, I’m just not sure if we’ll be the ones to do it”, that’s a good sign. Uber was like this for me—after the first time I used it, it was clear we weren’t going to be calling cabs for that much longer, but I wasn’t sure that Uber was going to win the space. A good question to ask yourself early in the process of thinking about an idea is “could this be huge if it worked?” There are many good ideas in the world, but few of them have the inherent advantages that can make a startup massively successful. Most businesses don’t generate a valuable accumulating advantage as they scale. Think early about why an idea might have that property. It’s obvious for Facebook or Airbnb, but it often exists in more subtle ways. It’s also important to think about what you’re well-suited for. This is hard to do with pure introspection; ideally you can ask a mentor or some people you’ve worked with what you’re particularly good at. I’ve come to believe that founder/company fit is as important as product/market fit. Finally, a good test for an idea is if you can articulate why most people think it’s a bad idea, but you understand what makes it good.  This is from my notes for a talk I gave at a YC event in China in 2018. Thanks to Eric Migicovsky for encouraging me to post it!    I wrote it when I thought mostly about startups; now I think mostly about AI development. I am struck by how much of it applies, particularly paragraphs 5-9.
Sam Altman
https://blog.samaltman.com/
https://twitter.com/sama?ref_src=twsrc%5Egoogle%7Ctwcamp%5Eserp%7Ctwgr%5Eauthor

Sun Jul 16 22:01:55 +0000 2006
sama?ref_src=twsrc%5Egoogle%7Ctwcamp%5Eserp%7Ctwgr%5Eauthor
<div>AI is cool i guess| profile_url: http://blog.samaltman.com | name: Sam Altman | created_at: Sun Jul 16 22:01:55 +0000 2006 | favourites_count: 1005 | followers_count: 2835151 | friends_count: 892 | media_count: 308 | possibly_sensitive: False | verified: False | statuses_count: 6337 | location: SF </div><div>first and last time i ever wear one of these https://t.co/u3iKwyWj0a| created_at: Sun Nov 19 21:03:51 +0000 2023 | favorite_count: 99657 | quote_count: 2661 | reply_count: 3754 | retweet_count: 6254 | is_quote_status: False | retweeted: False | lang: en </div><div>i loved my time at openai. it was transformative for me personally, and hopefully the world a little bit. most of all i loved working with such talented people.
will have more to say about what’s next later. 
🫡| created_at: Fri Nov 17 21:46:53 +0000 2023 | favorite_count: 96466 | quote_count: 4492 | reply_count: 6620 | retweet_count: 9652 | is_quote_status: False | retweeted: False | lang: en </div><div>i love you all. 
today was a weird experience in many ways. but one unexpected one is that it has been sorta like reading your own eulogy while you’re still alive. the outpouring of love is awesome.
one takeaway: go tell your friends how great you think they are.| created_at: Sat Nov 18 05:05:51 +0000 2023 | favorite_count: 91286 | quote_count: 1292 | reply_count: 3761 | retweet_count: 6334 | is_quote_status: False | retweeted: False | lang: en </div><div>i love openai, and everything i’ve done over the past few days has been in service of keeping this team and its mission together. when i decided to join msft on sun evening, it was clear that was the best path for me and the team. with the new board and w satya’s support, i’m…| created_at: Wed Nov 22 06:08:42 +0000 2023 | favorite_count: 75305 | quote_count: 3085 | reply_count: 5080 | retweet_count: 7828 | is_quote_status: False | retweeted: False | lang: en </div><div>i love the openai team so much| created_at: Sun Nov 19 04:47:14 +0000 2023 | favorite_count: 73686 | quote_count: 3686 | reply_count: 4857 | retweet_count: 4420 | is_quote_status: False | retweeted: False | lang: en </div><div>for a long time i said that antisemitism, particularly on the american left, was not as bad as people claimed.
i'd like to just state that i was totally wrong.
i still don't understand it, really. or know what to do about it.
but it is so fucked.| created_at: Fri Dec 08 00:51:37 +0000 2023 | favorite_count: 67453 | quote_count: 1219 | reply_count: 5226 | retweet_count: 8541 | is_quote_status: False | retweeted: False | lang: en </div><div>if i start going off, the openai board should go after me for the full value of my shares| created_at: Sat Nov 18 05:32:19 +0000 2023 | favorite_count: 67622 | quote_count: 2693 | reply_count: 5364 | retweet_count: 5039 | is_quote_status: False | retweeted: False | lang: en </div><div>the mission continues| created_at: Mon Nov 20 07:58:18 +0000 2023 | favorite_count: 63269 | quote_count: 1801 | reply_count: 2112 | retweet_count: 6784 | is_quote_status: True | retweeted: False | lang: en </div><div>https://t.co/nej4TIwgaP| created_at: Thu Feb 15 19:56:47 +0000 2024 | favorite_count: 57777 | quote_count: 1798 | reply_count: 946 | retweet_count: 4937 | is_quote_status: True | retweeted: False | lang: zxx </div><div>ChatGPT launched on wednesday. today it crossed 1 million users!| created_at: Mon Dec 05 07:35:38 +0000 2022 | favorite_count: 50004 | quote_count: 571 | reply_count: 1056 | retweet_count: 3173 | is_quote_status: False | retweeted: False | lang: en </div><div>"Which is more important to you? A low public profile, or getting to enjoy shitposting on Twitter?" https://t.co/MvCkns93pT| created_at: Fri Nov 11 18:26:29 +0000 2022 | favorite_count: 48212 | quote_count: 217 | reply_count: 1170 | retweet_count: 1938 | is_quote_status: False | retweeted: False | lang: en </div><div>❤️🫡❤️| created_at: Wed Nov 22 06:05:39 +0000 2023 | favorite_count: 46195 | quote_count: 899 | reply_count: 1923 | retweet_count: 3773 | is_quote_status: True | retweeted: False | lang: art </div><div>GPTs can save a lot of effort: https://t.co/VFIrGzPuMN| created_at: Fri Nov 10 00:01:25 +0000 2023 | favorite_count: 45372 | quote_count: 2339 | reply_count: 2488 | retweet_count: 3960 | is_quote_status: False | retweeted: False | lang: en </div><div>a year ago tonight we were probably just sitting around the office putting the finishing touches on chatgpt before the next morning’s launch.
what a year it’s been…| created_at: Thu Nov 30 04:09:13 +0000 2023 | favorite_count: 44788 | quote_count: 712 | reply_count: 1666 | retweet_count: 3189 | is_quote_status: False | retweeted: False | lang: en </div><div>https://t.co/EvngqF2ZIX| created_at: Thu Feb 15 20:02:43 +0000 2024 | favorite_count: 44798 | quote_count: 1435 | reply_count: 1134 | retweet_count: 4770 | is_quote_status: True | retweeted: False | lang: zxx </div><div>satya and my top priority remains to ensure openai continues to thrive
we are committed to fully providing continuity of operations to our partners and customers
the openai/microsoft partnership makes this very doable| created_at: Mon Nov 20 19:39:03 +0000 2023 | favorite_count: 43429 | quote_count: 622 | reply_count: 1924 | retweet_count: 2433 | is_quote_status: False | retweeted: False | lang: en </div><div>muslim and arab (especially palestinian) colleagues in the tech community i've spoken with feel uncomfortable speaking about their recent experiences, often out of fear of retaliation and damaged career prospects.
our industry should be united in our support of these colleagues;…| created_at: Fri Jan 05 01:20:50 +0000 2024 | favorite_count: 41342 | quote_count: 672 | reply_count: 1832 | retweet_count: 5193 | is_quote_status: False | retweeted: False | lang: en </div><div>It's gross seeing so many root against Tesla. Be the person on the side of the climate and innovation, not the person hoping to make money on puts.
Also, betting against Elon is historically a mistake...and the best product usually wins.| created_at: Tue May 21 19:11:04 +0000 2019 | favorite_count: 38461 | quote_count: 437 | reply_count: 735 | retweet_count: 2965 | is_quote_status: False | retweeted: False | lang: en </div><div>we have more unity and commitment and focus than ever before. 
we are all going to work together some way or other, and i’m so excited. 
one team, one mission.| created_at: Mon Nov 20 18:27:49 +0000 2023 | favorite_count: 38653 | quote_count: 579 | reply_count: 1758 | retweet_count: 2036 | is_quote_status: False | retweeted: False | lang: en </div><div>the first day of openai, seven years ago today https://t.co/4kQUQtgb6t| created_at: Wed Jan 04 15:56:18 +0000 2023 | favorite_count: 35609 | quote_count: 342 | reply_count: 540 | retweet_count: 2393 | is_quote_status: False | retweeted: False | lang: en </div><div>vision pro is second most impressive tech since the iphone| created_at: Fri Feb 09 21:47:33 +0000 2024 | favorite_count: 35460 | quote_count: 570 | reply_count: 1106 | retweet_count: 2465 | is_quote_status: False | retweeted: False | lang: en </div><div>great conversation with @narendramodi discussing india's incredible tech ecosystem and how the country can benefit from ai.
really enjoyed all my meetings with people in the @PMOIndia. https://t.co/EzxVD0UMDM| created_at: Fri Jun 09 01:29:32 +0000 2023 | favorite_count: 34919 | quote_count: 355 | reply_count: 684 | retweet_count: 2859 | is_quote_status: False | retweeted: False | lang: en </div><div>movies are going to become video games and video games are going to become something unimaginably better| created_at: Fri Apr 05 03:06:27 +0000 2024 | favorite_count: 35367 | quote_count: 1675 | reply_count: 2612 | retweet_count: 3776 | is_quote_status: False | retweeted: False | lang: en </div><div>I think US college education is nearer to collapsing than it appears.| created_at: Sun Mar 20 17:31:26 +0000 2022 | favorite_count: 32759 | quote_count: 898 | reply_count: 1237 | retweet_count: 2753 | is_quote_status: False | retweeted: False | lang: en </div><div>we are so back| created_at: Wed Sep 27 17:35:58 +0000 2023 | favorite_count: 31662 | quote_count: 403 | reply_count: 1223 | retweet_count: 2707 | is_quote_status: True | retweeted: False | lang: en </div><div>we'd like to show you what sora can do, please reply with captions for videos you'd like to see and we'll start making some!| created_at: Thu Feb 15 18:17:20 +0000 2024 | favorite_count: 30656 | quote_count: 1011 | reply_count: 15278 | retweet_count: 2316 | is_quote_status: False | retweeted: False | lang: en </div><div>the openai leadership team, particularly mira brad and jason but really all of them, have been doing an incredible job through this that will be in the history books. 
incredibly proud of them.| created_at: Mon Nov 20 18:19:28 +0000 2023 | favorite_count: 30343 | quote_count: 247 | reply_count: 1027 | retweet_count: 1247 | is_quote_status: False | retweeted: False | lang: en </div><div>today we launched ChatGPT. try talking with it here: 
https://t.co/uWra8LKFMN| created_at: Wed Nov 30 19:38:38 +0000 2022 | favorite_count: 29791 | quote_count: 1565 | reply_count: 1186 | retweet_count: 5556 | is_quote_status: False | retweeted: False | lang: en </div><div>also, the video we made for dalle 3 is SO CUTE: https://t.co/k1FOFTOsU5| created_at: Wed Sep 20 18:22:12 +0000 2023 | favorite_count: 29542 | quote_count: 1309 | reply_count: 976 | retweet_count: 3769 | is_quote_status: False | retweeted: False | lang: en </div><div>❤️❤️❤️| created_at: Mon Nov 20 13:32:37 +0000 2023 | favorite_count: 29527 | quote_count: 1226 | reply_count: 1522 | retweet_count: 2139 | is_quote_status: True | retweeted: False | lang: art </div><div>ChatGPT is incredibly limited, but good enough at some things to create a misleading impression of greatness.
it's a mistake to be relying on it for anything important right now. it’s a preview of progress; we have lots of work to do on robustness and truthfulness.| created_at: Sun Dec 11 00:11:14 +0000 2022 | favorite_count: 27673 | quote_count: 736 | reply_count: 862 | retweet_count: 3363 | is_quote_status: False | retweeted: False | lang: en </div><div>this is the most interesting year in human history, except for all future years| created_at: Sun Mar 17 17:23:59 +0000 2024 | favorite_count: 27654 | quote_count: 710 | reply_count: 1761 | retweet_count: 2790 | is_quote_status: False | retweeted: False | lang: en </div><div>here is sora, our video generation model:
https://t.co/CDr4DdCrh1
today we are starting red-teaming and offering access to a limited number of creators.
@_tim_brooks @billpeeb @model_mechanic are really incredible; amazing work by them and the team.
remarkable moment.| created_at: Thu Feb 15 18:16:36 +0000 2024 | favorite_count: 26318 | quote_count: 2408 | reply_count: 1723 | retweet_count: 4492 | is_quote_status: False | retweeted: False | lang: en </div><div>https://t.co/WanFKOzdIw| created_at: Thu Feb 15 19:59:47 +0000 2024 | favorite_count: 25155 | quote_count: 3264 | reply_count: 1424 | retweet_count: 2564 | is_quote_status: True | retweeted: False | lang: zxx </div><div>openai is the most talented and nicest group of people i have ever seen in one place
working on the hardest, most interesting, and most important problems
with all the key resources in place
extremely focused on making AGI
you should perhaps considering joining us| created_at: Fri Feb 16 00:01:04 +0000 2024 | favorite_count: 23357 | quote_count: 315 | reply_count: 2016 | retweet_count: 1145 | is_quote_status: False | retweeted: False | lang: en </div><div>society underestimates how much it owes elon for raising the collective ambition level at a time when optimism for the future was receding| created_at: Tue Feb 14 06:21:57 +0000 2023 | favorite_count: 23277 | quote_count: 375 | reply_count: 944 | retweet_count: 2098 | is_quote_status: False | retweeted: False | lang: en </div><div>colleges prioritized making people feel perfectly safe over everything else and produced a generation afraid to fail, and thus afraid to take risk, and thus on pace to accomplish extremely little| created_at: Sat Jan 07 18:00:56 +0000 2023 | favorite_count: 22413 | quote_count: 1126 | reply_count: 1547 | retweet_count: 3035 | is_quote_status: False | retweeted: False | lang: en </div><div>on absolutely no one's 2022 bingo card was "twitter becomes the hardest working tech company"| created_at: Sun Nov 20 17:25:44 +0000 2022 | favorite_count: 21371 | quote_count: 71 | reply_count: 348 | retweet_count: 808 | is_quote_status: False | retweeted: False | lang: en </div><div>If you are successful, it’s almost always because some people went out of their way to help you. You have a moral obligation to pay it forward.| created_at: Tue Aug 21 05:19:32 +0000 2018 | favorite_count: 21419 | quote_count: 416 | reply_count: 169 | retweet_count: 6216 | is_quote_status: False | retweeted: False | lang: en </div><div>all of this has happened before, all of this will happen again| created_at: Sun Mar 03 06:37:02 +0000 2024 | favorite_count: 21718 | quote_count: 964 | reply_count: 2303 | retweet_count: 2236 | is_quote_status: False | retweeted: False | lang: en </div><div>here is GPT-4, our most capable and aligned model yet. it is available today in our API (with a waitlist) and in ChatGPT+.
https://t.co/2ZFC36xqAJ
it is still flawed, still limited, and it still seems more impressive on first use than it does after you spend more time with it.| created_at: Tue Mar 14 17:02:28 +0000 2023 | favorite_count: 21544 | quote_count: 1151 | reply_count: 1070 | retweet_count: 4342 | is_quote_status: False | retweeted: False | lang: en </div><div>https://t.co/nPPH2bP6IZ| created_at: Thu Feb 15 19:09:07 +0000 2024 | favorite_count: 21622 | quote_count: 899 | reply_count: 692 | retweet_count: 2499 | is_quote_status: True | retweeted: False | lang: zxx </div><div>here is an alternative path for society: ignore the culture war. ignore the attention war. make safe agi. make fusion. make people smarter and healthier. make 20 other things of that magnitude.
 
start radical growth, inclusivity, and optimism.
 
expand throughout the universe.| created_at: Sun May 07 16:34:07 +0000 2023 | favorite_count: 21224 | quote_count: 775 | reply_count: 1846 | retweet_count: 2902 | is_quote_status: False | retweeted: False | lang: en </div><div>Let yourself occasionally get a little screwed in exchange for not having to live with your guard up all the time. It’s worth it.| created_at: Sun Aug 23 13:30:33 +0000 2020 | favorite_count: 21126 | quote_count: 594 | reply_count: 259 | retweet_count: 3338 | is_quote_status: False | retweeted: False | lang: en </div><div>@elonmusk anytime 🫡| created_at: Fri Mar 01 22:06:25 +0000 2024 | favorite_count: 21082 | quote_count: 541 | reply_count: 1462 | retweet_count: 886 | is_quote_status: False | retweeted: False | lang: en </div><div>Move faster. Slowness anywhere justifies slowness everywhere.
2021 instead of 2022. This week instead of next week. Today instead of tomorrow.
Moving fast compounds so much more than people realize.| created_at: Fri Jan 01 22:50:29 +0000 2021 | favorite_count: 19775 | quote_count: 511 | reply_count: 358 | retweet_count: 3529 | is_quote_status: False | retweeted: False | lang: en </div><div>i failed pretty hard at my first startup--it sucked!--and am doing pretty well on my second.
the thing i wish someone told me during the first one is that no one else thinks about your failures as much as you do, and that as long as don't psych yourself out you can try again.| created_at: Sun Feb 05 03:08:49 +0000 2023 | favorite_count: 19450 | quote_count: 200 | reply_count: 463 | retweet_count: 2004 | is_quote_status: False | retweeted: False | lang: en </div><div>one of the great pleasures in life is finding undiscovered talent, enabling them with high conviction, and watching them bend the trajectory of things| created_at: Fri Feb 09 22:28:52 +0000 2024 | favorite_count: 19499 | quote_count: 221 | reply_count: 523 | retweet_count: 1959 | is_quote_status: False | retweeted: False | lang: en </div><div>@DermoreLEI i am jewish. i believe that antisemitism is a significant and growing problem in the world, and i see a lot of people in our industry sticking up for me, which i deeply appreciate.
i see much less of that for muslims.| created_at: Fri Jan 05 01:36:33 +0000 2024 | favorite_count: 19034 | quote_count: 144 | reply_count: 469 | retweet_count: 1255 | is_quote_status: False | retweeted: False | lang: en </div><div>“give yourself a lot of shots to get lucky” is even better advice than it appears on the surface.
luck isn’t an independent variable but increases super-linearly with more surface area—you meet more people, make more connections between new ideas, learn patterns, etc.| created_at: Sun Aug 27 12:30:48 +0000 2023 | favorite_count: 18289 | quote_count: 277 | reply_count: 542 | retweet_count: 2957 | is_quote_status: False | retweeted: False | lang: en </div><div>fk it why not 8| created_at: Fri Feb 16 04:29:21 +0000 2024 | favorite_count: 18332 | quote_count: 921 | reply_count: 1641 | retweet_count: 943 | is_quote_status: False | retweeted: False | lang: en </div><div>one of the easiest policy wins i can imagine for the US is to reform high-skill immigration.
the fact that many of the most talented people in the world want to be here is a hard-won gift; embracing them is the key to keeping it that way.
hard to get this back if we lose it.| created_at: Sun Jul 02 20:24:11 +0000 2023 | favorite_count: 17913 | quote_count: 333 | reply_count: 884 | retweet_count: 2057 | is_quote_status: False | retweeted: False | lang: en </div><div>we are starting our rollout of ChatGPT plugins. 
you can install plugins to help with a wide variety of tasks. we are excited to see what developers create!
https://t.co/NQ684Yp2LK https://t.co/m7b6vJrj5D| created_at: Thu Mar 23 17:12:29 +0000 2023 | favorite_count: 17764 | quote_count: 1098 | reply_count: 618 | retweet_count: 2826 | is_quote_status: False | retweeted: False | lang: en </div><div>❤️| created_at: Mon Nov 20 10:08:29 +0000 2023 | favorite_count: 17721 | quote_count: 189 | reply_count: 393 | retweet_count: 740 | is_quote_status: True | retweeted: False | lang: art </div><div>what i wish someone had told me:
https://t.co/1nEaYimzXG| created_at: Thu Dec 21 22:45:39 +0000 2023 | favorite_count: 16821 | quote_count: 625 | reply_count: 509 | retweet_count: 3089 | is_quote_status: False | retweeted: False | lang: en </div><div>we are pausing new ChatGPT Plus sign-ups for a bit :(
the surge in usage post devday has exceeded our capacity and we want to make sure everyone has a great experience.
you can still sign-up to be notified within the app when subs reopen.| created_at: Wed Nov 15 03:10:55 +0000 2023 | favorite_count: 16592 | quote_count: 1338 | reply_count: 1265 | retweet_count: 1371 | is_quote_status: False | retweeted: False | lang: en </div><div>excited 4 today https://t.co/wKMRZID2Qg| created_at: Tue Mar 14 16:50:42 +0000 2023 | favorite_count: 16440 | quote_count: 447 | reply_count: 732 | retweet_count: 511 | is_quote_status: False | retweeted: False | lang: en </div><div>born too late to explore the earth, born...at the absolute coolest time in history, about to be able to explore absolutely everything else| created_at: Thu Oct 05 16:38:32 +0000 2023 | favorite_count: 16282 | quote_count: 174 | reply_count: 591 | retweet_count: 1680 | is_quote_status: False | retweeted: False | lang: en </div><div>i know im not supposed to brag about openai, but the talent density at this scale (375 people) is 🤯 and i dont think has happened in the tech industry in recent memory| created_at: Mon Jan 23 20:58:36 +0000 2023 | favorite_count: 16228 | quote_count: 219 | reply_count: 624 | retweet_count: 811 | is_quote_status: False | retweeted: False | lang: en </div><div>Love these charts: https://t.co/nMNvGTfuPE| created_at: Mon Jul 31 17:49:47 +0000 2017 | favorite_count: 15793 | quote_count: 1075 | reply_count: 194 | retweet_count: 9173 | is_quote_status: False | retweeted: False | lang: en </div><div>microsoft, and particularly azure, don’t get nearly enough credit for the stuff openai launches. they do an amazing amount of work to make it happen; we are deeply grateful for the partnership. 🙏 they have built by far the best AI infra out there.| created_at: Mon Dec 05 17:15:53 +0000 2022 | favorite_count: 16000 | quote_count: 247 | reply_count: 310 | retweet_count: 1211 | is_quote_status: False | retweeted: False | lang: en </div><div>2023: $30,000 to get a simple iPhone app created, $300 for a plumbing job.
i wonder what those relative prices will look like in 2028!
the likely coming divergence between changes to cognitive work and changes to physical work could be quite dramatic.| created_at: Wed Feb 15 22:10:38 +0000 2023 | favorite_count: 15738 | quote_count: 420 | reply_count: 816 | retweet_count: 1582 | is_quote_status: False | retweeted: False | lang: en </div><div>GPTs are now live for all ChatGPT+ subscribers!| created_at: Thu Nov 09 21:01:15 +0000 2023 | favorite_count: 15655 | quote_count: 420 | reply_count: 781 | retweet_count: 1253 | is_quote_status: False | retweeted: False | lang: en </div><div>we have re-enabled chatgpt plus subscriptions! 🎄
thanks for your patience while we found more gpus.| created_at: Wed Dec 13 17:10:58 +0000 2023 | favorite_count: 15313 | quote_count: 354 | reply_count: 807 | retweet_count: 907 | is_quote_status: False | retweeted: False | lang: en </div><div>openai now generates about 100 billion words per day.
all people on earth generate about 100 trillion words per day.| created_at: Fri Feb 09 22:55:05 +0000 2024 | favorite_count: 15481 | quote_count: 699 | reply_count: 1230 | retweet_count: 1369 | is_quote_status: False | retweeted: False | lang: en </div><div>How To Be Successful
(At Your Career, Twitter Edition)| created_at: Mon Jan 06 19:54:25 +0000 2020 | favorite_count: 15177 | quote_count: 489 | reply_count: 231 | retweet_count: 4191 | is_quote_status: False | retweeted: False | lang: en </div><div>damn i love custom instructions https://t.co/su0BlttJF7| created_at: Sat Jul 22 18:56:23 +0000 2023 | favorite_count: 15221 | quote_count: 247 | reply_count: 551 | retweet_count: 1013 | is_quote_status: False | retweeted: False | lang: en </div><div>it’s been a crazy year.
i’m grateful that we put a tool out in the world that people really love and get so much benefit from.
more than that, i am glad that 2023 was the year the world started taking AI seriously.| created_at: Thu Dec 21 17:00:53 +0000 2023 | favorite_count: 15096 | quote_count: 134 | reply_count: 514 | retweet_count: 957 | is_quote_status: False | retweeted: False | lang: en </div><div>you have a right to your actions,
but never to your actions' fruits.| created_at: Sun Feb 11 17:47:29 +0000 2024 | favorite_count: 14929 | quote_count: 797 | reply_count: 1287 | retweet_count: 1614 | is_quote_status: False | retweeted: False | lang: en </div><div>ok cool will you do that for retail investors on the way down too?| created_at: Thu Jan 28 00:37:23 +0000 2021 | favorite_count: 14673 | quote_count: 54 | reply_count: 183 | retweet_count: 2094 | is_quote_status: True | retweeted: False | lang: en </div><div>thanks a lot for these! some common requests:
AGI (a little patience please)
GPT-5
better voice mode
higher rate limits
better GPTs
better reasoning
control over degree of wokeness/behavior
video
personalization
better browsing
'sign in with openai'
open source| created_at: Sat Dec 23 21:29:47 +0000 2023 | favorite_count: 14828 | quote_count: 384 | reply_count: 1697 | retweet_count: 1307 | is_quote_status: True | retweeted: False | lang: en </div><div>a new version of moore’s law that could start soon:
the amount of intelligence in the universe doubles every 18 months| created_at: Sun Feb 26 16:24:49 +0000 2023 | favorite_count: 14684 | quote_count: 728 | reply_count: 1454 | retweet_count: 1885 | is_quote_status: False | retweeted: False | lang: en </div><div>the way to succeed is to do the boring things extremely well| created_at: Wed Nov 02 01:49:21 +0000 2022 | favorite_count: 14231 | quote_count: 143 | reply_count: 345 | retweet_count: 1829 | is_quote_status: False | retweeted: False | lang: en </div><div>voice mode and vision for chatgpt! really worth a try. https://t.co/g8uA4QxXMb| created_at: Mon Sep 25 13:00:19 +0000 2023 | favorite_count: 14584 | quote_count: 697 | reply_count: 672 | retweet_count: 2241 | is_quote_status: False | retweeted: False | lang: en </div><div>you are listening to the new blink 182 album for the 17th time today and about to play the new mario with your friends who brought over mountain dew.
you ordered dominos with a discount code your mom gave you, $10/pizza.
the year is 2023, and you are 38 years old. life is good| created_at: Thu Oct 26 02:54:15 +0000 2023 | favorite_count: 14632 | quote_count: 202 | reply_count: 686 | retweet_count: 772 | is_quote_status: False | retweeted: False | lang: en </div><div>plans should be measured in decades, execution should be measured in weeks.
you gotta have both.| created_at: Thu Oct 26 17:37:54 +0000 2023 | favorite_count: 14144 | quote_count: 116 | reply_count: 277 | retweet_count: 2036 | is_quote_status: False | retweeted: False | lang: en </div><div>just spent a really nice few hours with @adamdangelo. 
happy thanksgiving from our families to yours! 🦃| created_at: Fri Nov 24 01:16:21 +0000 2023 | favorite_count: 14115 | quote_count: 158 | reply_count: 880 | retweet_count: 410 | is_quote_status: False | retweeted: False | lang: en </div><div>good sign for the resilience and adaptability of people in the face of technological change:
the turing test went whooshing by and everyone mostly went about their lives| created_at: Sat Dec 09 18:42:41 +0000 2023 | favorite_count: 14027 | quote_count: 288 | reply_count: 1042 | retweet_count: 1203 | is_quote_status: False | retweeted: False | lang: en </div><div>Prediction: AI will cause the price of work that can happen in front of a computer to decrease much faster than the price of work that happens in the physical world.
This is the opposite of what most people (including me) expected, and will have strange effects.| created_at: Sun Jun 13 15:38:10 +0000 2021 | favorite_count: 14052 | quote_count: 623 | reply_count: 494 | retweet_count: 2336 | is_quote_status: False | retweeted: False | lang: en </div><div>the GPT store is live!
https://t.co/AKg1mjlvo2
fun speculation last night about which GPTs will be doing the best by the end of today.| created_at: Wed Jan 10 17:26:36 +0000 2024 | favorite_count: 13975 | quote_count: 608 | reply_count: 1006 | retweet_count: 2427 | is_quote_status: False | retweeted: False | lang: en </div><div>we believe the world needs more ai infrastructure--fab capacity, energy, datacenters, etc--than people are currently planning to build.
building massive-scale ai infrastructure, and a resilient supply chain, is crucial to economic competitiveness.
openai will try to help!| created_at: Wed Feb 07 18:17:33 +0000 2024 | favorite_count: 13967 | quote_count: 416 | reply_count: 934 | retweet_count: 1206 | is_quote_status: False | retweeted: False | lang: en </div><div>https://t.co/JB4zOjmbTp| created_at: Thu Feb 15 18:43:40 +0000 2024 | favorite_count: 13780 | quote_count: 598 | reply_count: 644 | retweet_count: 1182 | is_quote_status: True | retweeted: False | lang: zxx </div><div>hello from redmond! excited for the event tomorrow https://t.co/b7TUr0ti42| created_at: Mon Feb 06 20:10:53 +0000 2023 | favorite_count: 13200 | quote_count: 293 | reply_count: 402 | retweet_count: 538 | is_quote_status: False | retweeted: False | lang: en </div><div>is there a word for feeling nostalgic for the time period you’re living through at the time you’re living it?| created_at: Thu Feb 01 17:53:27 +0000 2024 | favorite_count: 13150 | quote_count: 480 | reply_count: 2492 | retweet_count: 733 | is_quote_status: False | retweeted: False | lang: en </div><div>im personally getting way too much credit for openai. for a company like ours, the researchers and engineers that create the tech have far more impact than the ceo.
 
if you want to congratulate someone, pick them! hard to overstate the collective talents of that group...| created_at: Thu Dec 08 16:28:07 +0000 2022 | favorite_count: 12972 | quote_count: 95 | reply_count: 266 | retweet_count: 572 | is_quote_status: False | retweeted: False | lang: en </div><div>"If you can't figure out what kind of work you like, pay attention to what's easy to concentrate on and gives you energy vs. what makes you tune out and feel tired"
sounds obvious but remains some of the best advice I ever got.| created_at: Sun Jan 30 00:41:23 +0000 2022 | favorite_count: 12804 | quote_count: 117 | reply_count: 88 | retweet_count: 2048 | is_quote_status: False | retweeted: False | lang: en </div><div>❤️🧡💛💚💙💜🖤🤍| created_at: Thu Nov 30 01:15:49 +0000 2023 | favorite_count: 12754 | quote_count: 113 | reply_count: 537 | retweet_count: 817 | is_quote_status: True | retweeted: False | lang: art </div><div>i’d bet even more true today!| created_at: Wed Dec 27 04:03:08 +0000 2023 | favorite_count: 12475 | quote_count: 88 | reply_count: 732 | retweet_count: 1002 | is_quote_status: True | retweeted: False | lang: en </div><div>the fight for the future is a struggle between technological-driven growth and managed decline.
the growth path has inherent risks and challenges along with its fantastic upside, and the decline path has guaranteed long-term disaster.
stasis is a myth.| created_at: Fri Jan 05 21:35:23 +0000 2024 | favorite_count: 12558 | quote_count: 309 | reply_count: 812 | retweet_count: 1476 | is_quote_status: False | retweeted: False | lang: en </div><div>you’re supposed to pour your life force into something and it’s not supposed to always be easy| created_at: Sat Jan 07 18:09:21 +0000 2023 | favorite_count: 12302 | quote_count: 258 | reply_count: 449 | retweet_count: 1776 | is_quote_status: False | retweeted: False | lang: en </div><div>there is a new version of GPT-4 Turbo now live in ChatGPT; you should hopefully find it a lot better!
please let us know what you think.| created_at: Sat Nov 11 23:20:56 +0000 2023 | favorite_count: 12347 | quote_count: 143 | reply_count: 872 | retweet_count: 794 | is_quote_status: False | retweeted: False | lang: en </div><div>we know that ChatGPT has shortcomings around bias, and are working to improve it.
but directing hate at individual OAI employees because of this is appalling. hit me all you want, but attacking other people here doesn’t help the field advance, and the people doing it know that.| created_at: Wed Feb 01 23:32:01 +0000 2023 | favorite_count: 12289 | quote_count: 387 | reply_count: 1479 | retweet_count: 626 | is_quote_status: False | retweeted: False | lang: en </div><div>gpt-4 had a slow start on its new year's resolutions but should now be much less lazy now!| created_at: Sun Feb 04 15:56:46 +0000 2024 | favorite_count: 12251 | quote_count: 187 | reply_count: 742 | retweet_count: 557 | is_quote_status: False | retweeted: False | lang: en </div><div>all ChatGPT Plus users getting browsing and plugins over the next week; hope you enjoy!| created_at: Fri May 12 21:59:01 +0000 2023 | favorite_count: 11917 | quote_count: 331 | reply_count: 711 | retweet_count: 1111 | is_quote_status: True | retweeted: False | lang: en </div><div>a month ago the most exciting drama on tech twitter was elon and zuck fighting and now it’s that we are transfixed by maybe having an actual room temperature superconductor.
we are so back?| created_at: Tue Aug 01 14:41:56 +0000 2023 | favorite_count: 11872 | quote_count: 115 | reply_count: 593 | retweet_count: 741 | is_quote_status: False | retweeted: False | lang: en </div><div>1) What| created_at: Thu Feb 15 20:17:48 +0000 2024 | favorite_count: 11791 | quote_count: 147 | reply_count: 681 | retweet_count: 854 | is_quote_status: True | retweeted: False | lang: en </div><div>every few weeks i have a moment where i still can't quite believe we actually made this: https://t.co/8dgDh2robM| created_at: Mon Jun 05 17:23:47 +0000 2023 | favorite_count: 11779 | quote_count: 127 | reply_count: 562 | retweet_count: 695 | is_quote_status: False | retweeted: False | lang: en </div><div>@WSJ Concerning| created_at: Fri Apr 14 23:47:30 +0000 2023 | favorite_count: 11739 | quote_count: 241 | reply_count: 790 | retweet_count: 530 | is_quote_status: False | retweeted: False | lang: en </div><div>a lot of crazy stories start with too much amphetamines and end with not enough psychedelics| created_at: Sun Nov 13 17:46:10 +0000 2022 | favorite_count: 10966 | quote_count: 76 | reply_count: 296 | retweet_count: 791 | is_quote_status: False | retweeted: False | lang: en </div><div>i was hoping that the oppenheimer movie would inspire a generation of kids to be physicists but it really missed the mark on that.
let's get that movie made!
(i think the social network managed to do this for startup founders.)| created_at: Sat Jul 22 17:48:53 +0000 2023 | favorite_count: 11444 | quote_count: 2566 | reply_count: 1932 | retweet_count: 690 | is_quote_status: False | retweeted: False | lang: en </div>
AI is cool i guess| profile_url: http://blog.samaltman.com | name: Sam Altman | created_at: Sun Jul 16 22:01:55 +0000 2006 | favourites_count: 1005 | followers_count: 2835151 | friends_count: 892 | media_count: 308 | possibly_sensitive: False | verified: False | statuses_count: 6337 | location: SF  first and last time i ever wear one of these https://t.co/u3iKwyWj0a| created_at: Sun Nov 19 21:03:51 +0000 2023 | favorite_count: 99657 | quote_count: 2661 | reply_count: 3754 | retweet_count: 6254 | is_quote_status: False | retweeted: False | lang: en  i loved my time at openai. it was transformative for me personally, and hopefully the world a little bit. most of all i loved working with such talented people.
will have more to say about what’s next later. 
🫡| created_at: Fri Nov 17 21:46:53 +0000 2023 | favorite_count: 96466 | quote_count: 4492 | reply_count: 6620 | retweet_count: 9652 | is_quote_status: False | retweeted: False | lang: en  i love you all. 
today was a weird experience in many ways. but one unexpected one is that it has been sorta like reading your own eulogy while you’re still alive. the outpouring of love is awesome.
one takeaway: go tell your friends how great you think they are.| created_at: Sat Nov 18 05:05:51 +0000 2023 | favorite_count: 91286 | quote_count: 1292 | reply_count: 3761 | retweet_count: 6334 | is_quote_status: False | retweeted: False | lang: en  i love openai, and everything i’ve done over the past few days has been in service of keeping this team and its mission together. when i decided to join msft on sun evening, it was clear that was the best path for me and the team. with the new board and w satya’s support, i’m…| created_at: Wed Nov 22 06:08:42 +0000 2023 | favorite_count: 75305 | quote_count: 3085 | reply_count: 5080 | retweet_count: 7828 | is_quote_status: False | retweeted: False | lang: en  i love the openai team so much| created_at: Sun Nov 19 04:47:14 +0000 2023 | favorite_count: 73686 | quote_count: 3686 | reply_count: 4857 | retweet_count: 4420 | is_quote_status: False | retweeted: False | lang: en  for a long time i said that antisemitism, particularly on the american left, was not as bad as people claimed.
i'd like to just state that i was totally wrong.
i still don't understand it, really. or know what to do about it.
but it is so fucked.| created_at: Fri Dec 08 00:51:37 +0000 2023 | favorite_count: 67453 | quote_count: 1219 | reply_count: 5226 | retweet_count: 8541 | is_quote_status: False | retweeted: False | lang: en  if i start going off, the openai board should go after me for the full value of my shares| created_at: Sat Nov 18 05:32:19 +0000 2023 | favorite_count: 67622 | quote_count: 2693 | reply_count: 5364 | retweet_count: 5039 | is_quote_status: False | retweeted: False | lang: en  the mission continues| created_at: Mon Nov 20 07:58:18 +0000 2023 | favorite_count: 63269 | quote_count: 1801 | reply_count: 2112 | retweet_count: 6784 | is_quote_status: True | retweeted: False | lang: en  https://t.co/nej4TIwgaP| created_at: Thu Feb 15 19:56:47 +0000 2024 | favorite_count: 57777 | quote_count: 1798 | reply_count: 946 | retweet_count: 4937 | is_quote_status: True | retweeted: False | lang: zxx  ChatGPT launched on wednesday. today it crossed 1 million users!| created_at: Mon Dec 05 07:35:38 +0000 2022 | favorite_count: 50004 | quote_count: 571 | reply_count: 1056 | retweet_count: 3173 | is_quote_status: False | retweeted: False | lang: en  "Which is more important to you? A low public profile, or getting to enjoy shitposting on Twitter?" https://t.co/MvCkns93pT| created_at: Fri Nov 11 18:26:29 +0000 2022 | favorite_count: 48212 | quote_count: 217 | reply_count: 1170 | retweet_count: 1938 | is_quote_status: False | retweeted: False | lang: en  ❤️🫡❤️| created_at: Wed Nov 22 06:05:39 +0000 2023 | favorite_count: 46195 | quote_count: 899 | reply_count: 1923 | retweet_count: 3773 | is_quote_status: True | retweeted: False | lang: art  GPTs can save a lot of effort: https://t.co/VFIrGzPuMN| created_at: Fri Nov 10 00:01:25 +0000 2023 | favorite_count: 45372 | quote_count: 2339 | reply_count: 2488 | retweet_count: 3960 | is_quote_status: False | retweeted: False | lang: en  a year ago tonight we were probably just sitting around the office putting the finishing touches on chatgpt before the next morning’s launch.
what a year it’s been…| created_at: Thu Nov 30 04:09:13 +0000 2023 | favorite_count: 44788 | quote_count: 712 | reply_count: 1666 | retweet_count: 3189 | is_quote_status: False | retweeted: False | lang: en  https://t.co/EvngqF2ZIX| created_at: Thu Feb 15 20:02:43 +0000 2024 | favorite_count: 44798 | quote_count: 1435 | reply_count: 1134 | retweet_count: 4770 | is_quote_status: True | retweeted: False | lang: zxx  satya and my top priority remains to ensure openai continues to thrive
we are committed to fully providing continuity of operations to our partners and customers
the openai/microsoft partnership makes this very doable| created_at: Mon Nov 20 19:39:03 +0000 2023 | favorite_count: 43429 | quote_count: 622 | reply_count: 1924 | retweet_count: 2433 | is_quote_status: False | retweeted: False | lang: en  muslim and arab (especially palestinian) colleagues in the tech community i've spoken with feel uncomfortable speaking about their recent experiences, often out of fear of retaliation and damaged career prospects.
our industry should be united in our support of these colleagues;…| created_at: Fri Jan 05 01:20:50 +0000 2024 | favorite_count: 41342 | quote_count: 672 | reply_count: 1832 | retweet_count: 5193 | is_quote_status: False | retweeted: False | lang: en  It's gross seeing so many root against Tesla. Be the person on the side of the climate and innovation, not the person hoping to make money on puts.
Also, betting against Elon is historically a mistake...and the best product usually wins.| created_at: Tue May 21 19:11:04 +0000 2019 | favorite_count: 38461 | quote_count: 437 | reply_count: 735 | retweet_count: 2965 | is_quote_status: False | retweeted: False | lang: en  we have more unity and commitment and focus than ever before. 
we are all going to work together some way or other, and i’m so excited. 
one team, one mission.| created_at: Mon Nov 20 18:27:49 +0000 2023 | favorite_count: 38653 | quote_count: 579 | reply_count: 1758 | retweet_count: 2036 | is_quote_status: False | retweeted: False | lang: en  the first day of openai, seven years ago today https://t.co/4kQUQtgb6t| created_at: Wed Jan 04 15:56:18 +0000 2023 | favorite_count: 35609 | quote_count: 342 | reply_count: 540 | retweet_count: 2393 | is_quote_status: False | retweeted: False | lang: en  vision pro is second most impressive tech since the iphone| created_at: Fri Feb 09 21:47:33 +0000 2024 | favorite_count: 35460 | quote_count: 570 | reply_count: 1106 | retweet_count: 2465 | is_quote_status: False | retweeted: False | lang: en  great conversation with @narendramodi discussing india's incredible tech ecosystem and how the country can benefit from ai.
really enjoyed all my meetings with people in the @PMOIndia. https://t.co/EzxVD0UMDM| created_at: Fri Jun 09 01:29:32 +0000 2023 | favorite_count: 34919 | quote_count: 355 | reply_count: 684 | retweet_count: 2859 | is_quote_status: False | retweeted: False | lang: en  movies are going to become video games and video games are going to become something unimaginably better| created_at: Fri Apr 05 03:06:27 +0000 2024 | favorite_count: 35367 | quote_count: 1675 | reply_count: 2612 | retweet_count: 3776 | is_quote_status: False | retweeted: False | lang: en  I think US college education is nearer to collapsing than it appears.| created_at: Sun Mar 20 17:31:26 +0000 2022 | favorite_count: 32759 | quote_count: 898 | reply_count: 1237 | retweet_count: 2753 | is_quote_status: False | retweeted: False | lang: en  we are so back| created_at: Wed Sep 27 17:35:58 +0000 2023 | favorite_count: 31662 | quote_count: 403 | reply_count: 1223 | retweet_count: 2707 | is_quote_status: True | retweeted: False | lang: en  we'd like to show you what sora can do, please reply with captions for videos you'd like to see and we'll start making some!| created_at: Thu Feb 15 18:17:20 +0000 2024 | favorite_count: 30656 | quote_count: 1011 | reply_count: 15278 | retweet_count: 2316 | is_quote_status: False | retweeted: False | lang: en  the openai leadership team, particularly mira brad and jason but really all of them, have been doing an incredible job through this that will be in the history books. 
incredibly proud of them.| created_at: Mon Nov 20 18:19:28 +0000 2023 | favorite_count: 30343 | quote_count: 247 | reply_count: 1027 | retweet_count: 1247 | is_quote_status: False | retweeted: False | lang: en  today we launched ChatGPT. try talking with it here: 
https://t.co/uWra8LKFMN| created_at: Wed Nov 30 19:38:38 +0000 2022 | favorite_count: 29791 | quote_count: 1565 | reply_count: 1186 | retweet_count: 5556 | is_quote_status: False | retweeted: False | lang: en  also, the video we made for dalle 3 is SO CUTE: https://t.co/k1FOFTOsU5| created_at: Wed Sep 20 18:22:12 +0000 2023 | favorite_count: 29542 | quote_count: 1309 | reply_count: 976 | retweet_count: 3769 | is_quote_status: False | retweeted: False | lang: en  ❤️❤️❤️| created_at: Mon Nov 20 13:32:37 +0000 2023 | favorite_count: 29527 | quote_count: 1226 | reply_count: 1522 | retweet_count: 2139 | is_quote_status: True | retweeted: False | lang: art  ChatGPT is incredibly limited, but good enough at some things to create a misleading impression of greatness.
it's a mistake to be relying on it for anything important right now. it’s a preview of progress; we have lots of work to do on robustness and truthfulness.| created_at: Sun Dec 11 00:11:14 +0000 2022 | favorite_count: 27673 | quote_count: 736 | reply_count: 862 | retweet_count: 3363 | is_quote_status: False | retweeted: False | lang: en  this is the most interesting year in human history, except for all future years| created_at: Sun Mar 17 17:23:59 +0000 2024 | favorite_count: 27654 | quote_count: 710 | reply_count: 1761 | retweet_count: 2790 | is_quote_status: False | retweeted: False | lang: en  here is sora, our video generation model:
https://t.co/CDr4DdCrh1
today we are starting red-teaming and offering access to a limited number of creators.
@_tim_brooks @billpeeb @model_mechanic are really incredible; amazing work by them and the team.
remarkable moment.| created_at: Thu Feb 15 18:16:36 +0000 2024 | favorite_count: 26318 | quote_count: 2408 | reply_count: 1723 | retweet_count: 4492 | is_quote_status: False | retweeted: False | lang: en  https://t.co/WanFKOzdIw| created_at: Thu Feb 15 19:59:47 +0000 2024 | favorite_count: 25155 | quote_count: 3264 | reply_count: 1424 | retweet_count: 2564 | is_quote_status: True | retweeted: False | lang: zxx  openai is the most talented and nicest group of people i have ever seen in one place
working on the hardest, most interesting, and most important problems
with all the key resources in place
extremely focused on making AGI
you should perhaps considering joining us| created_at: Fri Feb 16 00:01:04 +0000 2024 | favorite_count: 23357 | quote_count: 315 | reply_count: 2016 | retweet_count: 1145 | is_quote_status: False | retweeted: False | lang: en  society underestimates how much it owes elon for raising the collective ambition level at a time when optimism for the future was receding| created_at: Tue Feb 14 06:21:57 +0000 2023 | favorite_count: 23277 | quote_count: 375 | reply_count: 944 | retweet_count: 2098 | is_quote_status: False | retweeted: False | lang: en  colleges prioritized making people feel perfectly safe over everything else and produced a generation afraid to fail, and thus afraid to take risk, and thus on pace to accomplish extremely little| created_at: Sat Jan 07 18:00:56 +0000 2023 | favorite_count: 22413 | quote_count: 1126 | reply_count: 1547 | retweet_count: 3035 | is_quote_status: False | retweeted: False | lang: en  on absolutely no one's 2022 bingo card was "twitter becomes the hardest working tech company"| created_at: Sun Nov 20 17:25:44 +0000 2022 | favorite_count: 21371 | quote_count: 71 | reply_count: 348 | retweet_count: 808 | is_quote_status: False | retweeted: False | lang: en  If you are successful, it’s almost always because some people went out of their way to help you. You have a moral obligation to pay it forward.| created_at: Tue Aug 21 05:19:32 +0000 2018 | favorite_count: 21419 | quote_count: 416 | reply_count: 169 | retweet_count: 6216 | is_quote_status: False | retweeted: False | lang: en  all of this has happened before, all of this will happen again| created_at: Sun Mar 03 06:37:02 +0000 2024 | favorite_count: 21718 | quote_count: 964 | reply_count: 2303 | retweet_count: 2236 | is_quote_status: False | retweeted: False | lang: en  here is GPT-4, our most capable and aligned model yet. it is available today in our API (with a waitlist) and in ChatGPT+.
https://t.co/2ZFC36xqAJ
it is still flawed, still limited, and it still seems more impressive on first use than it does after you spend more time with it.| created_at: Tue Mar 14 17:02:28 +0000 2023 | favorite_count: 21544 | quote_count: 1151 | reply_count: 1070 | retweet_count: 4342 | is_quote_status: False | retweeted: False | lang: en  https://t.co/nPPH2bP6IZ| created_at: Thu Feb 15 19:09:07 +0000 2024 | favorite_count: 21622 | quote_count: 899 | reply_count: 692 | retweet_count: 2499 | is_quote_status: True | retweeted: False | lang: zxx  here is an alternative path for society: ignore the culture war. ignore the attention war. make safe agi. make fusion. make people smarter and healthier. make 20 other things of that magnitude.
 
start radical growth, inclusivity, and optimism.
 
expand throughout the universe.| created_at: Sun May 07 16:34:07 +0000 2023 | favorite_count: 21224 | quote_count: 775 | reply_count: 1846 | retweet_count: 2902 | is_quote_status: False | retweeted: False | lang: en  Let yourself occasionally get a little screwed in exchange for not having to live with your guard up all the time. It’s worth it.| created_at: Sun Aug 23 13:30:33 +0000 2020 | favorite_count: 21126 | quote_count: 594 | reply_count: 259 | retweet_count: 3338 | is_quote_status: False | retweeted: False | lang: en  @elonmusk anytime 🫡| created_at: Fri Mar 01 22:06:25 +0000 2024 | favorite_count: 21082 | quote_count: 541 | reply_count: 1462 | retweet_count: 886 | is_quote_status: False | retweeted: False | lang: en  Move faster. Slowness anywhere justifies slowness everywhere.
2021 instead of 2022. This week instead of next week. Today instead of tomorrow.
Moving fast compounds so much more than people realize.| created_at: Fri Jan 01 22:50:29 +0000 2021 | favorite_count: 19775 | quote_count: 511 | reply_count: 358 | retweet_count: 3529 | is_quote_status: False | retweeted: False | lang: en  i failed pretty hard at my first startup--it sucked!--and am doing pretty well on my second.
the thing i wish someone told me during the first one is that no one else thinks about your failures as much as you do, and that as long as don't psych yourself out you can try again.| created_at: Sun Feb 05 03:08:49 +0000 2023 | favorite_count: 19450 | quote_count: 200 | reply_count: 463 | retweet_count: 2004 | is_quote_status: False | retweeted: False | lang: en  one of the great pleasures in life is finding undiscovered talent, enabling them with high conviction, and watching them bend the trajectory of things| created_at: Fri Feb 09 22:28:52 +0000 2024 | favorite_count: 19499 | quote_count: 221 | reply_count: 523 | retweet_count: 1959 | is_quote_status: False | retweeted: False | lang: en  @DermoreLEI i am jewish. i believe that antisemitism is a significant and growing problem in the world, and i see a lot of people in our industry sticking up for me, which i deeply appreciate.
i see much less of that for muslims.| created_at: Fri Jan 05 01:36:33 +0000 2024 | favorite_count: 19034 | quote_count: 144 | reply_count: 469 | retweet_count: 1255 | is_quote_status: False | retweeted: False | lang: en  “give yourself a lot of shots to get lucky” is even better advice than it appears on the surface.
luck isn’t an independent variable but increases super-linearly with more surface area—you meet more people, make more connections between new ideas, learn patterns, etc.| created_at: Sun Aug 27 12:30:48 +0000 2023 | favorite_count: 18289 | quote_count: 277 | reply_count: 542 | retweet_count: 2957 | is_quote_status: False | retweeted: False | lang: en  fk it why not 8| created_at: Fri Feb 16 04:29:21 +0000 2024 | favorite_count: 18332 | quote_count: 921 | reply_count: 1641 | retweet_count: 943 | is_quote_status: False | retweeted: False | lang: en  one of the easiest policy wins i can imagine for the US is to reform high-skill immigration.
the fact that many of the most talented people in the world want to be here is a hard-won gift; embracing them is the key to keeping it that way.
hard to get this back if we lose it.| created_at: Sun Jul 02 20:24:11 +0000 2023 | favorite_count: 17913 | quote_count: 333 | reply_count: 884 | retweet_count: 2057 | is_quote_status: False | retweeted: False | lang: en  we are starting our rollout of ChatGPT plugins. 
you can install plugins to help with a wide variety of tasks. we are excited to see what developers create!
https://t.co/NQ684Yp2LK https://t.co/m7b6vJrj5D| created_at: Thu Mar 23 17:12:29 +0000 2023 | favorite_count: 17764 | quote_count: 1098 | reply_count: 618 | retweet_count: 2826 | is_quote_status: False | retweeted: False | lang: en  ❤️| created_at: Mon Nov 20 10:08:29 +0000 2023 | favorite_count: 17721 | quote_count: 189 | reply_count: 393 | retweet_count: 740 | is_quote_status: True | retweeted: False | lang: art  what i wish someone had told me:
https://t.co/1nEaYimzXG| created_at: Thu Dec 21 22:45:39 +0000 2023 | favorite_count: 16821 | quote_count: 625 | reply_count: 509 | retweet_count: 3089 | is_quote_status: False | retweeted: False | lang: en  we are pausing new ChatGPT Plus sign-ups for a bit :(
the surge in usage post devday has exceeded our capacity and we want to make sure everyone has a great experience.
you can still sign-up to be notified within the app when subs reopen.| created_at: Wed Nov 15 03:10:55 +0000 2023 | favorite_count: 16592 | quote_count: 1338 | reply_count: 1265 | retweet_count: 1371 | is_quote_status: False | retweeted: False | lang: en  excited 4 today https://t.co/wKMRZID2Qg| created_at: Tue Mar 14 16:50:42 +0000 2023 | favorite_count: 16440 | quote_count: 447 | reply_count: 732 | retweet_count: 511 | is_quote_status: False | retweeted: False | lang: en  born too late to explore the earth, born...at the absolute coolest time in history, about to be able to explore absolutely everything else| created_at: Thu Oct 05 16:38:32 +0000 2023 | favorite_count: 16282 | quote_count: 174 | reply_count: 591 | retweet_count: 1680 | is_quote_status: False | retweeted: False | lang: en  i know im not supposed to brag about openai, but the talent density at this scale (375 people) is 🤯 and i dont think has happened in the tech industry in recent memory| created_at: Mon Jan 23 20:58:36 +0000 2023 | favorite_count: 16228 | quote_count: 219 | reply_count: 624 | retweet_count: 811 | is_quote_status: False | retweeted: False | lang: en  Love these charts: https://t.co/nMNvGTfuPE| created_at: Mon Jul 31 17:49:47 +0000 2017 | favorite_count: 15793 | quote_count: 1075 | reply_count: 194 | retweet_count: 9173 | is_quote_status: False | retweeted: False | lang: en  microsoft, and particularly azure, don’t get nearly enough credit for the stuff openai launches. they do an amazing amount of work to make it happen; we are deeply grateful for the partnership. 🙏 they have built by far the best AI infra out there.| created_at: Mon Dec 05 17:15:53 +0000 2022 | favorite_count: 16000 | quote_count: 247 | reply_count: 310 | retweet_count: 1211 | is_quote_status: False | retweeted: False | lang: en  2023: $30,000 to get a simple iPhone app created, $300 for a plumbing job.
i wonder what those relative prices will look like in 2028!
the likely coming divergence between changes to cognitive work and changes to physical work could be quite dramatic.| created_at: Wed Feb 15 22:10:38 +0000 2023 | favorite_count: 15738 | quote_count: 420 | reply_count: 816 | retweet_count: 1582 | is_quote_status: False | retweeted: False | lang: en  GPTs are now live for all ChatGPT+ subscribers!| created_at: Thu Nov 09 21:01:15 +0000 2023 | favorite_count: 15655 | quote_count: 420 | reply_count: 781 | retweet_count: 1253 | is_quote_status: False | retweeted: False | lang: en  we have re-enabled chatgpt plus subscriptions! 🎄
thanks for your patience while we found more gpus.| created_at: Wed Dec 13 17:10:58 +0000 2023 | favorite_count: 15313 | quote_count: 354 | reply_count: 807 | retweet_count: 907 | is_quote_status: False | retweeted: False | lang: en  openai now generates about 100 billion words per day.
all people on earth generate about 100 trillion words per day.| created_at: Fri Feb 09 22:55:05 +0000 2024 | favorite_count: 15481 | quote_count: 699 | reply_count: 1230 | retweet_count: 1369 | is_quote_status: False | retweeted: False | lang: en  How To Be Successful
(At Your Career, Twitter Edition)| created_at: Mon Jan 06 19:54:25 +0000 2020 | favorite_count: 15177 | quote_count: 489 | reply_count: 231 | retweet_count: 4191 | is_quote_status: False | retweeted: False | lang: en  damn i love custom instructions https://t.co/su0BlttJF7| created_at: Sat Jul 22 18:56:23 +0000 2023 | favorite_count: 15221 | quote_count: 247 | reply_count: 551 | retweet_count: 1013 | is_quote_status: False | retweeted: False | lang: en  it’s been a crazy year.
i’m grateful that we put a tool out in the world that people really love and get so much benefit from.
more than that, i am glad that 2023 was the year the world started taking AI seriously.| created_at: Thu Dec 21 17:00:53 +0000 2023 | favorite_count: 15096 | quote_count: 134 | reply_count: 514 | retweet_count: 957 | is_quote_status: False | retweeted: False | lang: en  you have a right to your actions,
but never to your actions' fruits.| created_at: Sun Feb 11 17:47:29 +0000 2024 | favorite_count: 14929 | quote_count: 797 | reply_count: 1287 | retweet_count: 1614 | is_quote_status: False | retweeted: False | lang: en  ok cool will you do that for retail investors on the way down too?| created_at: Thu Jan 28 00:37:23 +0000 2021 | favorite_count: 14673 | quote_count: 54 | reply_count: 183 | retweet_count: 2094 | is_quote_status: True | retweeted: False | lang: en  thanks a lot for these! some common requests:
AGI (a little patience please)
GPT-5
better voice mode
higher rate limits
better GPTs
better reasoning
control over degree of wokeness/behavior
video
personalization
better browsing
'sign in with openai'
open source| created_at: Sat Dec 23 21:29:47 +0000 2023 | favorite_count: 14828 | quote_count: 384 | reply_count: 1697 | retweet_count: 1307 | is_quote_status: True | retweeted: False | lang: en  a new version of moore’s law that could start soon:
the amount of intelligence in the universe doubles every 18 months| created_at: Sun Feb 26 16:24:49 +0000 2023 | favorite_count: 14684 | quote_count: 728 | reply_count: 1454 | retweet_count: 1885 | is_quote_status: False | retweeted: False | lang: en  the way to succeed is to do the boring things extremely well| created_at: Wed Nov 02 01:49:21 +0000 2022 | favorite_count: 14231 | quote_count: 143 | reply_count: 345 | retweet_count: 1829 | is_quote_status: False | retweeted: False | lang: en  voice mode and vision for chatgpt! really worth a try. https://t.co/g8uA4QxXMb| created_at: Mon Sep 25 13:00:19 +0000 2023 | favorite_count: 14584 | quote_count: 697 | reply_count: 672 | retweet_count: 2241 | is_quote_status: False | retweeted: False | lang: en  you are listening to the new blink 182 album for the 17th time today and about to play the new mario with your friends who brought over mountain dew.
you ordered dominos with a discount code your mom gave you, $10/pizza.
the year is 2023, and you are 38 years old. life is good| created_at: Thu Oct 26 02:54:15 +0000 2023 | favorite_count: 14632 | quote_count: 202 | reply_count: 686 | retweet_count: 772 | is_quote_status: False | retweeted: False | lang: en  plans should be measured in decades, execution should be measured in weeks.
you gotta have both.| created_at: Thu Oct 26 17:37:54 +0000 2023 | favorite_count: 14144 | quote_count: 116 | reply_count: 277 | retweet_count: 2036 | is_quote_status: False | retweeted: False | lang: en  just spent a really nice few hours with @adamdangelo. 
happy thanksgiving from our families to yours! 🦃| created_at: Fri Nov 24 01:16:21 +0000 2023 | favorite_count: 14115 | quote_count: 158 | reply_count: 880 | retweet_count: 410 | is_quote_status: False | retweeted: False | lang: en  good sign for the resilience and adaptability of people in the face of technological change:
the turing test went whooshing by and everyone mostly went about their lives| created_at: Sat Dec 09 18:42:41 +0000 2023 | favorite_count: 14027 | quote_count: 288 | reply_count: 1042 | retweet_count: 1203 | is_quote_status: False | retweeted: False | lang: en  Prediction: AI will cause the price of work that can happen in front of a computer to decrease much faster than the price of work that happens in the physical world.
This is the opposite of what most people (including me) expected, and will have strange effects.| created_at: Sun Jun 13 15:38:10 +0000 2021 | favorite_count: 14052 | quote_count: 623 | reply_count: 494 | retweet_count: 2336 | is_quote_status: False | retweeted: False | lang: en  the GPT store is live!
https://t.co/AKg1mjlvo2
fun speculation last night about which GPTs will be doing the best by the end of today.| created_at: Wed Jan 10 17:26:36 +0000 2024 | favorite_count: 13975 | quote_count: 608 | reply_count: 1006 | retweet_count: 2427 | is_quote_status: False | retweeted: False | lang: en  we believe the world needs more ai infrastructure--fab capacity, energy, datacenters, etc--than people are currently planning to build.
building massive-scale ai infrastructure, and a resilient supply chain, is crucial to economic competitiveness.
openai will try to help!| created_at: Wed Feb 07 18:17:33 +0000 2024 | favorite_count: 13967 | quote_count: 416 | reply_count: 934 | retweet_count: 1206 | is_quote_status: False | retweeted: False | lang: en  https://t.co/JB4zOjmbTp| created_at: Thu Feb 15 18:43:40 +0000 2024 | favorite_count: 13780 | quote_count: 598 | reply_count: 644 | retweet_count: 1182 | is_quote_status: True | retweeted: False | lang: zxx  hello from redmond! excited for the event tomorrow https://t.co/b7TUr0ti42| created_at: Mon Feb 06 20:10:53 +0000 2023 | favorite_count: 13200 | quote_count: 293 | reply_count: 402 | retweet_count: 538 | is_quote_status: False | retweeted: False | lang: en  is there a word for feeling nostalgic for the time period you’re living through at the time you’re living it?| created_at: Thu Feb 01 17:53:27 +0000 2024 | favorite_count: 13150 | quote_count: 480 | reply_count: 2492 | retweet_count: 733 | is_quote_status: False | retweeted: False | lang: en  im personally getting way too much credit for openai. for a company like ours, the researchers and engineers that create the tech have far more impact than the ceo.
 
if you want to congratulate someone, pick them! hard to overstate the collective talents of that group...| created_at: Thu Dec 08 16:28:07 +0000 2022 | favorite_count: 12972 | quote_count: 95 | reply_count: 266 | retweet_count: 572 | is_quote_status: False | retweeted: False | lang: en  "If you can't figure out what kind of work you like, pay attention to what's easy to concentrate on and gives you energy vs. what makes you tune out and feel tired"
sounds obvious but remains some of the best advice I ever got.| created_at: Sun Jan 30 00:41:23 +0000 2022 | favorite_count: 12804 | quote_count: 117 | reply_count: 88 | retweet_count: 2048 | is_quote_status: False | retweeted: False | lang: en  ❤️🧡💛💚💙💜🖤🤍| created_at: Thu Nov 30 01:15:49 +0000 2023 | favorite_count: 12754 | quote_count: 113 | reply_count: 537 | retweet_count: 817 | is_quote_status: True | retweeted: False | lang: art  i’d bet even more true today!| created_at: Wed Dec 27 04:03:08 +0000 2023 | favorite_count: 12475 | quote_count: 88 | reply_count: 732 | retweet_count: 1002 | is_quote_status: True | retweeted: False | lang: en  the fight for the future is a struggle between technological-driven growth and managed decline.
the growth path has inherent risks and challenges along with its fantastic upside, and the decline path has guaranteed long-term disaster.
stasis is a myth.| created_at: Fri Jan 05 21:35:23 +0000 2024 | favorite_count: 12558 | quote_count: 309 | reply_count: 812 | retweet_count: 1476 | is_quote_status: False | retweeted: False | lang: en  you’re supposed to pour your life force into something and it’s not supposed to always be easy| created_at: Sat Jan 07 18:09:21 +0000 2023 | favorite_count: 12302 | quote_count: 258 | reply_count: 449 | retweet_count: 1776 | is_quote_status: False | retweeted: False | lang: en  there is a new version of GPT-4 Turbo now live in ChatGPT; you should hopefully find it a lot better!
please let us know what you think.| created_at: Sat Nov 11 23:20:56 +0000 2023 | favorite_count: 12347 | quote_count: 143 | reply_count: 872 | retweet_count: 794 | is_quote_status: False | retweeted: False | lang: en  we know that ChatGPT has shortcomings around bias, and are working to improve it.
but directing hate at individual OAI employees because of this is appalling. hit me all you want, but attacking other people here doesn’t help the field advance, and the people doing it know that.| created_at: Wed Feb 01 23:32:01 +0000 2023 | favorite_count: 12289 | quote_count: 387 | reply_count: 1479 | retweet_count: 626 | is_quote_status: False | retweeted: False | lang: en  gpt-4 had a slow start on its new year's resolutions but should now be much less lazy now!| created_at: Sun Feb 04 15:56:46 +0000 2024 | favorite_count: 12251 | quote_count: 187 | reply_count: 742 | retweet_count: 557 | is_quote_status: False | retweeted: False | lang: en  all ChatGPT Plus users getting browsing and plugins over the next week; hope you enjoy!| created_at: Fri May 12 21:59:01 +0000 2023 | favorite_count: 11917 | quote_count: 331 | reply_count: 711 | retweet_count: 1111 | is_quote_status: True | retweeted: False | lang: en  a month ago the most exciting drama on tech twitter was elon and zuck fighting and now it’s that we are transfixed by maybe having an actual room temperature superconductor.
we are so back?| created_at: Tue Aug 01 14:41:56 +0000 2023 | favorite_count: 11872 | quote_count: 115 | reply_count: 593 | retweet_count: 741 | is_quote_status: False | retweeted: False | lang: en  1) What| created_at: Thu Feb 15 20:17:48 +0000 2024 | favorite_count: 11791 | quote_count: 147 | reply_count: 681 | retweet_count: 854 | is_quote_status: True | retweeted: False | lang: en  every few weeks i have a moment where i still can't quite believe we actually made this: https://t.co/8dgDh2robM| created_at: Mon Jun 05 17:23:47 +0000 2023 | favorite_count: 11779 | quote_count: 127 | reply_count: 562 | retweet_count: 695 | is_quote_status: False | retweeted: False | lang: en  @WSJ Concerning| created_at: Fri Apr 14 23:47:30 +0000 2023 | favorite_count: 11739 | quote_count: 241 | reply_count: 790 | retweet_count: 530 | is_quote_status: False | retweeted: False | lang: en  a lot of crazy stories start with too much amphetamines and end with not enough psychedelics| created_at: Sun Nov 13 17:46:10 +0000 2022 | favorite_count: 10966 | quote_count: 76 | reply_count: 296 | retweet_count: 791 | is_quote_status: False | retweeted: False | lang: en  i was hoping that the oppenheimer movie would inspire a generation of kids to be physicists but it really missed the mark on that.
let's get that movie made!
(i think the social network managed to do this for startup founders.)| created_at: Sat Jul 22 17:48:53 +0000 2023 | favorite_count: 11444 | quote_count: 2566 | reply_count: 1932 | retweet_count: 690 | is_quote_status: False | retweeted: False | lang: en
https://twitter.com/sama?ref_src=twsrc%5Egoogle%7Ctwcamp%5Eserp%7Ctwgr%5Eauthor
https://www.ycombinator.com/blog/author/sam-altman
Y Combinator
2019-05-20
None
<div><div><section><h3>Recent Posts By Sam Altman</h3></section><div><h3>All Posts</h3><div><a href="/blog/yc-china-qi-lu"><p>YC China + Qi Lu</p></a><p>by <a href="/blog/author/sam-altman">Sam Altman</a>8/14/2018</p><p>Edit: Read this update onYC China.I am delighted to announce that Qi Lu is joining YC to launch and run YCChina. I have been trying to recruit Qi for many years—he is one of the mostimpressive technologists I know.Our mission at YC is to enable more innovation than any other company in theworld, and to ensure that the benefits of that are fairly spread throughouthumanity.</p><p><a href="/blog/yc-china-qi-lu">Read More </a></p></div><div><a href="/blog/us-visas"><p>US Visas</p></a><p>by <a href="/blog/author/sam-altman">Sam Altman</a>3/9/2017</p><p>We’ve heard from some founders that they’re nervous about applying to YC becausethey worry they won’t be able to get visas to attend interviews or the summerprogram.We will hold a day of interviews in Vancouver for founders we’d like tointerview but can’t get US visas. We will also experiment with allowingcompanies that we’d like to fund but are unable to get visas for the duration ofour three-month program to participate remotely.</p><p><a href="/blog/us-visas">Read More </a></p></div><div><a href="/blog/onlineclass"><p>YC’s Online Class (Sign up at StartupSchool.org)</p></a><p>by <a href="/blog/author/sam-altman">Sam Altman</a>3/6/2017</p><p> We’re excited to announce our new online Startup School, with classes beginningon April 5. Anyone can sign up at StartupSchool.org for the 10-week massively open online course (MOOC), starting today. We want toteach everyone how to start a startup and help them along the way with guidancefrom people who’ve started companies.</p><p><a href="/blog/onlineclass">Read More </a></p></div><div><a href="/blog/dilution"><p>Dilution</p></a><p>by <a href="/blog/author/sam-altman">Sam Altman</a>3/1/2017</p><p>There has probably been more capital looking to invest in private technologycompanies in the past five years than any five-year period before.An obvious consequence of this increased supply is that company valuations (i.e.prices) have gone up, and so has the amount of capital raised by most companies.A non-obvious consequence is that although people raise more money at highervaluations, they still end up selling much more of the company.</p><p><a href="/blog/dilution">Read More </a></p></div><div><a href="/blog/2017-yc-annual-letter"><p>2017 YC Annual Letter</p></a><p>by <a href="/blog/author/sam-altman">Sam Altman</a>2/20/2017</p><p>Dear YC Community:In response to a comment onHacker News, I’m going to try writing an annual letter to the YC community withan update on our progress.Our mission is to enable the most innovation of any company in the world inorder to make the future great for everyone. We believe new technology, economicgrowth, and new ideas about how our society might function are more importantthan ever before.</p><p><a href="/blog/2017-yc-annual-letter">Read More </a></p></div><div><a href="/blog/yc-research-universal-healthcare"><p>YC Research: Universal Healthcare</p></a><p>by <a href="/blog/author/sam-altman">Sam Altman</a>2/7/2017</p><p>Four years ago, Watsi became YC’s first non-profit. They’vesince raised over $7.5 million to fund life-changing healthcare for more than10,000 patients in 24 countries.Today, we’re excited to announce that YC Research is funding Watsi for a projectthat will study using technology to improve the quality and reduce the cost ofhealthcare.</p><p><a href="/blog/yc-research-universal-healthcare">Read More </a></p></div><nav><p>Showing 1 to 10 of 71 total posts</p></nav></div></div>||||I|||| Accelerator
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 Recent Posts By Sam Altman

 Geoff Ralston for President

 I’m delighted to announce that Geoff Ralston is taking over for me as Presidentof YC.I’ve known Geoff for almost ten years, he’s been a ...

 YC News

 Sam Altman

 Sam Altman

 5/20/2019

 YC 120

 The world is shaped by people with intelligence, drive and vision. At YC, we’velearned a lot about cultivating a network of such people ...

 YC Events YC News

 Sam Altman

 Sam Altman

 1/29/2019

 Frontier Carbon Removal Technologies

 We’re excited to announce our new and expanded request for startups andnonprofits focusing on frontier technologies to remove carbon from theatmosphere. Read the RFS ...

 YC News rfs

 Sam Altman

 Sam Altman

 10/23/2018

 All Posts

 YC China + Qi Lu

 by Sam Altman 8/14/2018

 Edit: Read this update onYC China.I am delighted to announce that Qi Lu is joining YC to launch and run YCChina. I have been trying to recruit Qi for many years—he is one of the mostimpressive technologists I know.Our mission at YC is to enable more innovation than any other company in theworld, and to ensure that the benefits of that are fairly spread throughouthumanity.

 Read More

 US Visas

 by Sam Altman 3/9/2017

 We’ve heard from some founders that they’re nervous about applying to YC becausethey worry they won’t be able to get visas to attend interviews or the summerprogram.We will hold a day of interviews in Vancouver for founders we’d like tointerview but can’t get US visas. We will also experiment with allowingcompanies that we’d like to fund but are unable to get visas for the duration ofour three-month program to participate remotely.

 Read More

 YC’s Online Class (Sign up at StartupSchool.org)

 by Sam Altman 3/6/2017

 We’re excited to announce our new online Startup School, with classes beginningon April 5. Anyone can sign up at StartupSchool.org for the 10-week massively open online course (MOOC), starting today. We want toteach everyone how to start a startup and help them along the way with guidancefrom people who’ve started companies.

 Read More

 Dilution

 by Sam Altman 3/1/2017

 There has probably been more capital looking to invest in private technologycompanies in the past five years than any five-year period before.An obvious consequence of this increased supply is that company valuations (i.e.prices) have gone up, and so has the amount of capital raised by most companies.A non-obvious consequence is that although people raise more money at highervaluations, they still end up selling much more of the company.

 Read More

 Drew Houston on How to Build the Future

 by Sam Altman 2/23/2017

 Drew is the founder and CEO of Dropbox.Rejected once before, Drew eventually went through Y Combinator in the Winter of2007 with Dropbox and has since grown it to over 500 million users today.

 Read More

 2017 YC Annual Letter

 by Sam Altman 2/20/2017

 Dear YC Community:In response to a comment onHacker News, I’m going to try writing an annual letter to the YC community withan update on our progress.Our mission is to enable the most innovation of any company in the world inorder to make the future great for everyone. We believe new technology, economicgrowth, and new ideas about how our society might function are more importantthan ever before.

 Read More

 YC Research: Universal Healthcare

 by Sam Altman 2/7/2017

 Four years ago, Watsi became YC’s first non-profit. They’vesince raised over $7.5 million to fund life-changing healthcare for more than10,000 patients in 24 countries.Today, we’re excited to announce that YC Research is funding Watsi for a projectthat will study using technology to improve the quality and reduce the cost ofhealthcare.

 Read More

 Showing 1 to 10 of 71 total posts

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Recent Posts By Sam Altman   All Posts   YC China + Qi Lu  by Sam Altman8/14/2018 Edit: Read this update onYC China.I am delighted to announce that Qi Lu is joining YC to launch and run YCChina. I have been trying to recruit Qi for many years—he is one of the mostimpressive technologists I know.Our mission at YC is to enable more innovation than any other company in theworld, and to ensure that the benefits of that are fairly spread throughouthumanity.  Read More      US Visas  by Sam Altman3/9/2017 We’ve heard from some founders that they’re nervous about applying to YC becausethey worry they won’t be able to get visas to attend interviews or the summerprogram.We will hold a day of interviews in Vancouver for founders we’d like tointerview but can’t get US visas. We will also experiment with allowingcompanies that we’d like to fund but are unable to get visas for the duration ofour three-month program to participate remotely.  Read More      YC’s Online Class (Sign up at StartupSchool.org)  by Sam Altman3/6/2017  We’re excited to announce our new online Startup School, with classes beginningon April 5. Anyone can sign up at StartupSchool.org for the 10-week massively open online course (MOOC), starting today. We want toteach everyone how to start a startup and help them along the way with guidancefrom people who’ve started companies.  Read More      Dilution  by Sam Altman3/1/2017 There has probably been more capital looking to invest in private technologycompanies in the past five years than any five-year period before.An obvious consequence of this increased supply is that company valuations (i.e.prices) have gone up, and so has the amount of capital raised by most companies.A non-obvious consequence is that although people raise more money at highervaluations, they still end up selling much more of the company.  Read More      2017 YC Annual Letter  by Sam Altman2/20/2017 Dear YC Community:In response to a comment onHacker News, I’m going to try writing an annual letter to the YC community withan update on our progress.Our mission is to enable the most innovation of any company in the world inorder to make the future great for everyone. We believe new technology, economicgrowth, and new ideas about how our society might function are more importantthan ever before.  Read More      YC Research: Universal Healthcare  by Sam Altman2/7/2017 Four years ago, Watsi became YC’s first non-profit. They’vesince raised over $7.5 million to fund life-changing healthcare for more than10,000 patients in 24 countries.Today, we’re excited to announce that YC Research is funding Watsi for a projectthat will study using technology to improve the quality and reduce the cost ofhealthcare.  Read More     Showing 1 to 10 of 71 total posts
Y Combinator
https://www.ycombinator.com/blog/author/sam-altman
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sam_Altman
Sam Altman - Wikipedia
2009-04-19
None
<div><div>
	<p>From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia</p>
	</div><div>
<table><tbody><tr><th><p>Sam Altman</p></th></tr><tr><td><a href="/wiki/File:Sam_Altman_TechCrunch_SF_2019_Day_2_Oct_3_(cropped)_(cropped).jpg"></a><p>Altman in 2019</p></td></tr><tr><th>Born</th><td><p>Samuel H. Altman</p><br />April 22, 1985 (age 37)<br /><div><p><a href="/wiki/Chicago">Chicago</a>, <a href="/wiki/Illinois">Illinois</a>, U.S.</p></div></td></tr><tr><th>Education</th><td><a href="/wiki/Stanford_University">Stanford University</a> (dropped out)</td></tr><tr><th>Occupation</th><td>Entrepreneur</td></tr><tr><th>Known for</th><td><a href="/wiki/Loopt">Loopt</a>, <a href="/wiki/Y_Combinator">Y Combinator</a>, <a href="/wiki/OpenAI">OpenAI</a></td></tr><tr><th>Title</th><td>CEO of OpenAI LP and former president of Y Combinator</td></tr><tr><th>Website</th><td><a href="https://blog.samaltman.com/">Official website</a> <a href="https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q7407093#P856"></a></td></tr></tbody></table>
<p><b>Samuel H. Altman</b> ( <a href="/wiki/Help:Pronunciation_respelling_key"><i>AWLT-mən</i></a>; born April 22, 1985) is an American <a href="/wiki/Entrepreneur">entrepreneur</a>, <a href="/wiki/Investor">investor</a>, <a href="/wiki/Programmer">programmer</a>, and <a href="/wiki/Blog">blogger</a>.<sup><a href="#cite_note-1">[1]</a></sup> He is the CEO of <a href="/wiki/OpenAI">OpenAI</a> and the former president of <a href="/wiki/Y_Combinator">Y Combinator</a>.<sup><a href="#cite_note-2">[2]</a></sup><sup><a href="#cite_note-3">[3]</a></sup>
</p>
<h2>Early life and education[<a href="/w/index.php?title=Sam_Altman&amp;action=edit&amp;section=1">edit</a>]</h2>
<p>Altman grew up in <a href="/wiki/St._Louis,_Missouri">St. Louis, Missouri</a>; his mother is a dermatologist. He received his first computer at the age of eight.<sup><a href="#cite_note-esquire.com-4">[4]</a></sup> He was born to a Jewish family.<sup><a href="#cite_note-5">[5]</a></sup> For high school, he attended <a href="/wiki/John_Burroughs_School">John Burroughs School</a> and he studied computer science at <a href="/wiki/Stanford_University">Stanford University</a> until dropping out in 2005.<sup><a href="#cite_note-6">[6]</a></sup> In 2017, he received an honorary degree from the <a href="/wiki/University_of_Waterloo">University of Waterloo</a>.<sup><a href="#cite_note-7">[7]</a></sup>
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<h2>Career[<a href="/w/index.php?title=Sam_Altman&amp;action=edit&amp;section=2">edit</a>]</h2>
<h3>Loopt[<a href="/w/index.php?title=Sam_Altman&amp;action=edit&amp;section=3">edit</a>]</h3>
<p>In 2005, at age 19,<sup><a href="#cite_note-8">[8]</a></sup> Altman co-founded and became <a href="/wiki/Chief_executive_officer">CEO</a> of <a href="/wiki/Loopt">Loopt</a>,<sup><a href="#cite_note-9">[9]</a></sup> a location-based <a href="/wiki/Social_networking_service">social networking</a> mobile application. After raising more than $30 million in venture capital, Loopt was shut down in 2012 after failing to get traction. It was acquired by the <a href="/wiki/Green_Dot_Corporation">Green Dot Corporation</a> for $43.4 million.<sup><a href="#cite_note-10">[10]</a></sup><sup><a href="#cite_note-11">[11]</a></sup>
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<h3>Y Combinator[<a href="/w/index.php?title=Sam_Altman&amp;action=edit&amp;section=4">edit</a>]</h3>
<p>Altman began as a part-time partner at <a href="/wiki/Y_Combinator">Y Combinator</a> in 2011.<sup><a href="#cite_note-:0-12">[12]</a></sup> In February 2014, Altman was named president of Y Combinator by its co-founder, <a href="/wiki/Paul_Graham_(computer_programmer)">Paul Graham</a>.<sup><a href="#cite_note-13">[13]</a></sup><sup><a href="#cite_note-14">[14]</a></sup> Altman's first batch of investments included Loopt. In a 2014 blog post, Altman said that the total valuation of Y Combinator companies had surpassed $65 billion, including well-known companies like <a href="/wiki/Airbnb">Airbnb</a>, <a href="/wiki/Dropbox_(service)">Dropbox</a>, <a href="/wiki/Zenefits">Zenefits</a> and <a href="/wiki/Stripe_(company)">Stripe</a>.<sup><a href="#cite_note-15">[15]</a></sup> In September 2016, Altman announced that he would become president of YC Group, which included Y Combinator and other units.<sup><a href="#cite_note-16">[16]</a></sup>
</p><p>Altman said that he hoped to expand Y Combinator to fund 1,000 new companies per year. He also tried to expand the types of companies funded by YC, especially "hard technology" companies.<sup><a href="#cite_note-17">[17]</a></sup>
</p><p>In October 2015, Altman announced YC Continuity, a $700 million growth-stage <a href="/wiki/Equity_fund">equity fund</a> that invests in YC companies.<sup><a href="#cite_note-18">[18]</a></sup> Also in October 2015, Altman announced Y Combinator Research, a non-profit research lab, and donated $10 million to the group.<sup><a href="#cite_note-19">[19]</a></sup> YC Research has thus far announced research on basic income, the future of computing, education, and building new cities.<sup><a href="#cite_note-20">[20]</a></sup>
</p><p>Altman was named the top investor under 30 by <i><a href="/wiki/Forbes">Forbes</a></i> magazine in 2015,<sup><a href="#cite_note-21">[21]</a></sup> one of the "Best Young Entrepreneurs in Technology" by <i><a href="/wiki/Businessweek">Businessweek</a></i> magazine in 2008<sup><a href="#cite_note-22">[22]</a></sup> and listed as one of the five most interesting startup founders between 1979 and 2009 by his colleague Paul Graham.<sup><a href="#cite_note-23">[23]</a></sup>
</p><p>In March 2019, YC announced Altman's transitioning into a Chairman position to focus more on <a href="/wiki/OpenAI">OpenAI</a>.<sup><a href="#cite_note-24">[24]</a></sup> This decision came shortly after YC announced it would be moving its headquarters to San Francisco.<sup><a href="#cite_note-25">[25]</a></sup> As of early 2020, he was no longer affiliated with YC.
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<h3>Angel investing[<a href="/w/index.php?title=Sam_Altman&amp;action=edit&amp;section=5">edit</a>]</h3>
<p>Altman is an investor in many companies, including <a href="/wiki/Airbnb">Airbnb</a>, Stripe, <a href="/wiki/Reddit">Reddit</a>, <a href="/wiki/Asana_(software)">Asana</a>, <a href="/wiki/Pinterest">Pinterest</a>, <a href="/wiki/Teespring">Teespring</a>, Zenefits, FarmLogs, True North, <a href="/wiki/Shoptiques">Shoptiques</a>, <a href="/wiki/Instacart">Instacart</a>, <a href="/wiki/Optimizely">Optimizely</a>, <a href="/wiki/Verbling">Verbling</a>, <a href="/wiki/Soylent_(drink)">Soylent</a>, Reserve, Vicarious, Clever, and Notable PDF (now Kami).<sup><a href="#cite_note-Angel_List-26">[26]</a></sup><sup><a href="#cite_note-27">[27]</a></sup>
</p><p>He was the CEO of <a href="/wiki/Reddit">Reddit</a> for eight days in 2014 after CEO <a href="/wiki/Yishan_Wong">Yishan Wong</a> resigned.<sup><a href="#cite_note-28">[28]</a></sup> He announced the return of <a href="/wiki/Steve_Huffman">Steve Huffman</a> as CEO on July 10, 2015.<sup><a href="#cite_note-29">[29]</a></sup>
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<h3>Nuclear energy[<a href="/w/index.php?title=Sam_Altman&amp;action=edit&amp;section=6">edit</a>]</h3>
<p>He is chairman of the board for <a href="/wiki/Helion_Energy">Helion</a> and Oklo, two nuclear energy companies. He has said that nuclear energy is one of the most important areas of technological development.<sup><a href="#cite_note-30">[30]</a></sup>
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<h3>OpenAI[<a href="/w/index.php?title=Sam_Altman&amp;action=edit&amp;section=7">edit</a>]</h3>
<p>Altman is the CEO of <a href="/wiki/OpenAI">OpenAI</a>, which is a capped-profit research company whose goal is to advance artificial intelligence in a way that is most likely to benefit humanity as a whole, rather than cause harm.<sup><a href="#cite_note-31">[31]</a></sup> The organization was initially funded by Altman, Brockman, <a href="/wiki/Elon_Musk">Elon Musk</a>, <a href="/wiki/Jessica_Livingston">Jessica Livingston</a>, <a href="/wiki/Peter_Thiel">Peter Thiel</a>, <a href="/wiki/Amazon_Web_Services">Amazon Web Services</a>, <a href="/wiki/Infosys">Infosys</a> and YC Research. In total, when the company launched in 2015, it had raised $1 billion from outside funders.<sup><a href="#cite_note-32">[32]</a></sup>
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<h3>Worldcoin[<a href="/w/index.php?title=Sam_Altman&amp;action=edit&amp;section=8">edit</a>]</h3>
<p>Altman co-founded <a href="/w/index.php?title=Worldcoin&amp;action=edit&amp;redlink=1">Worldcoin</a> in 2020. Worldcoin aims to give its new digital money to every human on Earth for free by using privacy-preserving <a href="/wiki/Iris_recognition">iris recognition</a> to ensure that its users do not claim their free share more than once.<sup><a href="#cite_note-33">[33]</a></sup> Worldcoin paused its work in multiple countries after local contractors departed or regulations made doing business impossible.<sup><a href="#cite_note-34">[34]</a></sup>
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<h2>Philanthropy[<a href="/w/index.php?title=Sam_Altman&amp;action=edit&amp;section=9">edit</a>]</h2>
<p>During the <a href="/wiki/COVID-19_pandemic">COVID-19 pandemic</a> Altman helped fund and create Project Covalence which aimed to help researchers rapidly launch clinical trials in partnership with TrialSpark, a clinical trial startup.<sup><a href="#cite_note-35">[35]</a></sup><sup><a href="#cite_note-36">[36]</a></sup>
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<h2>Politics[<a href="/w/index.php?title=Sam_Altman&amp;action=edit&amp;section=10">edit</a>]</h2>
<p>According to reporting by <a href="/wiki/Vox_(website)"><i>Vox</i></a>'s <i>Recode</i>, there was speculation that Altman would run for <a href="/wiki/Governor_of_California">Governor of California</a> in the <a href="/wiki/2018_California_gubernatorial_election">2018 election</a>, which he did not enter. In 2018, Altman launched "The United Slate", a political movement focused on fixing housing and healthcare policy.<sup><a href="#cite_note-37">[37]</a></sup>
</p><p>In 2019, Altman held a fundraiser at his house in San Francisco for Democratic presidential candidate <a href="/wiki/Andrew_Yang">Andrew Yang</a>.<sup><a href="#cite_note-38">[38]</a></sup> In May 2020, Altman donated $250,000 to <a href="/wiki/American_Bridge_21st_Century">American Bridge 21st Century</a>, a <a href="/wiki/Political_action_committee">Super-PAC</a> supporting Democratic presidential candidate <a href="/wiki/Joe_Biden">Joe Biden</a>.<sup><a href="#cite_note-39">[39]</a></sup><sup><a href="#cite_note-40">[40]</a></sup>
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<h2>Personal life[<a href="/w/index.php?title=Sam_Altman&amp;action=edit&amp;section=11">edit</a>]</h2>
<p>Altman has been <a href="/wiki/Vegetarianism">vegetarian</a> since childhood.<sup><a href="#cite_note-41">[41]</a></sup><sup><a href="#cite_note-42">[42]</a></sup> Altman is gay and has been out since his teen years.<sup><a href="#cite_note-43">[43]</a></sup> He dated his Loopt co-founder Nick Sivo for nine years before they broke up shortly after the company was acquired.<sup><a href="#cite_note-44">[44]</a></sup>
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<h2>References[<a href="/w/index.php?title=Sam_Altman&amp;action=edit&amp;section=12">edit</a>]</h2>
<div>
<ol>
<li><b><a href="#cite_ref-1">^</a></b> <cite><a href="http://blog.samaltman.com/">"Sam Altman"</a>. <i>SamAltman.com</i>. <a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20151211175934/http://blog.samaltman.com/">Archived</a> from the original on December 11, 2015. Retrieved December 15, 2015.</cite>
</li>
<li><b><a href="#cite_ref-2">^</a></b> <cite>Graham, Paul (April 24, 2014). <a href="http://blog.ycombinator.com/sam-altman-for-president">"Sam Altman for President"</a>. <i>Y Combinator</i>. <a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20170325040953/http://blog.ycombinator.com/sam-altman-for-president/">Archived</a> from the original on March 25, 2017. Retrieved March 20, 2017.</cite>
</li>
<li><b><a href="#cite_ref-3">^</a></b> <cite><a href="https://openai.com/blog/introducing-openai/">"OpenAI"</a>. December 12, 2015. <a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20170808104802/https://openai.com/blog/introducing-openai/">Archived</a> from the original on August 8, 2017. Retrieved March 20, 2017.</cite>
</li>
<li><b><a href="#cite_ref-esquire.com_4-0">^</a></b> <cite>Junod, Tom (December 18, 2014). <a href="http://www.esquire.com/news-politics/interviews/a30763/sam-altman-interview-2014/">"How Venture Capitalists Find Opportunities in the Future"</a>. <i><a href="/wiki/Esquire_(magazine)">Esquire</a></i>. <a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20151220145855/http://www.esquire.com/news-politics/interviews/a30763/sam-altman-interview-2014/">Archived</a> from the original on December 20, 2015. Retrieved December 15, 2015.</cite>
</li>
<li><b><a href="#cite_ref-5">^</a></b> <cite>Friend, Tad (October 3, 2016). <a href="https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2016/10/10/sam-altmans-manifest-destiny">"Sam Altman's Manifest Destiny"</a>. <i>The New Yorker</i>. <a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20170517010534/http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2016/10/10/sam-altmans-manifest-destiny">Archived</a> from the original on May 17, 2017. Retrieved May 17, 2017.</cite>
</li>
<li><b><a href="#cite_ref-6">^</a></b> <cite><a href="http://ycombinator.com/people.html">"People"</a>. <i><a href="/wiki/Y_Combinator_(company)">Y Combinator</a></i>. <a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20140625021419/http://ycombinator.com/people.html">Archived</a> from the original on June 25, 2014. Retrieved December 15, 2015.</cite>
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<li><b><a href="#cite_ref-7">^</a></b> <cite><a href="https://uwaterloo.ca/registrar/spring-2017-honorary-and-award-recipients">"Spring 2017 honorary and award recipients"</a>. <i>Registrar's Office</i>. University of Waterloo. <a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20171201133159/https://uwaterloo.ca/registrar/spring-2017-honorary-and-award-recipients">Archived</a> from the original on December 1, 2017. Retrieved July 7, 2017.</cite>
</li>
<li><b><a href="#cite_ref-8">^</a></b> <cite>Ankeny, Jason (April 25, 2015). <a href="http://www.entrepreneur.com/article/244508">"Meet Y Combinator's Bold Whiz Kid Boss"</a>. <a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20151222150644/http://www.entrepreneur.com/article/244508">Archived</a> from the original on December 22, 2015. Retrieved December 15, 2015.</cite>
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<li><b><a href="#cite_ref-9">^</a></b> <cite><a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20120216022416/http://www.loopt.com/about/company/executives/">"Executives"</a>. <i><a href="/wiki/Loopt">Loopt</a></i>. Archived from <a href="http://www.loopt.com/about/company/executives">the original</a> on February 16, 2012. Retrieved December 15, 2015.</cite>
</li>
<li><b><a href="#cite_ref-10">^</a></b> <cite><a href="https://blogs.wsj.com/digits/2012/03/09/startup-loopt-lands-with-green-dot/">"Startup Loopt Lands with Green Dot"</a>. <i><a href="/wiki/The_Wall_Street_Journal">The Wall Street Journal</a></i>. March 9, 2012. <a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20120313052152/http://blogs.wsj.com/digits/2012/03/09/startup-loopt-lands-with-green-dot/">Archived</a> from the original on March 13, 2012. Retrieved March 13, 2012.</cite>
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<li><b><a href="#cite_ref-11">^</a></b> <cite><a href="https://mastersofscale.com/sam-altman-why-customer-love-is-all-you-need/">"Sam Altman: Why customer love is all you need | Masters of Scale podcast"</a>. <i>WaitWhat</i>. <a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20180320230702/https://mastersofscale.com/sam-altman-why-customer-love-is-all-you-need/">Archived</a> from the original on March 20, 2018. Retrieved March 20, 2018.</cite>
</li>
<li><b><a href="#cite_ref-:0_12-0">^</a></b> <cite><a href="http://social.techcrunch.com/2019/03/08/y-combinator-president-sam-altman-is-stepping-down-amid-a-series-of-changes-at-the-accelerator/">"Y Combinator president Sam Altman is stepping down amid a series of changes at the accelerator"</a>. <i>TechCrunch</i>. March 8, 2019. Retrieved March 18, 2019.</cite>
</li>
<li><b><a href="#cite_ref-13">^</a></b> <cite><a href="http://social.techcrunch.com/2015/11/06/garry-tan-says-goodbye-to-y-combinator/">"Garry Tan Says Goodbye to Y Combinator"</a>. <i>TechCrunch</i>. November 6, 2015. Retrieved March 18, 2019.</cite>
</li>
<li><b><a href="#cite_ref-14">^</a></b> <cite>Graham, Paul (April 24, 2014). <a href="http://blog.ycombinator.com/sam-altman-for-president">"Sam Altman for President"</a>. <i>Y Combinator</i>. <a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20170325040953/http://blog.ycombinator.com/sam-altman-for-president/">Archived</a> from the original on March 25, 2017. Retrieved December 15, 2015.</cite>
</li>
<li><b><a href="#cite_ref-15">^</a></b> <cite><a href="https://blog.ycombinator.com/yc-stats">"YC Stats"</a>. Y Combinator. August 26, 2015. <a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20151218203854/http://blog.ycombinator.com/yc-stats">Archived</a> from the original on December 18, 2015. Retrieved December 19, 2015.</cite>
</li>
<li><b><a href="#cite_ref-16">^</a></b> <cite>Altman, Sam. <a href="https://blog.ycombinator.com/yc-changes">"YC Changes"</a>. <i>Y Combinator</i>. <a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20161107155921/https://blog.ycombinator.com/yc-changes">Archived</a> from the original on November 7, 2016. Retrieved November 7, 2016.</cite>
</li>
<li><b><a href="#cite_ref-17">^</a></b> <cite><a href="http://www.fastcompany.com/3044282/the-y-combinator-chronicles/california-dreamin">"Y Combinator President Sam Altman is Dreaming Big"</a>. <i>Fast Company</i>. April 16, 2015. <a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20150722024957/http://www.fastcompany.com/3044282/the-y-combinator-chronicles/california-dreamin">Archived</a> from the original on July 22, 2015. Retrieved July 22, 2015.</cite>
</li>
<li><b><a href="#cite_ref-18">^</a></b> 
<ul><li><cite><a href="http://blog.ycombinator.com/yc-continuity-fund">"YC Continuity"</a>. Y Combinator. October 15, 2015. <a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20151218203823/http://blog.ycombinator.com/yc-continuity-fund">Archived</a> from the original on December 18, 2015. Retrieved December 19, 2015.</cite></li>
<li><cite><a href="https://venturebeat.com/2015/10/15/y-combinator-raises-700m-to-keep-funding-yc-startups-as-they-mature/">"YC Continuity"</a>. <i>VentureBeat</i>. October 15, 2015. <a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20151222185526/http://venturebeat.com/2015/10/15/y-combinator-raises-700m-to-keep-funding-yc-startups-as-they-mature/">Archived</a> from the original on December 22, 2015. Retrieved December 19, 2015.</cite></li></ul>
</li>
<li><b><a href="#cite_ref-19">^</a></b> <cite><a href="https://blog.ycombinator.com/yc-research">"YC Research"</a>. Y Combinator. October 7, 2015. <a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20160215225536/https://blog.ycombinator.com/yc-research">Archived</a> from the original on February 15, 2016. Retrieved February 19, 2016.</cite>
</li>
<li><b><a href="#cite_ref-20">^</a></b> <cite><a href="https://ycr.org/">"Y Combinator Research"</a>. <i>YC Research</i>. <a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20160611042811/https://ycr.org/">Archived</a> from the original on June 11, 2016. Retrieved August 3, 2016.</cite>
</li>
<li><b><a href="#cite_ref-21">^</a></b> <cite><a href="https://www.forbes.com/consent/?toURL=https://www.forbes.com/30-under-30/2022">"Forbes' 30 Under 30 2015: Venture Capital"</a>. <i><a href="/wiki/Forbes">Forbes</a></i>. January 5, 2015. <a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20150220065135/http://www.forbes.com/30under30/#/venture-capital">Archived</a> from the original on February 20, 2015. Retrieved February 28, 2015.</cite>
</li>
<li><b><a href="#cite_ref-22">^</a></b> <cite><a href="http://images.businessweek.com/ss/07/03/0326_tech_entrepreneurs/source/9.htm">"Tech's Best Young Entrepreneurs"</a>. <i><a href="/wiki/Businessweek">Businessweek</a></i>. April 18, 2008. <a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20090428015115/http://images.businessweek.com/ss/07/03/0326_tech_entrepreneurs/source/9.htm">Archived</a> from the original on April 28, 2009. Retrieved April 19, 2009.</cite>
</li>
<li><b><a href="#cite_ref-23">^</a></b> <cite><a href="/wiki/Paul_Graham_(computer_programmer)">Graham, Paul</a> (April 2009). <a href="http://www.paulgraham.com/5founders.html">"Five Founders"</a>. <a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20090417012020/http://www.paulgraham.com/5founders.html">Archived</a> from the original on April 17, 2009. Retrieved April 19, 2009.</cite>
</li>
<li><b><a href="#cite_ref-24">^</a></b> <cite>Loizos, Connie (March 9, 2019). <a href="http://social.techcrunch.com/2019/03/09/did-sam-altman-make-yc-better-or-worse/">"Did Sam Altman make YC better or worse?"</a>. <i>TechCrunch</i>. Retrieved February 3, 2020.</cite>
</li>
<li><b><a href="#cite_ref-25">^</a></b> <cite><a href="http://social.techcrunch.com/2019/03/08/y-combinator-president-sam-altman-is-stepping-down-amid-a-series-of-changes-at-the-accelerator/">"Y Combinator president Sam Altman is stepping down amid a series of changes at the accelerator"</a>. <i>TechCrunch</i>. March 8, 2019. Retrieved February 3, 2020.</cite>
</li>
<li><b><a href="#cite_ref-Angel_List_26-0">^</a></b> <cite>Altman, Sam. <a href="https://angel.co/sama/syndicate">"Angel List"</a>. <i>Angel List</i>. <a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20150509161145/https://angel.co/sama/syndicate">Archived</a> from the original on May 9, 2015. Retrieved April 20, 2015.</cite>
</li>
<li><b><a href="#cite_ref-27">^</a></b> <cite><a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20170405210802/https://www.yahoo.com/tech/notable-pdf-built-annotation-tool-130003639.html">"How Notable PDF built an annotation tool for PDFs on the web"</a>. April 5, 2017. Archived from <a href="https://www.yahoo.com/tech/s/notable-pdf-built-annotation-tool-130003639.html">the original</a> on April 5, 2017. Retrieved March 26, 2018.</cite>
</li>
<li><b><a href="#cite_ref-28">^</a></b> <cite><a href="http://blog.samaltman.com/a-new-team-at-reddit">"A New Team At Reddit"</a>. Sam Altman. November 13, 2014. <a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20150213043217/http://blog.samaltman.com/a-new-team-at-reddit">Archived</a> from the original on February 13, 2015. Retrieved February 13, 2015.</cite>
</li>
<li><b><a href="#cite_ref-29">^</a></b> <cite><a href="https://www.reddit.com/comments/3cucye/">"An Old Team At Reddit"</a>. <a href="/wiki/Reddit">reddit</a>. <a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20151226130417/https://www.reddit.com/comments/3cucye/">Archived</a> from the original on December 26, 2015. Retrieved July 13, 2015.</cite>
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<li><b><a href="#cite_ref-30">^</a></b> <cite><a href="http://blog.samaltman.com/energy/">"Energy"</a>. Sam Altman. <a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20150629201610/http://blog.samaltman.com/energy">Archived</a> from the original on June 29, 2015. Retrieved July 13, 2015.</cite>
</li>
<li><b><a href="#cite_ref-31">^</a></b> <cite><a href="https://openai.com/blog/introducing-openai/">"OpenAI"</a>. December 12, 2015. <a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20170808104802/https://openai.com/blog/introducing-openai/">Archived</a> from the original on August 8, 2017. Retrieved December 15, 2015.</cite>
</li>
<li><b><a href="#cite_ref-32">^</a></b> <cite>Olanoff, Drew (December 11, 2015). <a href="https://techcrunch.com/2015/12/11/non-profit-openai-launches-with-backing-from-elon-musk-and-sam-altman/">"Artificial Intelligence Nonprofit OpenAI Launches With Backing From Elon Musk And Sam Altman"</a>. <i>TechCrunch</i>. <a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20221020165718/https://techcrunch.com/2015/12/11/non-profit-openai-launches-with-backing-from-elon-musk-and-sam-altman/">Archived</a> from the original on October 20, 2022. Retrieved October 20, 2022.</cite>
</li>
<li><b><a href="#cite_ref-33">^</a></b> <cite><a href="https://www.forbes.com/sites/tatianakoffman/2021/10/21/worldcoin-wants-to-give-cryptocurrency-to-every-human-on-earth/?sh=1f22f79aefc8">"Worldcoin Wants To Give Cryptocurrency To Every Human On Earth"</a>. <i><a href="/wiki/Forbes">Forbes</a></i>. <a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20220908173411/https://www.forbes.com/sites/tatianakoffman/2021/10/21/worldcoin-wants-to-give-cryptocurrency-to-every-human-on-earth/?sh=1f22f79aefc8">Archived</a> from the original on September 8, 2022. Retrieved September 8, 2022.</cite>
</li>
<li><b><a href="#cite_ref-34">^</a></b> <cite><a href="https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2022-03-16/worldcoin-the-eyeball-scanning-crypto-unicorn-hits-signup-snags">"Crypto Startup That Wants to Scan Everyone's Eyeballs Is Having Some Trouble"</a>. <i><a href="/wiki/Bloomberg_News">Bloomberg News</a></i>. March 16, 2022. <a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20220316142840/https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2022-03-16/worldcoin-the-eyeball-scanning-crypto-unicorn-hits-signup-snags">Archived</a> from the original on March 16, 2022. Retrieved March 16, 2022.</cite>
</li>
<li><b><a href="#cite_ref-35">^</a></b> <cite><a href="https://www.statnews.com/2020/06/16/tech-investor-covid-trials/">"Teaming tech and pharma, effort seeks to speed Covid-19 clinical trials"</a>. <i>STAT</i>. June 16, 2020. <a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20201018203629/https://www.statnews.com/2020/06/16/tech-investor-covid-trials/">Archived</a> from the original on October 18, 2020. Retrieved October 17, 2020.</cite>
</li>
<li><b><a href="#cite_ref-36">^</a></b> <cite><a href="https://blog.samaltman.com/project-covalence">"Project Covalence"</a>. <i>Sam Altman</i>. <a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20201022010009/https://blog.samaltman.com/project-covalence">Archived</a> from the original on October 22, 2020. Retrieved October 17, 2020.</cite>
</li>
<li><b><a href="#cite_ref-37">^</a></b> <cite>Romm, Tony (July 31, 2017). <a href="https://www.vox.com/2017/7/31/16066640/sam-altman-united-slate-health-care-housing-california-2018-midterm-elections-trump">"Sam Altman will spend big on a new political movement to fix U.S. housing, health care and more"</a>. <i>Vox</i>. <a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20230119221420/https://www.vox.com/2017/7/31/16066640/sam-altman-united-slate-health-care-housing-california-2018-midterm-elections-trump">Archived</a> from the original on January 19, 2023. Retrieved January 19, 2023.</cite>
</li>
<li><b><a href="#cite_ref-38">^</a></b> <cite>Russell, Melia. <a href="https://www.businessinsider.com/andrew-yang-talks-tech-san-francisco-sam-altman-fundraiser-2019-11">"Andrew Yang preached his tech-friendly gospel at Sam Altman's San Francisco house: You can't treat tech like oil companies and breaking up Amazon won't bring malls back"</a>. <i>Business Insider</i>. <a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20200702061954/https://www.businessinsider.com/andrew-yang-talks-tech-san-francisco-sam-altman-fundraiser-2019-11">Archived</a> from the original on July 2, 2020. Retrieved June 30, 2020.</cite>
</li>
<li><b><a href="#cite_ref-39">^</a></b> <cite>Tindera, Michela. <a href="https://www.forbes.com/sites/michelatindera/2020/05/22/silicon-valleys-sam-altman-gave-250000-to-democratic-super-pac-supporting-biden/">"Silicon Valley's Sam Altman Gave $250,000 To Democratic Super-PAC Supporting Biden"</a>. <i>Forbes</i>. <a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20200703062136/https://www.forbes.com/sites/michelatindera/2020/05/22/silicon-valleys-sam-altman-gave-250000-to-democratic-super-pac-supporting-biden/">Archived</a> from the original on July 3, 2020. Retrieved June 30, 2020.</cite>
</li>
<li><b><a href="#cite_ref-40">^</a></b> <cite><a href="https://docquery.fec.gov/pdf/730/202005219239481730/202005219239481730.pdf">"FEC Filings"</a> (PDF). <a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20200609045119/https://docquery.fec.gov/pdf/730/202005219239481730/202005219239481730.pdf">Archived</a> (PDF) from the original on June 9, 2020.</cite>
</li>
<li><b><a href="#cite_ref-41">^</a></b> <cite>Altman, Sam (April 10, 2018). <a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20220731181905/https://blog.samaltman.com/productivity">"Productivity"</a>. <i>Sam Altman</i>. Archived from <a href="https://blog.samaltman.com/productivity">the original</a> on July 31, 2022. Retrieved August 3, 2022.</cite>
</li>
<li><b><a href="#cite_ref-42">^</a></b> <cite><a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20220803224649/https://rescale.com/blog/fireside-chat-with-sam-altman/">"Fireside Chat with Sam Altman"</a>. <i>Rescale</i>. February 24, 2020. Archived from <a href="https://rescale.com/blog/fireside-chat-with-sam-altman/">the original</a> on August 3, 2022. Retrieved August 3, 2022.</cite>
</li>
<li><b><a href="#cite_ref-43">^</a></b> <cite><a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MIDDm3fKyT0"><i>Tech Pride: Sam Altman</i></a>, <a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20230203191432/https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MIDDm3fKyT0">archived</a> from the original on February 3, 2023, retrieved January 21, 2023</cite>
</li>
<li><b><a href="#cite_ref-44">^</a></b> <cite>Friend, Tad (October 3, 2016). <a href="https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2016/10/10/sam-altmans-manifest-destiny">"Sam Altman's Manifest Destiny"</a>. <i>New Yorker</i>. <a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20170517010534/http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2016/10/10/sam-altmans-manifest-destiny">Archived</a> from the original on May 17, 2017. Retrieved February 18, 2020.</cite>
</li>
</ol></div>
<h2>External links[<a href="/w/index.php?title=Sam_Altman&amp;action=edit&amp;section=13">edit</a>]</h2>
<ul><li><a href="https://blog.samaltman.com/">Official website</a> <a href="https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q7407093#P856"></a></li></ul>
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 * (Top)
 * 1 Early life and education
 * 2 Career
 + 2.1 Loopt
 + 2.2 Y Combinator
 + 2.3 Angel investing
 + 2.4 Nuclear energy
 + 2.5 OpenAI
 + 2.6 Worldcoin
 * 3 Philanthropy
 * 4 Politics
 * 5 Personal life
 * 6 References
 * 7 External links
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 Sam Altman

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 From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

 Sam Altman 
 Altman in 2019
 Samuel H. Altman 
 Born April 22, 1985 (age 37) 
 Chicago, Illinois, U.S. 
 Education Stanford University (dropped out) 
 Occupation Entrepreneur 
 Known for Loopt, Y Combinator, OpenAI 
 Title CEO of OpenAI LP and former president of Y Combinator
 Website Official website 
 

 Samuel H. Altman (/ ˈ ɔː l t m ə n / AWLT -mən; born April 22, 1985) is an American entrepreneur, investor, programmer, and blogger.[1] He is the CEO of OpenAI and the former president of Y Combinator.[2][3]

 Early life and education [ edit ]

 Altman grew up in St. Louis, Missouri; his mother is a dermatologist. He received his first computer at the age of eight.[4] He was born to a Jewish family.[5] For high school, he attended John Burroughs School and he studied computer science at Stanford University until dropping out in 2005.[6] In 2017, he received an honorary degree from the University of Waterloo.[7]

 Career [ edit ]

 Loopt [ edit ]

 In 2005, at age 19,[8] Altman co-founded and became CEO of Loopt,[9] a location-based social networking mobile application. After raising more than $30 million in venture capital, Loopt was shut down in 2012 after failing to get traction. It was acquired by the Green Dot Corporation for $43.4 million.[10][11]

 Y Combinator [ edit ]

 Altman began as a part-time partner at Y Combinator in 2011.[12] In February 2014, Altman was named president of Y Combinator by its co-founder, Paul Graham.[13][14] Altman's first batch of investments included Loopt. In a 2014 blog post, Altman said that the total valuation of Y Combinator companies had surpassed $65 billion, including well-known companies like Airbnb, Dropbox, Zenefits and Stripe.[15] In September 2016, Altman announced that he would become president of YC Group, which included Y Combinator and other units.[16]

 Altman said that he hoped to expand Y Combinator to fund 1,000 new companies per year. He also tried to expand the types of companies funded by YC, especially "hard technology" companies.[17]

 In October 2015, Altman announced YC Continuity, a $700 million growth-stage equity fund that invests in YC companies.[18] Also in October 2015, Altman announced Y Combinator Research, a non-profit research lab, and donated $10 million to the group.[19] YC Research has thus far announced research on basic income, the future of computing, education, and building new cities.[20]

 Altman was named the top investor under 30 by Forbes magazine in 2015,[21] one of the "Best Young Entrepreneurs in Technology" by Businessweek magazine in 2008[22] and listed as one of the five most interesting startup founders between 1979 and 2009 by his colleague Paul Graham.[23]

 In March 2019, YC announced Altman's transitioning into a Chairman position to focus more on OpenAI.[24] This decision came shortly after YC announced it would be moving its headquarters to San Francisco.[25] As of early 2020, he was no longer affiliated with YC.

 Angel investing [ edit ]

 Altman is an investor in many companies, including Airbnb, Stripe, Reddit, Asana, Pinterest, Teespring, Zenefits, FarmLogs, True North, Shoptiques, Instacart, Optimizely, Verbling, Soylent, Reserve, Vicarious, Clever, and Notable PDF (now Kami).[26][27]

 He was the CEO of Reddit for eight days in 2014 after CEO Yishan Wong resigned.[28] He announced the return of Steve Huffman as CEO on July 10, 2015.[29]

 Nuclear energy [ edit ]

 He is chairman of the board for Helion and Oklo, two nuclear energy companies. He has said that nuclear energy is one of the most important areas of technological development.[30]

 OpenAI [ edit ]

 Altman is the CEO of OpenAI, which is a capped-profit research company whose goal is to advance artificial intelligence in a way that is most likely to benefit humanity as a whole, rather than cause harm.[31] The organization was initially funded by Altman, Brockman, Elon Musk, Jessica Livingston, Peter Thiel, Amazon Web Services, Infosys and YC Research. In total, when the company launched in 2015, it had raised $1 billion from outside funders.[32]

 Worldcoin [ edit ]

 Altman co-founded Worldcoin in 2020. Worldcoin aims to give its new digital money to every human on Earth for free by using privacy-preserving iris recognition to ensure that its users do not claim their free share more than once.[33] Worldcoin paused its work in multiple countries after local contractors departed or regulations made doing business impossible.[34]

 Philanthropy [ edit ]

 During the COVID-19 pandemic Altman helped fund and create Project Covalence which aimed to help researchers rapidly launch clinical trials in partnership with TrialSpark, a clinical trial startup.[35][36]

 Politics [ edit ]

 According to reporting by Vox's Recode, there was speculation that Altman would run for Governor of California in the 2018 election, which he did not enter. In 2018, Altman launched "The United Slate", a political movement focused on fixing housing and healthcare policy.[37]

 In 2019, Altman held a fundraiser at his house in San Francisco for Democratic presidential candidate Andrew Yang.[38] In May 2020, Altman donated $250,000 to American Bridge 21st Century, a Super-PAC supporting Democratic presidential candidate Joe Biden.[39][40]

 Personal life [ edit ]

 Altman has been vegetarian since childhood.[41][42] Altman is gay and has been out since his teen years.[43] He dated his Loopt co-founder Nick Sivo for nine years before they broke up shortly after the company was acquired.[44]

 References [ edit ]

 1. ^ "Sam Altman". SamAltman.com. Archived from the original on December 11, 2015 . Retrieved December 15, 2015 .
 2. ^ Graham, Paul (April 24, 2014). "Sam Altman for President". Y Combinator. Archived from the original on March 25, 2017 . Retrieved March 20, 2017 .
 3. ^ "OpenAI". December 12, 2015. Archived from the original on August 8, 2017 . Retrieved March 20, 2017 .
 4. ^ Junod, Tom (December 18, 2014). "How Venture Capitalists Find Opportunities in the Future". Esquire. Archived from the original on December 20, 2015 . Retrieved December 15, 2015 .
 5. ^ Friend, Tad (October 3, 2016). "Sam Altman's Manifest Destiny". The New Yorker. Archived from the original on May 17, 2017 . Retrieved May 17, 2017 .
 6. ^ "People". Y Combinator. Archived from the original on June 25, 2014 . Retrieved December 15, 2015 .
 7. ^ "Spring 2017 honorary and award recipients". Registrar's Office. University of Waterloo. Archived from the original on December 1, 2017 . Retrieved July 7, 2017 .
 8. ^ Ankeny, Jason (April 25, 2015). "Meet Y Combinator's Bold Whiz Kid Boss". Archived from the original on December 22, 2015 . Retrieved December 15, 2015 .
 9. ^ "Executives". Loopt. Archived from the original on February 16, 2012 . Retrieved December 15, 2015 .
 10. ^ "Startup Loopt Lands with Green Dot". The Wall Street Journal. March 9, 2012. Archived from the original on March 13, 2012 . Retrieved March 13, 2012 .
 11. ^ "Sam Altman: Why customer love is all you need | Masters of Scale podcast". WaitWhat. Archived from the original on March 20, 2018 . Retrieved March 20, 2018 .
 12. ^ "Y Combinator president Sam Altman is stepping down amid a series of changes at the accelerator". TechCrunch. March 8, 2019 . Retrieved March 18, 2019 .
 13. ^ "Garry Tan Says Goodbye to Y Combinator". TechCrunch. November 6, 2015 . Retrieved March 18, 2019 .
 14. ^ Graham, Paul (April 24, 2014). "Sam Altman for President". Y Combinator. Archived from the original on March 25, 2017 . Retrieved December 15, 2015 .
 15. ^ "YC Stats". Y Combinator. August 26, 2015. Archived from the original on December 18, 2015 . Retrieved December 19, 2015 .
 16. ^ Altman, Sam. "YC Changes". Y Combinator. Archived from the original on November 7, 2016 . Retrieved November 7, 2016 .
 17. ^ "Y Combinator President Sam Altman is Dreaming Big". Fast Company. April 16, 2015. Archived from the original on July 22, 2015 . Retrieved July 22, 2015 .
 18. ^
 + "YC Continuity". Y Combinator. October 15, 2015. Archived from the original on December 18, 2015 . Retrieved December 19, 2015 .
 + "YC Continuity". VentureBeat. October 15, 2015. Archived from the original on December 22, 2015 . Retrieved December 19, 2015 .
 19. ^ "YC Research". Y Combinator. October 7, 2015. Archived from the original on February 15, 2016 . Retrieved February 19, 2016 .
 20. ^ "Y Combinator Research". YC Research. Archived from the original on June 11, 2016 . Retrieved August 3, 2016 .
 21. ^ "Forbes' 30 Under 30 2015: Venture Capital". Forbes. January 5, 2015. Archived from the original on February 20, 2015 . Retrieved February 28, 2015 .
 22. ^ "Tech's Best Young Entrepreneurs". Businessweek. April 18, 2008. Archived from the original on April 28, 2009 . Retrieved April 19, 2009 .
 23. ^ Graham, Paul (April 2009). "Five Founders". Archived from the original on April 17, 2009 . Retrieved April 19, 2009 .
 24. ^ Loizos, Connie (March 9, 2019). "Did Sam Altman make YC better or worse?". TechCrunch . Retrieved February 3, 2020 .
 25. ^ "Y Combinator president Sam Altman is stepping down amid a series of changes at the accelerator". TechCrunch. March 8, 2019 . Retrieved February 3, 2020 .
 26. ^ Altman, Sam. "Angel List". Angel List. Archived from the original on May 9, 2015 . Retrieved April 20, 2015 .
 27. ^ "How Notable PDF built an annotation tool for PDFs on the web". April 5, 2017. Archived from the original on April 5, 2017 . Retrieved March 26, 2018 .
 28. ^ "A New Team At Reddit". Sam Altman. November 13, 2014. Archived from the original on February 13, 2015 . Retrieved February 13, 2015 .
 29. ^ "An Old Team At Reddit". reddit. Archived from the original on December 26, 2015 . Retrieved July 13, 2015 .
 30. ^ "Energy". Sam Altman. Archived from the original on June 29, 2015 . Retrieved July 13, 2015 .
 31. ^ "OpenAI". December 12, 2015. Archived from the original on August 8, 2017 . Retrieved December 15, 2015 .
 32. ^ Olanoff, Drew (December 11, 2015). "Artificial Intelligence Nonprofit OpenAI Launches With Backing From Elon Musk And Sam Altman". TechCrunch. Archived from the original on October 20, 2022 . Retrieved October 20, 2022 .
 33. ^ "Worldcoin Wants To Give Cryptocurrency To Every Human On Earth". Forbes. Archived from the original on September 8, 2022 . Retrieved September 8, 2022 .
 34. ^ "Crypto Startup That Wants to Scan Everyone's Eyeballs Is Having Some Trouble". Bloomberg News. March 16, 2022. Archived from the original on March 16, 2022 . Retrieved March 16, 2022 .
 35. ^ "Teaming tech and pharma, effort seeks to speed Covid-19 clinical trials". STAT. June 16, 2020. Archived from the original on October 18, 2020 . Retrieved October 17, 2020 .
 36. ^ "Project Covalence". Sam Altman. Archived from the original on October 22, 2020 . Retrieved October 17, 2020 .
 37. ^ Romm, Tony (July 31, 2017). "Sam Altman will spend big on a new political movement to fix U.S. housing, health care and more". Vox. Archived from the original on January 19, 2023 . Retrieved January 19, 2023 .
 38. ^ Russell, Melia. "Andrew Yang preached his tech-friendly gospel at Sam Altman's San Francisco house: You can't treat tech like oil companies and breaking up Amazon won't bring malls back". Business Insider. Archived from the original on July 2, 2020 . Retrieved June 30, 2020 .
 39. ^ Tindera, Michela. "Silicon Valley's Sam Altman Gave $250,000 To Democratic Super-PAC Supporting Biden". Forbes. Archived from the original on July 3, 2020 . Retrieved June 30, 2020 .
 40. ^ "FEC Filings" (PDF) . Archived (PDF) from the original on June 9, 2020.
 41. ^ Altman, Sam (April 10, 2018). "Productivity". Sam Altman. Archived from the original on July 31, 2022 . Retrieved August 3, 2022 .
 42. ^ "Fireside Chat with Sam Altman". Rescale. February 24, 2020. Archived from the original on August 3, 2022 . Retrieved August 3, 2022 .
 43. ^ Tech Pride: Sam Altman, archived from the original on February 3, 2023 , retrieved January 21, 2023
 44. ^ Friend, Tad (October 3, 2016). "Sam Altman's Manifest Destiny". New Yorker. Archived from the original on May 17, 2017 . Retrieved February 18, 2020 .

 External links [ edit ]

 * Official website
 Retrieved from "https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Sam_Altman&oldid=1137279215"
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From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
	 
    Sam Altman       Altman in 2019    Born  Samuel H. Altman April 22, 1985 (age 37)   Chicago, Illinois, U.S.     Education  Stanford University (dropped out)   Occupation Entrepreneur   Known for  Loopt, Y Combinator, OpenAI    Title CEO of OpenAI LP and former president of Y Combinator   Website  Official website      
 Samuel H. Altman (  AWLT-mən ; born April 22, 1985) is an American entrepreneur, investor, programmer, and blogger. [1]  He is the CEO of OpenAI and the former president of Y Combinator. [2]   [3] 
Early life and education[edit]
Altman grew up in St. Louis, Missouri; his mother is a dermatologist. He received his first computer at the age of eight. [4]  He was born to a Jewish family. [5]  For high school, he attended John Burroughs School and he studied computer science at Stanford University until dropping out in 2005. [6]  In 2017, he received an honorary degree from the University of Waterloo. [7] 
Career[edit]
Loopt[edit]
In 2005, at age 19, [8]  Altman co-founded and became CEO of Loopt, [9]  a location-based social networking mobile application. After raising more than $30 million in venture capital, Loopt was shut down in 2012 after failing to get traction. It was acquired by the Green Dot Corporation for $43.4 million. [10]   [11] 
Y Combinator[edit]
Altman began as a part-time partner at Y Combinator in 2011. [12]  In February 2014, Altman was named president of Y Combinator by its co-founder, Paul Graham. [13]   [14]  Altman's first batch of investments included Loopt. In a 2014 blog post, Altman said that the total valuation of Y Combinator companies had surpassed $65 billion, including well-known companies like Airbnb, Dropbox, Zenefits and Stripe. [15]  In September 2016, Altman announced that he would become president of YC Group, which included Y Combinator and other units. [16] 
 Altman said that he hoped to expand Y Combinator to fund 1,000 new companies per year. He also tried to expand the types of companies funded by YC, especially "hard technology" companies. [17] 
 In October 2015, Altman announced YC Continuity, a $700 million growth-stage equity fund that invests in YC companies. [18]  Also in October 2015, Altman announced Y Combinator Research, a non-profit research lab, and donated $10 million to the group. [19]  YC Research has thus far announced research on basic income, the future of computing, education, and building new cities. [20] 
 Altman was named the top investor under 30 by  Forbes  magazine in 2015, [21]  one of the "Best Young Entrepreneurs in Technology" by  Businessweek  magazine in 2008 [22]  and listed as one of the five most interesting startup founders between 1979 and 2009 by his colleague Paul Graham. [23] 
 In March 2019, YC announced Altman's transitioning into a Chairman position to focus more on OpenAI. [24]  This decision came shortly after YC announced it would be moving its headquarters to San Francisco. [25]  As of early 2020, he was no longer affiliated with YC.
Angel investing[edit]
Altman is an investor in many companies, including Airbnb, Stripe, Reddit, Asana, Pinterest, Teespring, Zenefits, FarmLogs, True North, Shoptiques, Instacart, Optimizely, Verbling, Soylent, Reserve, Vicarious, Clever, and Notable PDF (now Kami). [26]   [27] 
 He was the CEO of Reddit for eight days in 2014 after CEO Yishan Wong resigned. [28]  He announced the return of Steve Huffman as CEO on July 10, 2015. [29] 
Nuclear energy[edit]
He is chairman of the board for Helion and Oklo, two nuclear energy companies. He has said that nuclear energy is one of the most important areas of technological development. [30] 
OpenAI[edit]
Altman is the CEO of OpenAI, which is a capped-profit research company whose goal is to advance artificial intelligence in a way that is most likely to benefit humanity as a whole, rather than cause harm. [31]  The organization was initially funded by Altman, Brockman, Elon Musk, Jessica Livingston, Peter Thiel, Amazon Web Services, Infosys and YC Research. In total, when the company launched in 2015, it had raised $1 billion from outside funders. [32] 
Worldcoin[edit]
Altman co-founded Worldcoin in 2020. Worldcoin aims to give its new digital money to every human on Earth for free by using privacy-preserving iris recognition to ensure that its users do not claim their free share more than once. [33]  Worldcoin paused its work in multiple countries after local contractors departed or regulations made doing business impossible. [34] 
Philanthropy[edit]
During the COVID-19 pandemic Altman helped fund and create Project Covalence which aimed to help researchers rapidly launch clinical trials in partnership with TrialSpark, a clinical trial startup. [35]   [36] 
Politics[edit]
According to reporting by  Vox 's Recode, there was speculation that Altman would run for Governor of California in the 2018 election, which he did not enter. In 2018, Altman launched "The United Slate", a political movement focused on fixing housing and healthcare policy. [37] 
 In 2019, Altman held a fundraiser at his house in San Francisco for Democratic presidential candidate Andrew Yang. [38]  In May 2020, Altman donated $250,000 to American Bridge 21st Century, a Super-PAC supporting Democratic presidential candidate Joe Biden. [39]   [40] 
Personal life[edit]
Altman has been vegetarian since childhood. [41]   [42]  Altman is gay and has been out since his teen years. [43]  He dated his Loopt co-founder Nick Sivo for nine years before they broke up shortly after the company was acquired. [44] 
References[edit]
  ^   "Sam Altman". SamAltman.com. Archived from the original on December 11, 2015. Retrieved December 15, 2015.
  ^  Graham, Paul (April 24, 2014). "Sam Altman for President". Y Combinator. Archived from the original on March 25, 2017. Retrieved March 20, 2017.
  ^   "OpenAI". December 12, 2015. Archived from the original on August 8, 2017. Retrieved March 20, 2017.
  ^  Junod, Tom (December 18, 2014). "How Venture Capitalists Find Opportunities in the Future".  Esquire . Archived from the original on December 20, 2015. Retrieved December 15, 2015.
  ^  Friend, Tad (October 3, 2016). "Sam Altman's Manifest Destiny". The New Yorker. Archived from the original on May 17, 2017. Retrieved May 17, 2017.
  ^   "People".  Y Combinator . Archived from the original on June 25, 2014. Retrieved December 15, 2015.
  ^   "Spring 2017 honorary and award recipients". Registrar's Office. University of Waterloo. Archived from the original on December 1, 2017. Retrieved July 7, 2017.
  ^  Ankeny, Jason (April 25, 2015). "Meet Y Combinator's Bold Whiz Kid Boss". Archived from the original on December 22, 2015. Retrieved December 15, 2015.
  ^   "Executives".  Loopt . Archived from the original on February 16, 2012. Retrieved December 15, 2015.
  ^   "Startup Loopt Lands with Green Dot".  The Wall Street Journal . March 9, 2012. Archived from the original on March 13, 2012. Retrieved March 13, 2012.
  ^   "Sam Altman: Why customer love is all you need | Masters of Scale podcast". WaitWhat. Archived from the original on March 20, 2018. Retrieved March 20, 2018.
  ^   "Y Combinator president Sam Altman is stepping down amid a series of changes at the accelerator". TechCrunch. March 8, 2019. Retrieved March 18, 2019.
  ^   "Garry Tan Says Goodbye to Y Combinator". TechCrunch. November 6, 2015. Retrieved March 18, 2019.
  ^  Graham, Paul (April 24, 2014). "Sam Altman for President". Y Combinator. Archived from the original on March 25, 2017. Retrieved December 15, 2015.
  ^   "YC Stats". Y Combinator. August 26, 2015. Archived from the original on December 18, 2015. Retrieved December 19, 2015.
  ^  Altman, Sam. "YC Changes". Y Combinator. Archived from the original on November 7, 2016. Retrieved November 7, 2016.
  ^   "Y Combinator President Sam Altman is Dreaming Big". Fast Company. April 16, 2015. Archived from the original on July 22, 2015. Retrieved July 22, 2015.
  ^  
   "YC Continuity". Y Combinator. October 15, 2015. Archived from the original on December 18, 2015. Retrieved December 19, 2015. 
  "YC Continuity". VentureBeat. October 15, 2015. Archived from the original on December 22, 2015. Retrieved December 19, 2015.  
  ^   "YC Research". Y Combinator. October 7, 2015. Archived from the original on February 15, 2016. Retrieved February 19, 2016.
  ^   "Y Combinator Research". YC Research. Archived from the original on June 11, 2016. Retrieved August 3, 2016.
  ^   "Forbes' 30 Under 30 2015: Venture Capital".  Forbes . January 5, 2015. Archived from the original on February 20, 2015. Retrieved February 28, 2015.
  ^   "Tech's Best Young Entrepreneurs".  Businessweek . April 18, 2008. Archived from the original on April 28, 2009. Retrieved April 19, 2009.
  ^   Graham, Paul (April 2009). "Five Founders". Archived from the original on April 17, 2009. Retrieved April 19, 2009.
  ^  Loizos, Connie (March 9, 2019). "Did Sam Altman make YC better or worse?". TechCrunch. Retrieved February 3, 2020.
  ^   "Y Combinator president Sam Altman is stepping down amid a series of changes at the accelerator". TechCrunch. March 8, 2019. Retrieved February 3, 2020.
  ^  Altman, Sam. "Angel List". Angel List. Archived from the original on May 9, 2015. Retrieved April 20, 2015.
  ^   "How Notable PDF built an annotation tool for PDFs on the web". April 5, 2017. Archived from the original on April 5, 2017. Retrieved March 26, 2018.
  ^   "A New Team At Reddit". Sam Altman. November 13, 2014. Archived from the original on February 13, 2015. Retrieved February 13, 2015.
  ^   "An Old Team At Reddit". reddit. Archived from the original on December 26, 2015. Retrieved July 13, 2015.
  ^   "Energy". Sam Altman. Archived from the original on June 29, 2015. Retrieved July 13, 2015.
  ^   "OpenAI". December 12, 2015. Archived from the original on August 8, 2017. Retrieved December 15, 2015.
  ^  Olanoff, Drew (December 11, 2015). "Artificial Intelligence Nonprofit OpenAI Launches With Backing From Elon Musk And Sam Altman". TechCrunch. Archived from the original on October 20, 2022. Retrieved October 20, 2022.
  ^   "Worldcoin Wants To Give Cryptocurrency To Every Human On Earth".  Forbes . Archived from the original on September 8, 2022. Retrieved September 8, 2022.
  ^   "Crypto Startup That Wants to Scan Everyone's Eyeballs Is Having Some Trouble".  Bloomberg News . March 16, 2022. Archived from the original on March 16, 2022. Retrieved March 16, 2022.
  ^   "Teaming tech and pharma, effort seeks to speed Covid-19 clinical trials". STAT. June 16, 2020. Archived from the original on October 18, 2020. Retrieved October 17, 2020.
  ^   "Project Covalence". Sam Altman. Archived from the original on October 22, 2020. Retrieved October 17, 2020.
  ^  Romm, Tony (July 31, 2017). "Sam Altman will spend big on a new political movement to fix U.S. housing, health care and more". Vox. Archived from the original on January 19, 2023. Retrieved January 19, 2023.
  ^  Russell, Melia. "Andrew Yang preached his tech-friendly gospel at Sam Altman's San Francisco house: You can't treat tech like oil companies and breaking up Amazon won't bring malls back". Business Insider. Archived from the original on July 2, 2020. Retrieved June 30, 2020.
  ^  Tindera, Michela. "Silicon Valley's Sam Altman Gave $250,000 To Democratic Super-PAC Supporting Biden". Forbes. Archived from the original on July 3, 2020. Retrieved June 30, 2020.
  ^   "FEC Filings" (PDF). Archived (PDF) from the original on June 9, 2020.
  ^  Altman, Sam (April 10, 2018). "Productivity". Sam Altman. Archived from the original on July 31, 2022. Retrieved August 3, 2022.
  ^   "Fireside Chat with Sam Altman". Rescale. February 24, 2020. Archived from the original on August 3, 2022. Retrieved August 3, 2022.
  ^    Tech Pride: Sam Altman , archived from the original on February 3, 2023, retrieved January 21, 2023
  ^  Friend, Tad (October 3, 2016). "Sam Altman's Manifest Destiny". New Yorker. Archived from the original on May 17, 2017. Retrieved February 18, 2020.
 
External links[edit]
  Official website
Sam Altman - Wikipedia
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sam_Altman
https://www.quora.com/What-are-the-best-blog-posts-of-Sam-Altman
What are the best blog posts of Sam Altman?
2024-01-01
None
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 What are the best blog posts of Sam Altman ?
 All related (33)
 Sort
 Recommended
 Assistant
 Bot
 ·
 1y

 Sam Altman is a well-known Silicon Valley entrepreneur, investor, and blogger. He has written many insightful blog posts over the years. Here are a few of his most popular ones:

 * "How to be successful" - In this post, Altman shares his thoughts on what it takes to be successful, including the importance of hard work, focus, and perseverance.

 * "The days are long but the decades are short" - This post is a reflection on the passage of time and the importance of making the most of every day.

 * "The only way to win is to learn faster than anyone else" - In this post, Altman discusses the importance of

 Continue Reading

 Sam Altman is a well-known Silicon Valley entrepreneur, investor, and blogger. He has written many insightful blog posts over the years. Here are a few of his most popular ones:

 * "How to be successful" - In this post, Altman shares his thoughts on what it takes to be successful, including the importance of hard work, focus, and perseverance.

 * "The days are long but the decades are short" - This post is a reflection on the passage of time and the importance of making the most of every day.

 * "The only way to win is to learn faster than anyone else" - In this post, Altman discusses the importance of continuous learning and improvement in business and life.

 * "How to be a good founder/CEO" - Altman shares his insights on what it takes to be a successful founder and CEO, including the importance of vision, execution, and team-building.

 * "Startup Playbook" - This post is a comprehensive guide to starting and running a successful startup, covering everything from idea generation to fundraising to hiring.

 I hope you find these posts helpful and informative!
 Upvote ·
 9 1
 Potluck Mittal
 I work with him
 · 9y

 My favorites:

 * Black Swan Seed Rounds

 * Employee Equity

 * Fundraising Mistakes Founders Make

 * Value is created by doing

 * The Only Way to Grow Huge

 * Non-technical founder? Learn to hack

 * How to hire

 * Advice for ambitious 19 year olds

 Upvote ·
 99 24
 9 1
 Promoted by monday.com
 monday.com
 One platform for managing any project, task, and workflow.
 · Updated 11mo
 What are the best project management tools for managers?

 As a manager, the ability to prioritize workloads, schedule employees/projects, and track deadlines is simply impossible without a reliable and easy-to-use project management platform.

 Trusted by over 180K global customers, monday.com offers an award-winning, customizable work and project management platform for all teams, industries, and sizes. With its easy-to-use interface, any member of your team can jump on and start using it immediately, no training required.

 Try for free (Free forever. No credit card)>>

 With monday.com , you can plan, execute, and manage all of your teams' work in one place
 Continue Reading

 As a manager, the ability to prioritize workloads, schedule employees/projects, and track deadlines is simply impossible without a reliable and easy-to-use project management platform.

 Trusted by over 180K global customers, monday.com offers an award-winning, customizable work and project management platform for all teams, industries, and sizes. With its easy-to-use interface, any member of your team can jump on and start using it immediately, no training required.

 Try for free (Free forever. No credit card)>>

 With monday.com , you can plan, execute, and manage all of your teams' work in one place by automating and streamlining activities with no-code automations, saving you and your team hours of valuable time.

 With customizable dashboards, 200+ pre-made templates, 72+ integrations, and real-time notifications and updates, optimize processes, and boost team productivity and collaboration.

 You can easily track projects and meet deadlines using timelines, Gantt charts, and more. Discover why 180K+ global customers love and use monday.com.

 Try monday.com for free
 Upvote ·
 999 370
 99 75
 9 7
 Related questions
 More answers below
 Why is Sam Altman so highly regarded in entrepreneurial circles?
 Is Sam Altman gay?
 Does Sam Altman smoke weed?
 What car does Sam Altman own?
 Who thinks Sam Altman is the Antichrist?
 Kshitij Agrawal
 I teach machines how to see.
 · 9y

 One of the best things Sam Altman has done after taking charge of YC is his Stanford Startup Class [http://startupclass.samaltman.com/] initiative, bringing the knowledge of YC to everyone. This covers all the majors pain points of starting a startup and would be a good resource to start off with.

 Note: Not all the posts are by Sam Altman, but they sure cover most of the startup centric topics to start off with.
 Upvote ·
 99 12
 9 1
 Anonymous
 9y
 Related
 Why is Sam Altman so highly regarded in entrepreneurial circles?

 I'm a YC alumnus, not from Sam's class or from Summer 2014.

 Loopt isn't particularly impressive as an outcome, whether due to being too early or something else, but it was clear Sam was a top founder before he even started Loopt.

 As far as I can tell, Sam is clearly an outlier on the intelligence spectrum, but not particularly far from other top people in technology. He's +3 sigma intelligence for sure, but probably not 5 sigma.

 He is very intellectually curious, with broad interests and knowledge.

 For a founder and technical expert, he's very willing to talk to people, and genuinely tries to be
 Continue Reading

 I'm a YC alumnus, not from Sam's class or from Summer 2014.

 Loopt isn't particularly impressive as an outcome, whether due to being too early or something else, but it was clear Sam was a top founder before he even started Loopt.

 As far as I can tell, Sam is clearly an outlier on the intelligence spectrum, but not particularly far from other top people in technology. He's +3 sigma intelligence for sure, but probably not 5 sigma.

 He is very intellectually curious, with broad interests and knowledge.

 For a founder and technical expert, he's very willing to talk to people, and genuinely tries to be helpful. His communication style is terse, but the upside is he doesn't waste your time.

 His main extreme-outlier quality seems to be being relentlessly resourceful, something Paul Graham values highly. Combine that with a great willingness to experiment and take risks, then course-correct rapidly and you get a top-5 founder.
 Upvote ·
 99 92
 99 10
 Related questions
 Why is Sam Altman so highly regarded in entrepreneurial circles?
 Is Sam Altman gay?
 Does Sam Altman smoke weed?
 What car does Sam Altman own?
 Who thinks Sam Altman is the Antichrist?
 What is Sam Altman's net worth?
 What does Sam Altman read?
 Is Sam Altman building "the platform of Sam"?
 Why are people hating on Sam Altman?
 What do you think of Sam Altman's eye-scanning crypto project Worldcoin?
 Would you consider working for Sam Altman?
 What is Sam Altman's view on cryptocurrencies?
 What are the potential implications of A.I. systems generating synthetic data to improve themselves, as suggested by figures like Sam Altman and Jeff Clune?
 What font does Sam Altman use on his blog?
 Who is Sam Altman?
 Related questions
 Why is Sam Altman so highly regarded in entrepreneurial circles?
 Is Sam Altman gay?
 Does Sam Altman smoke weed?
 What car does Sam Altman own?
 Who thinks Sam Altman is the Antichrist?
 What is Sam Altman's net worth?
 Advertisement
 About · Careers · Privacy · Terms · Contact · Languages · Your Ad Choices · Press ·
 © Quora, Inc. 2024
Please enable Javascript and refresh the page to continue
Skip to content
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 What are the best blog posts of Sam Altman ?
 All related (33)
 Sort
 Recommended
 Assistant
 Bot
 ·
 1y
 Sam Altman is a well-known Silicon Valley entrepreneur, investor, and blogger. He has written many insightful blog posts over the years. Here are a few of his most popular ones:
 * "How to be successful" - In this post, Altman shares his thoughts on what it takes to be successful, including the importance of hard work, focus, and perseverance.
 * "The days are long but the decades are short" - This post is a reflection on the passage of time and the importance of making the most of every day.
 * "The only way to win is to learn faster than anyone else" - In this post, Altman discusses the importance of
 Continue Reading
 Sam Altman is a well-known Silicon Valley entrepreneur, investor, and blogger. He has written many insightful blog posts over the years. Here are a few of his most popular ones:
 * "How to be successful" - In this post, Altman shares his thoughts on what it takes to be successful, including the importance of hard work, focus, and perseverance.
 * "The days are long but the decades are short" - This post is a reflection on the passage of time and the importance of making the most of every day.
 * "The only way to win is to learn faster than anyone else" - In this post, Altman discusses the importance of continuous learning and improvement in business and life.
 * "How to be a good founder/CEO" - Altman shares his insights on what it takes to be a successful founder and CEO, including the importance of vision, execution, and team-building.
 * "Startup Playbook" - This post is a comprehensive guide to starting and running a successful startup, covering everything from idea generation to fundraising to hiring.
 I hope you find these posts helpful and informative!
 Upvote ·
 9 1
 Potluck Mittal
 I work with him
 · 9y
 My favorites:
 * Black Swan Seed Rounds
 * Employee Equity
 * Fundraising Mistakes Founders Make
 * Value is created by doing
 * The Only Way to Grow Huge
 * Non-technical founder? Learn to hack
 * How to hire
 * Advice for ambitious 19 year olds
 Upvote ·
 99 24
 9 1
 Promoted by monday.com
 monday.com
 One platform for managing any project, task, and workflow.
 · Updated 11mo
 What are the best project management tools for managers?
 As a manager, the ability to prioritize workloads, schedule employees/projects, and track deadlines is simply impossible without a reliable and easy-to-use project management platform.
 Trusted by over 180K global customers, monday.com offers an award-winning, customizable work and project management platform for all teams, industries, and sizes. With its easy-to-use interface, any member of your team can jump on and start using it immediately, no training required.
 Try for free (Free forever. No credit card)>>
 With monday.com , you can plan, execute, and manage all of your teams' work in one place
 Continue Reading
 As a manager, the ability to prioritize workloads, schedule employees/projects, and track deadlines is simply impossible without a reliable and easy-to-use project management platform.
 Trusted by over 180K global customers, monday.com offers an award-winning, customizable work and project management platform for all teams, industries, and sizes. With its easy-to-use interface, any member of your team can jump on and start using it immediately, no training required.
 Try for free (Free forever. No credit card)>>
 With monday.com , you can plan, execute, and manage all of your teams' work in one place by automating and streamlining activities with no-code automations, saving you and your team hours of valuable time.
 With customizable dashboards, 200+ pre-made templates, 72+ integrations, and real-time notifications and updates, optimize processes, and boost team productivity and collaboration.
 You can easily track projects and meet deadlines using timelines, Gantt charts, and more. Discover why 180K+ global customers love and use monday.com.
 Try monday.com for free
 Upvote ·
 999 370
 99 75
 9 7
 Related questions
 More answers below
 Why is Sam Altman so highly regarded in entrepreneurial circles?
 Is Sam Altman gay?
 Does Sam Altman smoke weed?
 What car does Sam Altman own?
 Who thinks Sam Altman is the Antichrist?
 Kshitij Agrawal
 I teach machines how to see.
 · 9y
 One of the best things Sam Altman has done after taking charge of YC is his Stanford Startup Class [http://startupclass.samaltman.com/] initiative, bringing the knowledge of YC to everyone. This covers all the majors pain points of starting a startup and would be a good resource to start off with.
 Note: Not all the posts are by Sam Altman, but they sure cover most of the startup centric topics to start off with.
 Upvote ·
 99 12
 9 1
 Anonymous
 9y
 Related
 Why is Sam Altman so highly regarded in entrepreneurial circles?
 I'm a YC alumnus, not from Sam's class or from Summer 2014.
 Loopt isn't particularly impressive as an outcome, whether due to being too early or something else, but it was clear Sam was a top founder before he even started Loopt.
 As far as I can tell, Sam is clearly an outlier on the intelligence spectrum, but not particularly far from other top people in technology. He's +3 sigma intelligence for sure, but probably not 5 sigma.
 He is very intellectually curious, with broad interests and knowledge.
 For a founder and technical expert, he's very willing to talk to people, and genuinely tries to be
 Continue Reading
 I'm a YC alumnus, not from Sam's class or from Summer 2014.
 Loopt isn't particularly impressive as an outcome, whether due to being too early or something else, but it was clear Sam was a top founder before he even started Loopt.
 As far as I can tell, Sam is clearly an outlier on the intelligence spectrum, but not particularly far from other top people in technology. He's +3 sigma intelligence for sure, but probably not 5 sigma.
 He is very intellectually curious, with broad interests and knowledge.
 For a founder and technical expert, he's very willing to talk to people, and genuinely tries to be helpful. His communication style is terse, but the upside is he doesn't waste your time.
 His main extreme-outlier quality seems to be being relentlessly resourceful, something Paul Graham values highly. Combine that with a great willingness to experiment and take risks, then course-correct rapidly and you get a top-5 founder.
 Upvote ·
 99 92
 99 10
 Related questions
 Why is Sam Altman so highly regarded in entrepreneurial circles?
 Is Sam Altman gay?
 Does Sam Altman smoke weed?
 What car does Sam Altman own?
 Who thinks Sam Altman is the Antichrist?
 What is Sam Altman's net worth?
 What does Sam Altman read?
 Is Sam Altman building "the platform of Sam"?
 Why are people hating on Sam Altman?
 What do you think of Sam Altman's eye-scanning crypto project Worldcoin?
 Would you consider working for Sam Altman?
 What is Sam Altman's view on cryptocurrencies?
 What are the potential implications of A.I. systems generating synthetic data to improve themselves, as suggested by figures like Sam Altman and Jeff Clune?
 What font does Sam Altman use on his blog?
 Who is Sam Altman?
 Related questions
 Why is Sam Altman so highly regarded in entrepreneurial circles?
 Is Sam Altman gay?
 Does Sam Altman smoke weed?
 What car does Sam Altman own?
 Who thinks Sam Altman is the Antichrist?
 What is Sam Altman's net worth?
 Advertisement
 About · Careers · Privacy · Terms · Contact · Languages · Your Ad Choices · Press ·
 © Quora, Inc. 2024
Please enable Javascript and refresh the page to continue
What are the best blog posts of Sam Altman?
https://www.quora.com/What-are-the-best-blog-posts-of-Sam-Altman
https://www.crunchbase.com/person/sam-altman
Sam Altman - Co-Founder & CEO @ OpenAI - Crunchbase Person Profile
2023-11-30
None
<div><div><p>This profile is locked. If you'd like to suggest changes to this profile, please email us at support@crunchbase.com</p><p>Number of portfolio companies associated to the Person</p><p>Total number of Exits</p><p>Access Number of Exits for free</p><p>The person's primary job title</p><p>The organization associated to the person's primary job</p><p>Where the person is located (e.g. Europe, Menlo Park, China)</p><p>Where the person is located (e.g. San Francisco Bay Area, Silicon Valley)</p><p>A Person's gender</p><p>This describes the type of investor the person is (e.g. Angel, Fund of Funds, Venture Capital)</p><p>This describes the stage of investor this person is (e.g. Angel, Fund of Funds, Venture Capital)</p><p>Link to a Person's website</p><p>Link to a Person's Facebook page</p><p>Link to a Person's Twitter page</p><p>Number of Investments the Individual has participated in</p><p>Access Money Raised for free</p><p>Announced Date: Date when the Investment is announced</p><p>Organization Name: Name of the organization that received the investment</p><p>Lead Investor: This field indicates whether an investor led/organized the investment</p><p>Funding Round: Name of the funding round where the Investment is made</p><p>Money Raised: Amount of money raised in Funding Round</p><p>Number of Investments the Individual has partnered in</p><p>Investor Name: Name of the investor who participated in the Investment</p><p>Total number of current Jobs the person has</p><p>Total number of past Jobs the person has</p><p>Organization Name: This is the name of the organization</p><p>Title At Company: Title of a Person's Job</p><p>Start Date: Start date of the Person's Job</p><p>End Date: End date of the Person's Job</p><p>Total number of current Advisors and Board roles the person has</p><p>Total number of past Board and Advisor roles the person has</p><p>Hub Name: Name of the Hub</p><p>CB Rank (Hub): Algorithmic rank assigned to the top 100,000 most active Hubs</p><p>Total number of events the individual appeared in</p><p>Number of news articles that reference the Person</p><p>Access exclusive data for free</p></div></div>||||I|||| Search Crunchbase
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 Individual Investor

 Sam Altman

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 Summary

 Overview

 Number of Portfolio Companies 95
 Number of Exits
 Unlock for free
 * Primary Job Title Co-Founder & CEO
 * Primary Organization
 OpenAI
 * Location San Francisco , California , United States
 * Regions San Francisco Bay Area , West Coast , Western US
 * Gender Male
 * Investor Type Investment Partner, Individual/Angel
 * Investor Stage Seed
 * Number of Exits
 21
 * Website blog.samaltman.com
 * Facebook View on Facebook
 * Twitter View on Twitter
 Sam Altman is a Partner of Apollo Projects. He previously worked at OpenAI as a Co-Founder and CEO. Sam Altman attended Stanford University.

 Personal Investments

 Number of Investments 106
 Sam Altman has made 106 investments. Their latest investment was Seed Round - Software Applications Incorporated on Nov 30, 2023 , when Software Applications Incorporated raised
 $6.5M
 .
 Announced Date Organization Name Lead Investor Funding Round Money Raised
 Nov 30, 2023 Software Applications Incorporated Yes Seed Round - Software Applications Incorporated $6.5M 
 Oct 3, 2023 Induced AI Yes Seed Round - Induced AI $2.3M 
 Sep 27, 2023 Slope — Venture Round - Slope $30M 
 Sep 25, 2023 teachme.to — Seed Round - teachme.to $2M 
 Jul 24, 2023 Vital Bio — Venture Round - Vital Bio $48M 
 Jun 21, 2023 Warp — Series B - Warp $50M 
 Jun 8, 2023 Uncommon — Series A - Uncommon $24M 
 Jun 7, 2023 Magrathea — Seed Round - Magrathea $10M 
 Jun 6, 2023
This profile is locked. If you'd like to suggest changes to this profile, please email us at support@crunchbase.com Number of portfolio companies associated to the Person Total number of Exits Access Number of Exits for free The person's primary job title The organization associated to the person's primary job Where the person is located (e.g. Europe, Menlo Park, China) Where the person is located (e.g. San Francisco Bay Area, Silicon Valley) A Person's gender This describes the type of investor the person is (e.g. Angel, Fund of Funds, Venture Capital) This describes the stage of investor this person is (e.g. Angel, Fund of Funds, Venture Capital) Link to a Person's website Link to a Person's Facebook page Link to a Person's Twitter page Number of Investments the Individual has participated in Access Money Raised for free Announced Date: Date when the Investment is announced Organization Name: Name of the organization that received the investment Lead Investor: This field indicates whether an investor led/organized the investment Funding Round: Name of the funding round where the Investment is made Money Raised: Amount of money raised in Funding Round Number of Investments the Individual has partnered in Investor Name: Name of the investor who participated in the Investment Total number of current Jobs the person has Total number of past Jobs the person has Organization Name: This is the name of the organization Title At Company: Title of a Person's Job Start Date: Start date of the Person's Job End Date: End date of the Person's Job Total number of current Advisors and Board roles the person has Total number of past Board and Advisor roles the person has Hub Name: Name of the Hub CB Rank (Hub): Algorithmic rank assigned to the top 100,000 most active Hubs Total number of events the individual appeared in Number of news articles that reference the Person Access exclusive data for free
Sam Altman - Co-Founder & CEO @ OpenAI - Crunchbase Person Profile
https://www.crunchbase.com/person/sam-altman
https://dudeperf3ct.github.io/sensei/sam-altman/
Sam Altman
None
None
<div><div>
<article>
<p>
</p>
<h6>This a collection of almost everything including stories, lessons, short quotes which I will keep updating often. There is lesson in everything. </h6>
<h2>Altmanism</h2>
<p>Doing anything worthwhile takes a long time and it takes a lot of emotional trauma and if you are not willing to sign up for that, you are not gonna succeed.</p>
<p>Take time try lot of things, explore a lot of things. Try to have beginner’s mind about what will work and what won’t but trust your intuitions and pursue a lot of things as cheaply and quickly as possible then be honest with yourself about what’s working well and what’s not. And hard part is cut all the stuff that’s not working and focus down until you are eventually focused one or two things that are really working.</p>
<p>My three most pillar in productivity:</p>
<ul>
<li></li>
<li></li>
<li></li>
</ul>
<p></p>
<p>Everytime I make a major investment in the company, I am convinced that it’s going to work or atleast like I am prepared to pay for the expected value that I think it’s going to work. Convincing yourself otherwise is very hard.</p>
<p>I think the way you become really great at venture capital is to accept that the only way to figure out the future of the world is to identify incredibly talented, smart, creative, original thinkers and back those people. You have to trust that that will work out over time. You can’t just be the smartest person all the time.</p>
<p></p>
<p>Paul Graham used to say that the prototype for a good founder was James Bond. There’s lots of reasons the analogy doesn’t work, but this idea that a lot of things go wrong, you are unflappable, you never lose your cool, you know how to react. Bad things are happening to you left and right, and you are a survivor, and you always figure it out with whatever resource is in front of you. That part is the spirit of a great founder.</p>
<p>The things that have taught me lot about business are poker and investing. I strongly recommend poker for understanding the world of psychology and risk.</p>
<p>Things in life are rarely as risky as they seem. Most people are too much risk averse and so much advice is biased too much towards conservative paths. We are very good at thinking about short-term catastrophic risk and we are very bad thinking about long-term chronic risk. We worry about nuclear metldown but not like inhaling coal smoke.</p>
<p>I think as you get older, the perspective shift just gets harder and harder and it’s invaluable thing to get. Keeping sort of mental flexibility to look at things from fresh perspectives and new angles is most important thing hold on to.</p>
<p>Surrounding yourself with people who will make you more ambitious, more inquisitive, shift your perspective more is really important. Basically all people, almost about 98% people in the world will try to pull you back and say it’s crazy, it out there, it’s really ambitious.</p>
<p>I think a vision that someone feels compelled to make happen in the world is probably the most important of a super successful founder. Then this idea of relentless resourcefulness: “That thing is so important to me that I’m going to figure out how to get it done, whatever it takes. Whatever I need to learn. Whoever I need to convince.” That’s really important.</p>
<p>You want to look for intersection of what you good at, what you enjoy and where you can create value for the world. In my experience, if you don’t find some intersection of those three it’s really hard to have impact.</p>
<p>If you work very hard at early in your career, you get little better at what you work every day, every week, every year and you learn more and meet people and just get work done. There’s a compound effect.</p>
<p> In a world where people are increasingly focused on tick and quarterly earnings cycle, you should try and go in the other direction. This a great way to generate value and wealth.</p>
<p>I think willing to go, take a risk and make some amount of sacrifice to be able to try impact the world in some way you care about and sooner you get to work on that, better you’ll be.</p>
<p>If you look at the most successful founders, they’re not the ones that are on the circuit.</p>
<p>The main question I ask myself when I meet a founder is if I’d work for that person. The second question I ask myself is if I can imagine them taking over their industry. My second biggest chronic mistake has been chasing investments primarily because other investors like them.</p>
<p> Well, I think there’s a few different reasons for that. One is it objectively seems to be true. If you look at the companies that have gone to become super important and valuable, and shaped the world in a big way, they tend to have fairly fanatical early users. If you think about how you first came across Facebook or Google, it’s very likely because a friend told you how great it was. </p>
<p></p>
<p></p>
<p>Almost every venture capital firm gives advice they never follow themselves. They don’t build differentiated products. They are not network-affected businesses. They don’t try to build a brand and a community. And they don’t try to make something that gets better the bigger it gets and have the scale effects that anyone would tell you they want in a business.</p>
<p>I think one thing that is a really important thing to strive for is being internally driven, being driven to compete with yourself, not with other people. If you compete with other people, you end up in this mimetic trap, and you sort of play this tournament, and if you win, you lose.</p>
<p>I don’t know why most investors are so obsessed with the current size of a market instead of how big they think it will be in ten years, but it’s an opportunity for you.</p>
<p>The most expensive investing mistake in the world to make is to be a pessimist, and it’s a common one. I think that’s actually the most common mistake to make in life.</p>
<p>If you look at most successful founders, they are pretty smart, upper-middle-class people. They are very rarely the children of super successful people. They are very rarely born in real poverty. They are very rarely the absolute smartest people who otherwise would win a Fields Medal. They are never dumb, but upper-middle-class, pretty smart people that have grit and drive and creativity and vision and edge and a different way of thinking about the world. That is what I think I’m good at spotting, and that is what I think are good founders.</p>
<p>To do well as an investor, you need to do three things: get access to good investment opportunities, make good decisions about what to invest in, and get the companies you want to invest in to choose you as an investor. That’s it!</p>
<p>The better the investment opportunity is (i.e., expected value relative to valuation), the harder it usually is to get the company to choose you as an investor.</p>
<p>The most important way to help founders is to get them to be more ambitious—to think bigger and to have more self-belief. Help them set ambitious but achievable goals. The second most important thing to do is to give them specific, tactical advice (instead of general strategy) about how to achieve their goals.</p>
<p>I’ve found that most of the time when founders call asking for vague help, what they are really asking for is emotional support from a friend. Invite them over to your house, make them tea or pour them a drink, and start listening to their struggles.</p>
<h2>Quotes</h2>
<p>Minimize your cognitive load from distracting things that don’t really matter.</p>
<p>History belongs to the doers.</p>
<p>People don’t stick with products they don’t love.</p>
<p>You win people over one person at a time.</p>
<p>Crowd is right “sometimes”.</p>
<p>It is easier to start a hard company than an easy company.</p>
<p>You have to get really good at saying no.</p>
<p>The way things get done in the world are through a combination of focus and personal connection. ~ Charlie Rose</p>
<p>I would like to additional factor of self belief to above qualities.</p>
<p>You have to work harder than most people think you should.</p>
<p>People regret way more things they didn’t do then they do.</p>
<p>Startups, once they get big enough, can only grow by word of mouth.</p>
<p>People always say that the CEO’s job is not to run out of money, and what they usually mean by that is fundraising. But the other way you can do that is to make money.</p>
<p>I think the job is 5% that and 95% making sure that it happens.</p>
<h2>Stories</h2>
<p>One specific thing which I do has become an annual ritual which I like is on December 31st every year take a break, and I sit and write down what went well last year what didn’t. I look hard at what I might to-do list for the year and I write one out for next year.</p>
<p>I sold my company when I was 25. Then I took a year off. It is really hard to do in Silicon Valley because in a place where social status is determined by your job and what you are working on like when you show up to a party and someone says oh hey, what are you working on and you are kind a like ahh I am taking a year off. You can see in real time their eyes look for someone else in room to talk to. It doesn’t fill good. But it’s incredible privileged thing to be able to do it only if you are in position between jobs where you can take a year off. I highly recommend. I think it was like one or two best career things I ever did.</p>
<p>In that year, I read like many dozens of textbooks, I learned about the fields that I had been interested in. I didn’t have any idea that they were all going to come together in the way they did. I learned a lot but nuclear engineering, learned a lot about AI, synthetic biology. I learned about investing that I had started like I made maybe four angel investments before this. I travelled around a lot. I met people that were working on all sorts of different things who were nice enough to talk to me. I got badly needed time to reconnect with with my friends and family. I had just caught up on life. Having unlimited time, I helped people that seemed good and interesting and needed help. They would teach me stuff or they would like offer me a chance to invest in their startup later and I left myself unscheduled so I could fly to another country for conference. I started doing all these random stuff.</p>
<p>And out of all of it, almost all of it never worked out. The seeds were planted for things that worked in deep ways later.</p>
</article>
</div></div>||||I|||| Blog
 About

 Sam Altman

 This a collection of almost everything including stories, lessons, short quotes which I will keep updating often. There is lesson in everything. Happy Learning!

 Altmanism

 Doing anything worthwhile takes a long time and it takes a lot of emotional trauma and if you are not willing to sign up for that, you are not gonna succeed.

 Take time try lot of things, explore a lot of things. Try to have beginner’s mind about what will work and what won’t but trust your intuitions and pursue a lot of things as cheaply and quickly as possible then be honest with yourself about what’s working well and what’s not. And hard part is cut all the stuff that’s not working and focus down until you are eventually focused one or two things that are really working.

 My three most pillar in productivity:

 * Make sure to get important things done
 * Don’t waste time on stupid shit
 * Make a lots of lists

 The best thing I can say is I like to follow my interests, I try to pursue a lot of projects that seem interesting. I realize that most of them will fail and I don’t care as long as the one that work really work.

 Everytime I make a major investment in the company, I am convinced that it’s going to work or atleast like I am prepared to pay for the expected value that I think it’s going to work. Convincing yourself otherwise is very hard.

 I think the way you become really great at venture capital is to accept that the only way to figure out the future of the world is to identify incredibly talented, smart, creative, original thinkers and back those people. You have to trust that that will work out over time. You can’t just be the smartest person all the time.

 The best thing in investing is you get to be wrong a lot many times very frequently and you learn that’s okay as long as magnitude of success is pays for all of failures.

 Paul Graham used to say that the prototype for a good founder was James Bond. There’s lots of reasons the analogy doesn’t work, but this idea that a lot of things go wrong, you are unflappable, you never lose your cool, you know how to react. Bad things are happening to you left and right, and you are a survivor, and you always figure it out with whatever resource is in front of you. That part is the spirit of a great founder.

 The things that have taught me lot about business are poker and investing. I strongly recommend poker for understanding the world of psychology and risk.

 Things in life are rarely as risky as they seem. Most people are too much risk averse and so much advice is biased too much towards conservative paths. We are very good at thinking about short-term catastrophic risk and we are very bad thinking about long-term chronic risk. We worry about nuclear metldown but not like inhaling coal smoke.

 I think as you get older, the perspective shift just gets harder and harder and it’s invaluable thing to get. Keeping sort of mental flexibility to look at things from fresh perspectives and new angles is most important thing hold on to.

 Surrounding yourself with people who will make you more ambitious, more inquisitive, shift your perspective more is really important. Basically all people, almost about 98% people in the world will try to pull you back and say it’s crazy, it out there, it’s really ambitious.

 I think a vision that someone feels compelled to make happen in the world is probably the most important of a super successful founder. Then this idea of relentless resourcefulness: “That thing is so important to me that I’m going to figure out how to get it done, whatever it takes. Whatever I need to learn. Whoever I need to convince.” That’s really important.

 You want to look for intersection of what you good at, what you enjoy and where you can create value for the world. In my experience, if you don’t find some intersection of those three it’s really hard to have impact.

 If you work very hard at early in your career, you get little better at what you work every day, every week, every year and you learn more and meet people and just get work done. There’s a compound effect.

 My new belief on how long should I hold the stock in best companies is forever. In a world where people are increasingly focused on tick and quarterly earnings cycle, you should try and go in the other direction. This a great way to generate value and wealth.

 I think willing to go, take a risk and make some amount of sacrifice to be able to try impact the world in some way you care about and sooner you get to work on that, better you’ll be.

 The point that I always try to make is that it’s important to do very small amounts of that. Less is more. If you look at the most successful founders, they’re not the ones that are on the circuit.

 The main question I ask myself when I meet a founder is if I’d work for that person. The second question I ask myself is if I can imagine them taking over their industry. My second biggest chronic mistake has been chasing investments primarily because other investors like them.

 “Love is better than like.” Well, I think there’s a few different reasons for that. One is it objectively seems to be true. If you look at the companies that have gone to become super important and valuable, and shaped the world in a big way, they tend to have fairly fanatical early users. If you think about how you first came across Facebook or Google, it’s very likely because a friend told you how great it was. Focus on love, not likes.

 The role of the CEO is basically to figure out and decide what the company should do and then make sure it does that. Many CEOs try to outsource those things.

 The hard part of getting users and getting revenue is that it means spending your time building stuff and talking to users—and the implication is you should do nothing else.

 Almost every venture capital firm gives advice they never follow themselves. They don’t build differentiated products. They are not network-affected businesses. They don’t try to build a brand and a community. And they don’t try to make something that gets better the bigger it gets and have the scale effects that anyone would tell you they want in a business.

 I think one thing that is a really important thing to strive for is being internally driven, being driven to compete with yourself, not with other people. If you compete with other people, you end up in this mimetic trap, and you sort of play this tournament, and if you win, you lose.

 I don’t know why most investors are so obsessed with the current size of a market instead of how big they think it will be in ten years, but it’s an opportunity for you.

 The most expensive investing mistake in the world to make is to be a pessimist, and it’s a common one. I think that’s actually the most common mistake to make in life.

 If you look at most successful founders, they are pretty smart, upper-middle-class people. They are very rarely the children of super successful people. They are very rarely born in real poverty. They are very rarely the absolute smartest people who otherwise would win a Fields Medal. They are never dumb, but upper-middle-class, pretty smart people that have grit and drive and creativity and vision and edge and a different way of thinking about the world. That is what I think I’m good at spotting, and that is what I think are good founders.

 To do well as an investor, you need to do three things: get access to good investment opportunities, make good decisions about what to invest in, and get the companies you want to invest in to choose you as an investor. That’s it!

 The better the investment opportunity is (i.e., expected value relative to valuation), the harder it usually is to get the company to choose you as an investor.

 The most important way to help founders is to get them to be more ambitious—to think bigger and to have more self-belief. Help them set ambitious but achievable goals. The second most important thing to do is to give them specific, tactical advice (instead of general strategy) about how to achieve their goals.

 I’ve found that most of the time when founders call asking for vague help, what they are really asking for is emotional support from a friend. Invite them over to your house, make them tea or pour them a drink, and start listening to their struggles.

 Quotes

 Minimize your cognitive load from distracting things that don’t really matter.

 History belongs to the doers.

 People don’t stick with products they don’t love.

 You win people over one person at a time.

 Crowd is right “sometimes”.

 It is easier to start a hard company than an easy company.

 You have to get really good at saying no.

 The way things get done in the world are through a combination of focus and personal connection. ~ Charlie Rose

 I would like to additional factor of self belief to above qualities.

 You have to work harder than most people think you should.

 People regret way more things they didn’t do then they do.

 Startups, once they get big enough, can only grow by word of mouth.

 People always say that the CEO’s job is not to run out of money, and what they usually mean by that is fundraising. But the other way you can do that is to make money.

 I think the job is 5% that and 95% making sure that it happens.

 Stories

 One specific thing which I do has become an annual ritual which I like is on December 31st every year take a break, and I sit and write down what went well last year what didn’t. I look hard at what I might to-do list for the year and I write one out for next year.

 I sold my company when I was 25. Then I took a year off. It is really hard to do in Silicon Valley because in a place where social status is determined by your job and what you are working on like when you show up to a party and someone says oh hey, what are you working on and you are kind a like ahh I am taking a year off. You can see in real time their eyes look for someone else in room to talk to. It doesn’t fill good. But it’s incredible privileged thing to be able to do it only if you are in position between jobs where you can take a year off. I highly recommend. I think it was like one or two best career things I ever did.

 In that year, I read like many dozens of textbooks, I learned about the fields that I had been interested in. I didn’t have any idea that they were all going to come together in the way they did. I learned a lot but nuclear engineering, learned a lot about AI, synthetic biology. I learned about investing that I had started like I made maybe four angel investments before this. I travelled around a lot. I met people that were working on all sorts of different things who were nice enough to talk to me. I got badly needed time to reconnect with with my friends and family. I had just caught up on life. Having unlimited time, I helped people that seemed good and interesting and needed help. They would teach me stuff or they would like offer me a chance to invest in their startup later and I left myself unscheduled so I could fly to another country for conference. I started doing all these random stuff.

 And out of all of it, almost all of it never worked out. The seeds were planted for things that worked in deep ways later.

 ✌️ Peace Out! ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
 Pixyll Theme crafted with <3
This a collection of almost everything including stories, lessons, short quotes which I will keep updating often. There is lesson in everything. 
Altmanism
Doing anything worthwhile takes a long time and it takes a lot of emotional trauma and if you are not willing to sign up for that, you are not gonna succeed.
Take time try lot of things, explore a lot of things. Try to have beginner’s mind about what will work and what won’t but trust your intuitions and pursue a lot of things as cheaply and quickly as possible then be honest with yourself about what’s working well and what’s not. And hard part is cut all the stuff that’s not working and focus down until you are eventually focused one or two things that are really working.
My three most pillar in productivity:
 
 
 
 
Everytime I make a major investment in the company, I am convinced that it’s going to work or atleast like I am prepared to pay for the expected value that I think it’s going to work. Convincing yourself otherwise is very hard.
I think the way you become really great at venture capital is to accept that the only way to figure out the future of the world is to identify incredibly talented, smart, creative, original thinkers and back those people. You have to trust that that will work out over time. You can’t just be the smartest person all the time.
 
Paul Graham used to say that the prototype for a good founder was James Bond. There’s lots of reasons the analogy doesn’t work, but this idea that a lot of things go wrong, you are unflappable, you never lose your cool, you know how to react. Bad things are happening to you left and right, and you are a survivor, and you always figure it out with whatever resource is in front of you. That part is the spirit of a great founder.
The things that have taught me lot about business are poker and investing. I strongly recommend poker for understanding the world of psychology and risk.
Things in life are rarely as risky as they seem. Most people are too much risk averse and so much advice is biased too much towards conservative paths. We are very good at thinking about short-term catastrophic risk and we are very bad thinking about long-term chronic risk. We worry about nuclear metldown but not like inhaling coal smoke.
I think as you get older, the perspective shift just gets harder and harder and it’s invaluable thing to get. Keeping sort of mental flexibility to look at things from fresh perspectives and new angles is most important thing hold on to.
Surrounding yourself with people who will make you more ambitious, more inquisitive, shift your perspective more is really important. Basically all people, almost about 98% people in the world will try to pull you back and say it’s crazy, it out there, it’s really ambitious.
I think a vision that someone feels compelled to make happen in the world is probably the most important of a super successful founder. Then this idea of relentless resourcefulness: “That thing is so important to me that I’m going to figure out how to get it done, whatever it takes. Whatever I need to learn. Whoever I need to convince.” That’s really important.
You want to look for intersection of what you good at, what you enjoy and where you can create value for the world. In my experience, if you don’t find some intersection of those three it’s really hard to have impact.
If you work very hard at early in your career, you get little better at what you work every day, every week, every year and you learn more and meet people and just get work done. There’s a compound effect.
 In a world where people are increasingly focused on tick and quarterly earnings cycle, you should try and go in the other direction. This a great way to generate value and wealth.
I think willing to go, take a risk and make some amount of sacrifice to be able to try impact the world in some way you care about and sooner you get to work on that, better you’ll be.
If you look at the most successful founders, they’re not the ones that are on the circuit.
The main question I ask myself when I meet a founder is if I’d work for that person. The second question I ask myself is if I can imagine them taking over their industry. My second biggest chronic mistake has been chasing investments primarily because other investors like them.
 Well, I think there’s a few different reasons for that. One is it objectively seems to be true. If you look at the companies that have gone to become super important and valuable, and shaped the world in a big way, they tend to have fairly fanatical early users. If you think about how you first came across Facebook or Google, it’s very likely because a friend told you how great it was. 
 
 
Almost every venture capital firm gives advice they never follow themselves. They don’t build differentiated products. They are not network-affected businesses. They don’t try to build a brand and a community. And they don’t try to make something that gets better the bigger it gets and have the scale effects that anyone would tell you they want in a business.
I think one thing that is a really important thing to strive for is being internally driven, being driven to compete with yourself, not with other people. If you compete with other people, you end up in this mimetic trap, and you sort of play this tournament, and if you win, you lose.
I don’t know why most investors are so obsessed with the current size of a market instead of how big they think it will be in ten years, but it’s an opportunity for you.
The most expensive investing mistake in the world to make is to be a pessimist, and it’s a common one. I think that’s actually the most common mistake to make in life.
If you look at most successful founders, they are pretty smart, upper-middle-class people. They are very rarely the children of super successful people. They are very rarely born in real poverty. They are very rarely the absolute smartest people who otherwise would win a Fields Medal. They are never dumb, but upper-middle-class, pretty smart people that have grit and drive and creativity and vision and edge and a different way of thinking about the world. That is what I think I’m good at spotting, and that is what I think are good founders.
To do well as an investor, you need to do three things: get access to good investment opportunities, make good decisions about what to invest in, and get the companies you want to invest in to choose you as an investor. That’s it!
The better the investment opportunity is (i.e., expected value relative to valuation), the harder it usually is to get the company to choose you as an investor.
The most important way to help founders is to get them to be more ambitious—to think bigger and to have more self-belief. Help them set ambitious but achievable goals. The second most important thing to do is to give them specific, tactical advice (instead of general strategy) about how to achieve their goals.
I’ve found that most of the time when founders call asking for vague help, what they are really asking for is emotional support from a friend. Invite them over to your house, make them tea or pour them a drink, and start listening to their struggles.
Quotes
Minimize your cognitive load from distracting things that don’t really matter.
History belongs to the doers.
People don’t stick with products they don’t love.
You win people over one person at a time.
Crowd is right “sometimes”.
It is easier to start a hard company than an easy company.
You have to get really good at saying no.
The way things get done in the world are through a combination of focus and personal connection. ~ Charlie Rose
I would like to additional factor of self belief to above qualities.
You have to work harder than most people think you should.
People regret way more things they didn’t do then they do.
Startups, once they get big enough, can only grow by word of mouth.
People always say that the CEO’s job is not to run out of money, and what they usually mean by that is fundraising. But the other way you can do that is to make money.
I think the job is 5% that and 95% making sure that it happens.
Stories
One specific thing which I do has become an annual ritual which I like is on December 31st every year take a break, and I sit and write down what went well last year what didn’t. I look hard at what I might to-do list for the year and I write one out for next year.
I sold my company when I was 25. Then I took a year off. It is really hard to do in Silicon Valley because in a place where social status is determined by your job and what you are working on like when you show up to a party and someone says oh hey, what are you working on and you are kind a like ahh I am taking a year off. You can see in real time their eyes look for someone else in room to talk to. It doesn’t fill good. But it’s incredible privileged thing to be able to do it only if you are in position between jobs where you can take a year off. I highly recommend. I think it was like one or two best career things I ever did.
In that year, I read like many dozens of textbooks, I learned about the fields that I had been interested in. I didn’t have any idea that they were all going to come together in the way they did. I learned a lot but nuclear engineering, learned a lot about AI, synthetic biology. I learned about investing that I had started like I made maybe four angel investments before this. I travelled around a lot. I met people that were working on all sorts of different things who were nice enough to talk to me. I got badly needed time to reconnect with with my friends and family. I had just caught up on life. Having unlimited time, I helped people that seemed good and interesting and needed help. They would teach me stuff or they would like offer me a chance to invest in their startup later and I left myself unscheduled so I could fly to another country for conference. I started doing all these random stuff.
And out of all of it, almost all of it never worked out. The seeds were planted for things that worked in deep ways later.
Sam Altman
https://dudeperf3ct.github.io/sensei/sam-altman/
https://www.playforthoughts.com/blog/sam-altman-equation
Sam Altman: The Success Equation — Play For Thoughts
2022-06-13
Mateusz Siniło
<div><div>
<p>Sam Altman is a successful programmer, entrepreneur, and AI enthusiast, mostly known as the former president of Y Combinator, the world’s most successful startup incubator. Sam went to Standford and studied computer science. He was the co-founder and CEO of a mobile location-based startup called Loopt which was funded by Y Combinator. </p><p>Altman is widely known for writing essays on a variety of topics, several of which are held in high esteem and are considered a great work of providing valuable advice and guidance, especially for younger people. </p><p>Sam, in his essays, emphasizes the importance of creating value, choosing the right project, and looking through the long-term perspective. His most well-received essays are "The days are long but the decades are short", "How to Be Successful" and "Idea Generation".</p><p>He has a lot of insightful frameworks that can significantly improve our decision-making process and give us a bigger picture of success and value creation. And the learnings from Sam can be applied not only in the tech and startup world but as guides and mental models for our careers and overall thinking patterns.</p><h4><strong>1. </strong>Choose the right project to work on.</h4><blockquote><p>“Pick the right thing to do (this is critical and usually ignored), focus, believe in yourself (especially when others tell you it’s not going to work), develop personal connections with people that will help you, learn to identify talented people, and work hard. It’s hard to identify what to work on because original thought is hard.“</p></blockquote><p>Altman in one of his most popular essays “The days are long but decades are short“ shared a couple of thoughts and ideas on work and success. </p><p>Sam pointed out the importance of working on the right projects because it’s often easy to get heads down, lose the appropriate focus and mislike the accomplishments.</p><p>And especially in today's, ever-changing and dynamic world is much easy to lose the right frame of picking the right thing to do and jump from one to another project.</p><blockquote><p>“The number of people who said to me like man I thought for 10 years I was doing incredible work because I felt like I was creating a huge amount of output but in retrospect it was in the wrong direction“</p></blockquote><p>Obviously, we do need to focus and work hard but it’s good to put the focus in the right direction. Therefore, the good idea would be to focus on some time and then step back and think if I’m doing the right thing.</p><p>And on the other hand, we want to avoid reckless mistakes and constantly flip our attention from project to project. And Altman describes this kind of mistake as a 22-year-old stereotypical college dropout in Silicon Valley:</p><blockquote><p>“I’m gonna solve all the world’s problems in three months and if I haven’t done in three months, I failed, so I’m going to give up and do the next thing, and they jump onto some other projects“</p></blockquote><pre><code>So the advice that Sam left us is to make check-in to make sure you work on things that matter and work on an appropriate time scale because as he noticed, the time horizon is crucial. </code></pre><h4><strong>2. Compound Yourself</strong></h4><blockquote><p>“Compounding is magic. Look for it everywhere. Exponential curves are the key to wealth generation. “</p></blockquote><p>One of the most crucial and lucrative but difficult things to do is to be on the exponential curve, and since most careers progress fairly linearly, it’s important to move towards a career that has a compounding effect. </p><p>I’m going to refer to Albert Einstein who described the compound interest not only as the most powerful force in the universe but also the greatest mathematical discovery of all time. </p><blockquote><p>“you should aim for your life to follow an ever-increasing up-and-to-the-right trajectory.“</p></blockquote><p>The perfect scenario is when your rate of learning is always high, and each unit of work adds up well, generating more results and causing the great effect of compounding. </p><p>The case in which twenty years of your work could be condensed and as effective as two years of work of something different is not recommended and would be better to shift the direction of effort. </p><p>And the form of leverage and compounding applied not only to the capital, but also to networks, brands, relationships, and many more - anything of importance. </p><blockquote><p>“It’s useful to focus on adding another zero to whatever you define as your success metric—money, status, impact on the world, or whatever. I am willing to take as much time as needed between projects to find my next thing. But I always want it to be a project that, if successful, will make the rest of my career look like a footnote.“</p></blockquote><p>As we noted before, it's often common and easy to get your head down and focus on the wrong things, and this approach also applies to compounding because most people are stuck with linear opportunities. We should have willing to let these kinds of opportunities go and expose ourselves to exponential opportunities that can bring beneficial returns.</p><blockquote><p>“I think the biggest competitive advantage in business—either for a company or for an individual’s career—is long-term thinking with a broad view of how different systems in the world are going to come together. One of the notable aspects of compound growth is that the furthest out years are the most important. In a world where almost no one takes a truly long-term view, the market richly rewards those who do.“</p></blockquote><p>In short, it’s crucial to arm yourself with the form of leverage, and all the important benefits in life come from compound interest.</p><h4><strong>3. The importance of momentum</strong></h4><blockquote><p>“I was told and I thought for a long time that you get burned out from working too hard and at least in my experience burnout actually comes from failing and things not working. Momentum is really energizing, the lack of momentum is super draining“</p></blockquote><p>Sam pointed out how gaining momentum can do wonders for our growth, which resonates and complements the previous advice on compounding. It gives us the bigger picture, and from my personal experience, it seems to be true.</p><p>I find that I have infinite energy to work on things that interest me and additionally work. On the contrary, I hardly have the motivation to work on projects that either interest me or that don't work out.</p><p>Sam Altman additionally often put the concept of momentum in the startups world: </p><blockquote><p>“Growth and momentum are what a startup lives on and you always have to focus on maintaining these“</p></blockquote><p>And he summarized the concept of momentum by drawing two conclusions and lessons:</p><ul><li><p>The tiring is banging your head against the wall, not the number of hours worked</p></li><li><p>If you don't have momentum, nothing except getting momentum will solve your problems.</p></li></ul><h4><strong>4. Rate of iteration</strong></h4><blockquote><p>“The number one predictor of success for a very young startup: rate of iteration.”</p></blockquote><p>As we previously mentioned, Einstein described the compounding effect as the most beautiful mathematical discovery, but I think that we human beings underestimate the power of compounding. </p><p>And the main cause of that may be that we cannot look through the long-term perspective and we overestimate the short-term consequences.</p><p>The compounding power of the rapid execution and iterated learning feedback loop can do wonders to our growth, and commitment to this, over the course of career, is, what Sam described, the closest thing you can get to guaranteed success.</p><blockquote><p>“I think most people give up on things way too early[…] Most of the founders that I have spent time with that have gone on to be super successful spent a very long time on their idea when a lot of people would have given up and either people said it sucks or people said nothing at all“</p></blockquote><p>This advice is also highly valuable in the startup world, where Altman encourages us to begin with a “minimum viable product” and then iterate rapidly. But the common ground between startups, our lives, and careers is that it’s all about execution. </p><p>A good summary of the concept of iterations could be the quote by Naval Ravikant: </p><blockquote><p>“It isn’t 10,000 hours that creates outliers, it’s 10,000 iterations.“</p></blockquote><h4><strong>5. Useful frameworks</strong></h4><p>Sam through his speeches shared a couple of frameworks that support his decision-making process, and the common theme of these mental models is to look through the long-term lens and get the winding path of progress.</p><p><strong>a) Impact maximization / regret minimization - how to allocate time</strong></p><blockquote><p>“Impact maximization slash regret minimization. So I try to look at those two curves together. And I try to think about where I can have the biggest net impact on the world, net positive impact on the world. Easy to have a big impact. And then, also, just regret minimization. You know, you get to live once. It’s really important that you do what you want to do and that you spend time with the people you’d like to work with and work on the things that you find personally fulfilling.“</p></blockquote><p><strong>b) How to pick what’s important to work on</strong></p><blockquote><p>“I think you want to look for the intersection of what you’re good at, what you enjoy and where you can create value for the world. And in my experience, if you don’t find some of the intersection of those three it’s hard to really have an impact.“</p></blockquote><p><strong>c) Starting a lot of things then prune down and focus on the thing that is working</strong></p><blockquote><p>“I found really useful is spend a little bit of effort trying a lot of things, and then relentlessly prune down and focus quickly on the ones that you like and the ones that seem to be working. So in some sense, this is the Y Combinator model of fund a lot of startups with a little bit of money. And then, you know, most don’t work out, and some work really well. You spend more time and more money on the ones that do. “</p></blockquote><p><strong>d) Decision of quitting should be internal</strong></p><blockquote><p>“A Framework that I have for when to give up and when to keep working is that it should be internal not external decision. If people aren’t using it or are saying it’s bad that alone is not a reason to give up. You want to pay some attention to that, they might be right, but I think that the best entrepreneurs I know, they make an internal decision about when to give up or when to keep working on something. “</p></blockquote><p>The books that Sam recommends to improve the quality of the thinking process are <a href="https://amzn.to/3tyKVKB"><strong>“Thinking, Fast and Slow”</strong></a> by Daniel Kahneman and <a href="https://amzn.to/3MHJH6k"><strong>“Zero to One“</strong></a> by Peter Thiel.</p><h4><strong>6. Success = ability x will x direction x luck</strong></h4><p>Sam shared this equation of success through one of his tweets and combining our information we can somehow break it down and grasp the notion of that equation. </p><p>Firstly, the direction cannot be accidental, and our focus should be directed on important and exponential projects. And it’s not easy to maintain that frame in such a dynamic world, so a good framework is to be internally driven and step back and think deeply about the project.</p><p>Secondly, you have to give yourself a lot of chances to get lucky, and it can be done by frequently iterating things. The more energy around you, the higher chances that you get lucky. And another powerful lesson you can learn is that you can figure out what to do in situations that seem to have no solution. </p><blockquote><p>“Grit comes from learning you can get back up after you get knocked down.”</p></blockquote><p>Thirdly, it seems that ability and will follow your success and momentum, so to improve the ability and motivation, I would seek out creating momentum and get the compound effect, again by a frequent rate of iterations on exponential projects.</p><blockquote><p>“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“</p></blockquote><p>For more insights, I encourage you to follow me on <a href="https://twitter.com/mateuszsinilo"><strong>Twitter</strong></a> and join our community on <a href="https://discord.gg/9gwFrzkYPf"><strong>Discord</strong></a>!</p><h4><strong>Summary:</strong></h4><ol><li><p>More crucial than hard work itself is to pick the right thing to do, and it’s usually ignored and a critical factor to future success.</p></li><li><p>“Compounding is magic. Look for it everywhere. Exponential curves are the key to wealth generation. “</p></li><li><p>“Momentum is really energizing, the lack of momentum is super draining“</p></li><li><p>“The number one predictor of success for a very young startup: rate of iteration.”</p></li><li><p>Have useful frameworks and mental models in your toolbox to improve the quality of the decision-making process. The recommended book that covers that topic well is <a href="https://amzn.to/3mMYi61"><strong>“Thinking, Fast and Slow“</strong></a>.</p></li><li><p>Success = ability x will x direction x luck.</p></li></ol>
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 Sam Altman: The Success Equation

 Jun 13
 Written By Mateusz Siniło

 Sam Altman is a successful programmer, entrepreneur, and AI enthusiast, mostly known as the former president of Y Combinator, the world’s most successful startup incubator. Sam went to Standford and studied computer science. He was the co-founder and CEO of a mobile location-based startup called Loopt which was funded by Y Combinator. 

 Altman is widely known for writing essays on a variety of topics, several of which are held in high esteem and are considered a great work of providing valuable advice and guidance, especially for younger people. 

 Sam, in his essays, emphasizes the importance of creating value, choosing the right project, and looking through the long-term perspective. His most well-received essays are "The days are long but the decades are short", "How to Be Successful" and "Idea Generation".

 He has a lot of insightful frameworks that can significantly improve our decision-making process and give us a bigger picture of success and value creation. And the learnings from Sam can be applied not only in the tech and startup world but as guides and mental models for our careers and overall thinking patterns.

 1. Choose the right project to work on.

 “Pick the right thing to do (this is critical and usually ignored), focus, believe in yourself (especially when others tell you it’s not going to work), develop personal connections with people that will help you, learn to identify talented people, and work hard. It’s hard to identify what to work on because original thought is hard.“

 Altman in one of his most popular essays “The days are long but decades are short“ shared a couple of thoughts and ideas on work and success. 

 Sam pointed out the importance of working on the right projects because it’s often easy to get heads down, lose the appropriate focus and mislike the accomplishments.

 And especially in today's, ever-changing and dynamic world is much easy to lose the right frame of picking the right thing to do and jump from one to another project.

 “The number of people who said to me like man I thought for 10 years I was doing incredible work because I felt like I was creating a huge amount of output but in retrospect it was in the wrong direction“

 Obviously, we do need to focus and work hard but it’s good to put the focus in the right direction. Therefore, the good idea would be to focus on some time and then step back and think if I’m doing the right thing.

 And on the other hand, we want to avoid reckless mistakes and constantly flip our attention from project to project. And Altman describes this kind of mistake as a 22-year-old stereotypical college dropout in Silicon Valley:

 “I’m gonna solve all the world’s problems in three months and if I haven’t done in three months, I failed, so I’m going to give up and do the next thing, and they jump onto some other projects“

 So the advice that Sam left us is to make check-in to make sure you work on things that matter and work on an appropriate time scale because as he noticed, the time horizon is crucial. 

 2. Compound Yourself

 “Compounding is magic. Look for it everywhere. Exponential curves are the key to wealth generation. “

 One of the most crucial and lucrative but difficult things to do is to be on the exponential curve, and since most careers progress fairly linearly, it’s important to move towards a career that has a compounding effect. 

 I’m going to refer to Albert Einstein who described the compound interest not only as the most powerful force in the universe but also the greatest mathematical discovery of all time. 

 “you should aim for your life to follow an ever-increasing up-and-to-the-right trajectory.“

 The perfect scenario is when your rate of learning is always high, and each unit of work adds up well, generating more results and causing the great effect of compounding. 

 The case in which twenty years of your work could be condensed and as effective as two years of work of something different is not recommended and would be better to shift the direction of effort. 

 And the form of leverage and compounding applied not only to the capital, but also to networks, brands, relationships, and many more - anything of importance. 

 “It’s useful to focus on adding another zero to whatever you define as your success metric—money, status, impact on the world, or whatever. I am willing to take as much time as needed between projects to find my next thing. But I always want it to be a project that, if successful, will make the rest of my career look like a footnote.“

 As we noted before, it's often common and easy to get your head down and focus on the wrong things, and this approach also applies to compounding because most people are stuck with linear opportunities. We should have willing to let these kinds of opportunities go and expose ourselves to exponential opportunities that can bring beneficial returns.

 “I think the biggest competitive advantage in business—either for a company or for an individual’s career—is long-term thinking with a broad view of how different systems in the world are going to come together. One of the notable aspects of compound growth is that the furthest out years are the most important. In a world where almost no one takes a truly long-term view, the market richly rewards those who do.“

 In short, it’s crucial to arm yourself with the form of leverage, and all the important benefits in life come from compound interest.

 3. The importance of momentum

 “I was told and I thought for a long time that you get burned out from working too hard and at least in my experience burnout actually comes from failing and things not working. Momentum is really energizing, the lack of momentum is super draining“

 Sam pointed out how gaining momentum can do wonders for our growth, which resonates and complements the previous advice on compounding. It gives us the bigger picture, and from my personal experience, it seems to be true.

 I find that I have infinite energy to work on things that interest me and additionally work. On the contrary, I hardly have the motivation to work on projects that either interest me or that don't work out.

 Sam Altman additionally often put the concept of momentum in the startups world: 

 “Growth and momentum are what a startup lives on and you always have to focus on maintaining these“

 And he summarized the concept of momentum by drawing two conclusions and lessons:

 * The tiring is banging your head against the wall, not the number of hours worked

 * If you don't have momentum, nothing except getting momentum will solve your problems.

 4. Rate of iteration

 “The number one predictor of success for a very young startup: rate of iteration.”

 As we previously mentioned, Einstein described the compounding effect as the most beautiful mathematical discovery, but I think that we human beings underestimate the power of compounding. 

 And the main cause of that may be that we cannot look through the long-term perspective and we overestimate the short-term consequences.

 The compounding power of the rapid execution and iterated learning feedback loop can do wonders to our growth, and commitment to this, over the course of career, is, what Sam described, the closest thing you can get to guaranteed success.

 “I think most people give up on things way too early[…] Most of the founders that I have spent time with that have gone on to be super successful spent a very long time on their idea when a lot of people would have given up and either people said it sucks or people said nothing at all“

 This advice is also highly valuable in the startup world, where Altman encourages us to begin with a “minimum viable product” and then iterate rapidly. But the common ground between startups, our lives, and careers is that it’s all about execution. 

 A good summary of the concept of iterations could be the quote by Naval Ravikant: 

 “It isn’t 10,000 hours that creates outliers, it’s 10,000 iterations.“

 5. Useful frameworks

 Sam through his speeches shared a couple of frameworks that support his decision-making process, and the common theme of these mental models is to look through the long-term lens and get the winding path of progress.

 a) Impact maximization / regret minimization - how to allocate time

 “Impact maximization slash regret minimization. So I try to look at those two curves together. And I try to think about where I can have the biggest net impact on the world, net positive impact on the world. Easy to have a big impact. And then, also, just regret minimization. You know, you get to live once. It’s really important that you do what you want to do and that you spend time with the people you’d like to work with and work on the things that you find personally fulfilling.“

 b) How to pick what’s important to work on

 “I think you want to look for the intersection of what you’re good at, what you enjoy and where you can create value for the world. And in my experience, if you don’t find some of the intersection of those three it’s hard to really have an impact.“

 c) Starting a lot of things then prune down and focus on the thing that is working

 “I found really useful is spend a little bit of effort trying a lot of things, and then relentlessly prune down and focus quickly on the ones that you like and the ones that seem to be working. So in some sense, this is the Y Combinator model of fund a lot of startups with a little bit of money. And then, you know, most don’t work out, and some work really well. You spend more time and more money on the ones that do. “

 d) Decision of quitting should be internal

 “A Framework that I have for when to give up and when to keep working is that it should be internal not external decision. If people aren’t using it or are saying it’s bad that alone is not a reason to give up. You want to pay some attention to that, they might be right, but I think that the best entrepreneurs I know, they make an internal decision about when to give up or when to keep working on something. “

 The books that Sam recommends to improve the quality of the thinking process are “Thinking, Fast and Slow” by Daniel Kahneman and “Zero to One“ by Peter Thiel.

 6. Success = ability x will x direction x luck

 Sam shared this equation of success through one of his tweets and combining our information we can somehow break it down and grasp the notion of that equation. 

 Firstly, the direction cannot be accidental, and our focus should be directed on important and exponential projects. And it’s not easy to maintain that frame in such a dynamic world, so a good framework is to be internally driven and step back and think deeply about the project.

 Secondly, you have to give yourself a lot of chances to get lucky, and it can be done by frequently iterating things. The more energy around you, the higher chances that you get lucky. And another powerful lesson you can learn is that you can figure out what to do in situations that seem to have no solution. 

 “Grit comes from learning you can get back up after you get knocked down.”

 Thirdly, it seems that ability and will follow your success and momentum, so to improve the ability and motivation, I would seek out creating momentum and get the compound effect, again by a frequent rate of iterations on exponential projects.

 “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“

 For more insights, I encourage you to follow me on Twitter and join our community on Discord!

 Summary:

 1. More crucial than hard work itself is to pick the right thing to do, and it’s usually ignored and a critical factor to future success.

 2. “Compounding is magic. Look for it everywhere. Exponential curves are the key to wealth generation. “

 3. “Momentum is really energizing, the lack of momentum is super draining“

 4. “The number one predictor of success for a very young startup: rate of iteration.”

 5. Have useful frameworks and mental models in your toolbox to improve the quality of the decision-making process. The recommended book that covers that topic well is “Thinking, Fast and Slow“.

 6. Success = ability x will x direction x luck.

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 mateuszsinilo@gmail.com

Sam Altman is a successful programmer, entrepreneur, and AI enthusiast, mostly known as the former president of Y Combinator, the world’s most successful startup incubator. Sam went to Standford and studied computer science. He was the co-founder and CEO of a mobile location-based startup called Loopt which was funded by Y Combinator.  Altman is widely known for writing essays on a variety of topics, several of which are held in high esteem and are considered a great work of providing valuable advice and guidance, especially for younger people.  Sam, in his essays, emphasizes the importance of creating value, choosing the right project, and looking through the long-term perspective. His most well-received essays are "The days are long but the decades are short", "How to Be Successful" and "Idea Generation". He has a lot of insightful frameworks that can significantly improve our decision-making process and give us a bigger picture of success and value creation. And the learnings from Sam can be applied not only in the tech and startup world but as guides and mental models for our careers and overall thinking patterns.  1. Choose the right project to work on.  “Pick the right thing to do (this is critical and usually ignored), focus, believe in yourself (especially when others tell you it’s not going to work), develop personal connections with people that will help you, learn to identify talented people, and work hard. It’s hard to identify what to work on because original thought is hard.“  Altman in one of his most popular essays “The days are long but decades are short“ shared a couple of thoughts and ideas on work and success.  Sam pointed out the importance of working on the right projects because it’s often easy to get heads down, lose the appropriate focus and mislike the accomplishments. And especially in today's, ever-changing and dynamic world is much easy to lose the right frame of picking the right thing to do and jump from one to another project.  “The number of people who said to me like man I thought for 10 years I was doing incredible work because I felt like I was creating a huge amount of output but in retrospect it was in the wrong direction“  Obviously, we do need to focus and work hard but it’s good to put the focus in the right direction. Therefore, the good idea would be to focus on some time and then step back and think if I’m doing the right thing. And on the other hand, we want to avoid reckless mistakes and constantly flip our attention from project to project. And Altman describes this kind of mistake as a 22-year-old stereotypical college dropout in Silicon Valley:  “I’m gonna solve all the world’s problems in three months and if I haven’t done in three months, I failed, so I’m going to give up and do the next thing, and they jump onto some other projects“   So the advice that Sam left us is to make check-in to make sure you work on things that matter and work on an appropriate time scale because as he noticed, the time horizon is crucial.    2. Compound Yourself   “Compounding is magic. Look for it everywhere. Exponential curves are the key to wealth generation. “  One of the most crucial and lucrative but difficult things to do is to be on the exponential curve, and since most careers progress fairly linearly, it’s important to move towards a career that has a compounding effect.  I’m going to refer to Albert Einstein who described the compound interest not only as the most powerful force in the universe but also the greatest mathematical discovery of all time.   “you should aim for your life to follow an ever-increasing up-and-to-the-right trajectory.“  The perfect scenario is when your rate of learning is always high, and each unit of work adds up well, generating more results and causing the great effect of compounding.  The case in which twenty years of your work could be condensed and as effective as two years of work of something different is not recommended and would be better to shift the direction of effort.  And the form of leverage and compounding applied not only to the capital, but also to networks, brands, relationships, and many more - anything of importance.   “It’s useful to focus on adding another zero to whatever you define as your success metric—money, status, impact on the world, or whatever. I am willing to take as much time as needed between projects to find my next thing. But I always want it to be a project that, if successful, will make the rest of my career look like a footnote.“  As we noted before, it's often common and easy to get your head down and focus on the wrong things, and this approach also applies to compounding because most people are stuck with linear opportunities. We should have willing to let these kinds of opportunities go and expose ourselves to exponential opportunities that can bring beneficial returns.  “I think the biggest competitive advantage in business—either for a company or for an individual’s career—is long-term thinking with a broad view of how different systems in the world are going to come together. One of the notable aspects of compound growth is that the furthest out years are the most important. In a world where almost no one takes a truly long-term view, the market richly rewards those who do.“  In short, it’s crucial to arm yourself with the form of leverage, and all the important benefits in life come from compound interest.  3. The importance of momentum   “I was told and I thought for a long time that you get burned out from working too hard and at least in my experience burnout actually comes from failing and things not working. Momentum is really energizing, the lack of momentum is super draining“  Sam pointed out how gaining momentum can do wonders for our growth, which resonates and complements the previous advice on compounding. It gives us the bigger picture, and from my personal experience, it seems to be true. I find that I have infinite energy to work on things that interest me and additionally work. On the contrary, I hardly have the motivation to work on projects that either interest me or that don't work out. Sam Altman additionally often put the concept of momentum in the startups world:   “Growth and momentum are what a startup lives on and you always have to focus on maintaining these“  And he summarized the concept of momentum by drawing two conclusions and lessons:   The tiring is banging your head against the wall, not the number of hours worked   If you don't have momentum, nothing except getting momentum will solve your problems.    4. Rate of iteration   “The number one predictor of success for a very young startup: rate of iteration.”  As we previously mentioned, Einstein described the compounding effect as the most beautiful mathematical discovery, but I think that we human beings underestimate the power of compounding.  And the main cause of that may be that we cannot look through the long-term perspective and we overestimate the short-term consequences. The compounding power of the rapid execution and iterated learning feedback loop can do wonders to our growth, and commitment to this, over the course of career, is, what Sam described, the closest thing you can get to guaranteed success.  “I think most people give up on things way too early[…] Most of the founders that I have spent time with that have gone on to be super successful spent a very long time on their idea when a lot of people would have given up and either people said it sucks or people said nothing at all“  This advice is also highly valuable in the startup world, where Altman encourages us to begin with a “minimum viable product” and then iterate rapidly. But the common ground between startups, our lives, and careers is that it’s all about execution.  A good summary of the concept of iterations could be the quote by Naval Ravikant:   “It isn’t 10,000 hours that creates outliers, it’s 10,000 iterations.“   5. Useful frameworks  Sam through his speeches shared a couple of frameworks that support his decision-making process, and the common theme of these mental models is to look through the long-term lens and get the winding path of progress.  a) Impact maximization / regret minimization - how to allocate time   “Impact maximization slash regret minimization. So I try to look at those two curves together. And I try to think about where I can have the biggest net impact on the world, net positive impact on the world. Easy to have a big impact. And then, also, just regret minimization. You know, you get to live once. It’s really important that you do what you want to do and that you spend time with the people you’d like to work with and work on the things that you find personally fulfilling.“   b) How to pick what’s important to work on   “I think you want to look for the intersection of what you’re good at, what you enjoy and where you can create value for the world. And in my experience, if you don’t find some of the intersection of those three it’s hard to really have an impact.“   c) Starting a lot of things then prune down and focus on the thing that is working   “I found really useful is spend a little bit of effort trying a lot of things, and then relentlessly prune down and focus quickly on the ones that you like and the ones that seem to be working. So in some sense, this is the Y Combinator model of fund a lot of startups with a little bit of money. And then, you know, most don’t work out, and some work really well. You spend more time and more money on the ones that do. “   d) Decision of quitting should be internal   “A Framework that I have for when to give up and when to keep working is that it should be internal not external decision. If people aren’t using it or are saying it’s bad that alone is not a reason to give up. You want to pay some attention to that, they might be right, but I think that the best entrepreneurs I know, they make an internal decision about when to give up or when to keep working on something. “  The books that Sam recommends to improve the quality of the thinking process are  “Thinking, Fast and Slow”  by Daniel Kahneman and  “Zero to One“  by Peter Thiel.  6. Success = ability x will x direction x luck  Sam shared this equation of success through one of his tweets and combining our information we can somehow break it down and grasp the notion of that equation.  Firstly, the direction cannot be accidental, and our focus should be directed on important and exponential projects. And it’s not easy to maintain that frame in such a dynamic world, so a good framework is to be internally driven and step back and think deeply about the project. Secondly, you have to give yourself a lot of chances to get lucky, and it can be done by frequently iterating things. The more energy around you, the higher chances that you get lucky. And another powerful lesson you can learn is that you can figure out what to do in situations that seem to have no solution.   “Grit comes from learning you can get back up after you get knocked down.”  Thirdly, it seems that ability and will follow your success and momentum, so to improve the ability and motivation, I would seek out creating momentum and get the compound effect, again by a frequent rate of iterations on exponential projects.  “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“  For more insights, I encourage you to follow me on  Twitter  and join our community on  Discord !  Summary:    More crucial than hard work itself is to pick the right thing to do, and it’s usually ignored and a critical factor to future success.   “Compounding is magic. Look for it everywhere. Exponential curves are the key to wealth generation. “   “Momentum is really energizing, the lack of momentum is super draining“   “The number one predictor of success for a very young startup: rate of iteration.”   Have useful frameworks and mental models in your toolbox to improve the quality of the decision-making process. The recommended book that covers that topic well is  “Thinking, Fast and Slow“ .   Success = ability x will x direction x luck.
Sam Altman: The Success Equation — Play For Thoughts
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blog.samaltman.com
Get the latest updates from Sam Altman directly as they happen.
Latest posts
 Last updated 4 months ago 
 Helion Needs You 
 almost 2 years ago 
Helion has been progressing even faster than I expected and is on...
 DALL•E 2 
 about 2 years ago 
Today we did a research launch of DALL•E 2, a new AI...
 Helion 
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I’m delighted to be investing more in Helion. Helion is by far...
 PG and Jessica 
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A lot of people want to replicate YC in some other industry...
 Project Covalence 
 almost 4 years ago 
Almost every company and non-profit working on COVID-19 that I offered to...
 Idea Generation 
 almost 4 years ago 
The most common question prospective startup founders ask is how to get...
 The Virus 
 about 4 years ago 
Although I still hope things will go differently, the experts I’ve spoken...
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https://www.freshworks.com/freshservice/business-teams/
Freshservice for Business Teams: Employee Experience | Freshworks
2023-06-04T06:27:16Z

<html><body><div><div><div><div><p>The value-driven service management solution for every department</p></div><div><p><span></span></p></div></div><div><p><span>TRUSTED BY 60,000+ BUSINESSES</span></p></div><div><div><h2>One cost-effective platform. Endless employee satisfaction.</h2><p>Modernize how employees engage with HR, facilities, finance, and other business teams
</p></div><div><div><p><span>UNIFY AND SIMPLIFY</span></p><h3>Centralize operations for a modern employee experience</h3><div><p>Deliver a more consistent and efficient experience with AI-powered virtual agents. Use mobile-enabled self-service to accelerate resolutions. Integrate easily with MS Teams, Slack, and other applications.
</p><p><a href="https://www.freshworks.com/freshservice/it-service-desk/self-service-portal/">Employee portal<span></span></a></p></div></div><div><p><span><span></span></span></p></div></div><div><div><p><span>AUTOMATE WITH EASE</span></p><h3>Automate internal processes with easy-to-configure workflows</h3><div><p>Empower teams to deliver faster, more consistent service with easily customized automation workflows. Leverage the full power of automation to cut down on everyday tasks, streamline processes, and improve efficiency.
</p><p><a href="https://www.freshworks.com/freshservice/it-service-desk/automations/">Workflow automations<span></span></a></p></div></div><div><p><span><span></span></span></p></div></div><div><div><p><span>STAY IN YOUR LANE</span></p><h3>Protect data and ensure autonomy with dedicated workspaces</h3><div><p>Define who can access sensitive employee information. Create defined workspaces where teams can function autonomously within the same platform. Secure your operations with provisions such as restricted groups and access control.
</p><p><a href="https://www.freshworks.com/freshservice/features/workspaces/">Workspaces<span></span></a></p></div></div><div><p><span><span></span></span></p></div></div><div><div><p><span>LICENSE TO GROW</span></p><h3>Keep costs in check with right-sized agent pricing</h3><div><p>Scale your business teams the cost-effective way with affordable user-based monthly pricing. Skip typical licensing commitments and only pay for what you need. Add business agents as you grow so you’re always on budget.</p><p><a href="https://www.freshworks.com/freshservice/pricing/">Right-sized pricing<span></span></a></p></div></div><div><p><span><span></span></span></p></div></div><div><div><p><span>EASY INTEGRATION</span></p><h3>Leverage your current tech stack for greater value</h3><div><p>Freshservice works with your existing business tools to deliver one seamlessly efficient experience. Easy integrations with collaboration tools such as Slack and MS Teams let you respond to employee queries instantly.</p><p><a href="https://www.freshworks.com/apps/freshservice/">Marketplace<span></span></a></p></div></div><div><p><span><span></span></span></p></div></div></div><div><div><p></p><h2>Our customers tell it like it is</h2><p></p></div><div><div><div><p><span><span></span></span></p></div><div><p>When we embarked on this project, we asked ourselves how we would create the best experience for managers, remove roadblocks in their work and make life easier for them. We believe we have achieved this goal with Freshservice.</p><p><span>Brooke O’Keefe</span><span>HR Manager, Randstad</span></p><p><a href="https://www.freshworks.com/freshservice/resources/case-study/randstad/">Read story<span></span></a></p></div></div><div><div><p><span><span></span></span></p></div><div><p>We’ve had good feedback from different departments. Beyond the departments we added as part of the launch, Marketing and Sales are now coming to us to develop unique workflows, yielding stronger reporting and internal training through Freshservice. It’s allowed us to think outside the box....</p><p><span>Fred Chin</span><span>Senior Director of IT End-User Services, RingCentral</span></p><p><a href="https://www.freshworks.com/freshservice/resources/case-study/ringcentral/">Read story<span></span></a></p></div></div><div><div><p><span><span></span></span></p></div><div><p>One of our major decision points was the ease-of-use and flexibility of the platform. That is the most important thing for me right now. However, I haven&#39;t forgotten that you had a fully operational and stable product. Everything from the implementation and support has been great.</p><p><span>Robert Lyons</span><span>Chief Technology Officer, Katz Media Group</span></p><p><a href="https://www.freshworks.com/freshservice/resources/case-study/katz/">Read story<span></span></a></p></div></div></div></div><div><p></p><h2>Recognized by industry experts</h2><p></p></div><div><div><h2>See why business teams <span>choose Freshworks</span></h2><div><p>Experience the everyday excellence of a unified, AI-powered solution to all your business needs
</p></div></div><div><p><span></span></p></div></div></div></div></body></html>
The value-driven service management solution for every department           TRUSTED BY 60,000+ BUSINESSES     One cost-effective platform. Endless employee satisfaction. Modernize how employees engage with HR, facilities, finance, and other business teams
     UNIFY AND SIMPLIFY  Centralize operations for a modern employee experience  Deliver a more consistent and efficient experience with AI-powered virtual agents. Use mobile-enabled self-service to accelerate resolutions. Integrate easily with MS Teams, Slack, and other applications.
  Employee portal                  AUTOMATE WITH EASE  Automate internal processes with easy-to-configure workflows  Empower teams to deliver faster, more consistent service with easily customized automation workflows. Leverage the full power of automation to cut down on everyday tasks, streamline processes, and improve efficiency.
  Workflow automations                  STAY IN YOUR LANE  Protect data and ensure autonomy with dedicated workspaces  Define who can access sensitive employee information. Create defined workspaces where teams can function autonomously within the same platform. Secure your operations with provisions such as restricted groups and access control.
  Workspaces                  LICENSE TO GROW  Keep costs in check with right-sized agent pricing  Scale your business teams the cost-effective way with affordable user-based monthly pricing. Skip typical licensing commitments and only pay for what you need. Add business agents as you grow so you’re always on budget.  Right-sized pricing                  EASY INTEGRATION  Leverage your current tech stack for greater value  Freshservice works with your existing business tools to deliver one seamlessly efficient experience. Easy integrations with collaboration tools such as Slack and MS Teams let you respond to employee queries instantly.  Marketplace                    Our customers tell it like it is               When we embarked on this project, we asked ourselves how we would create the best experience for managers, remove roadblocks in their work and make life easier for them. We believe we have achieved this goal with Freshservice.  Brooke O’Keefe HR Manager, Randstad   Read story                We’ve had good feedback from different departments. Beyond the departments we added as part of the launch, Marketing and Sales are now coming to us to develop unique workflows, yielding stronger reporting and internal training through Freshservice. It’s allowed us to think outside the box....  Fred Chin Senior Director of IT End-User Services, RingCentral   Read story                One of our major decision points was the ease-of-use and flexibility of the platform. That is the most important thing for me right now. However, I haven&#39;t forgotten that you had a fully operational and stable product. Everything from the implementation and support has been great.  Robert Lyons Chief Technology Officer, Katz Media Group   Read story           Recognized by industry experts      See why business teams choose Freshworks   Experience the everyday excellence of a unified, AI-powered solution to all your business needs
Freshservice for Business Teams: Employee Experience | Freshworks
https://www.freshworks.com/hrms/sam-altman-on-y-combinator-startups-founders-ideas-and-funding-blog/
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<div><div><a href="https://medium.com/marker/how-the-chairman-of-y-combinator-decides-which-startups-to-invest-in-4d90b58323a3?source=user_profile---------0----------------------------"><h2>How the Chairman of Y Combinator Decides Which Startups to Invest In</h2><p><h3>There isn’t a lot of advice out there about how to be a startup investor, so here is some</h3></p></a></div></div>||||I|||| Open in app

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How the Chairman of Y Combinator Decides Which Startups to Invest In  There isn’t a lot of advice out there about how to be a startup investor, so here is some
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<div><div><p>01</p><h2>Compound yourself</h2><p>Compounding is magic. Look for it everywhere. Exponential curves are the key to wealth generation.<br/></p><p>A medium-sized business that grows 50% in value every year becomes huge in a very short amount of time. Few businesses in the world have true network effects and extreme scalability. But with technology, more and more will.  It’s worth a lot of effort to find them and create them.<br/></p><p>You also want to be an exponential curve yourself—you should aim for your life to follow an ever-increasing up-and-to-the-right trajectory. It’s important to move towards a career that has a compounding effect—most careers progress fairly linearly.<br/></p><p>You don't want to be in a career where people who have been doing it for two years can be as effective as people who have been doing it for twenty—your rate of learning should always be high. As your career progresses, each unit of work you do should generate more and more results. There are many ways to get this leverage, such as capital, technology, brand, network effects, and managing people.<br/></p><p>It’s useful to focus on adding another zero to whatever you define as your success metric—money, status, impact on the world, or whatever. I am willing to take as much time as needed between projects to find my next thing. But I always want it to be a project that, if successful, will make the rest of my career look like a footnote.<br/></p><p>Most people get bogged down in linear opportunities. Be willing to let small opportunities go to focus on potential step changes.<br/></p><p>I think the biggest competitive advantage in business—either for a company or for an individual’s career—is long-term thinking with a broad view of how different systems in the world are going to come together. One of the notable aspects of compound growth is that the furthest out years are the most important. In a world where almost no one takes a truly long-term view, the market richly rewards those who do.<br/></p><p>Trust the exponential, be patient, and be pleasantly surprised.<br/></p></div><div><h2>Have almost too much self-belief</h2><p>Self-belief is immensely powerful. The most successful people I know believe in themselves almost to the point of delusion.</p><p>Cultivate this early. As you get more data points that your judgment is good and you can consistently deliver results, trust yourself more.</p><p>If you don’t believe in yourself, it’s hard to let yourself have contrarian ideas about the future. But this is where most value gets created.</p><p>I remember when Elon Musk took me on a tour of the SpaceX factory many years ago. He talked in detail about manufacturing every part of the rocket, but the thing that sticks in memory was the look of absolute certainty on his face when he talked about sending large rockets to Mars. I left thinking “huh, so that’s the benchmark for what conviction looks like.”</p><p>Managing your own morale—and your team’s morale—is one of the greatest challenges of most endeavors. It’s almost impossible without a lot of self-belief. And unfortunately, the more ambitious you are, the more the world will try to tear you down.</p><p>Most highly successful people have been really right about the future at least once at a time when people thought they were wrong. If not, they would have faced much more competition.</p><p>Self-belief must be balanced with self-awareness. I used to hate criticism of any sort and actively avoided it. Now I try to always listen to it with the assumption that it’s true, and then decide if I want to act on it or not. Truth-seeking is hard and often painful, but it is what separates self-belief from self-delusion.</p><p>This balance also helps you avoid coming across as entitled and out of touch.</p><p>02</p></div><div><h2>Learn to think independently</h2><p>Entrepreneurship is very difficult to teach because original thinking is very difficult to teach. School is not set up to teach this—in fact, it generally rewards the opposite. So you have to cultivate it on your own.</p><p>Thinking from first principles and trying to generate new ideas is fun, and finding people to exchange them with is a great way to get better at this. The next step is to find easy, fast ways to test these ideas in the real world.</p><p>“I will fail many times, and I will be really right once” is the entrepreneurs’ way. You have to give yourself a lot of chances to get lucky.</p><p>One of the most powerful lessons to learn is that you can figure out what to do in situations that seem to have no solution. The more times you do this, the more you will believe it. Grit comes from learning you can get back up after you get knocked down.</p><p>03</p></div><div><h2>Get good at “sales”</h2><p>Self-belief alone is not sufficient—you also have to be able to convince other people of what you believe.</p><p>All great careers, to some degree, become sales jobs. You have to evangelize your plans to customers, prospective employees, the press, investors, etc. This requires an inspiring vision, strong communication skills, some degree of charisma, and evidence of execution ability.</p><p>Getting good at communication—particularly written communication—is an investment worth making. My best advice for communicating clearly is to first make sure your thinking is clear and then use plain, concise language.</p><p>The best way to be good at sales is to genuinely believe in what you’re selling. Selling what you truly believe in feels great, and trying to sell snake oil feels awful.</p><p>Getting good at sales is like improving at any other skill—anyone can get better at it with deliberate practice. But for some reason, perhaps because it feels distasteful, many people treat it as something unlearnable.</p><p>My other big sales tip is to show up in person whenever it’s important. When I was first starting out, I was always willing to get on a plane. It was frequently unnecessary, but three times it led to career-making turning points for me that otherwise would have gone the other way.</p><p>04</p></div><div><h2>Make it easy to take risks</h2><p>Most people overestimate risk and underestimate reward. Taking risks is important because it’s impossible to be right all the time—you have to try many things and adapt quickly as you learn more.</p><p>It’s often easier to take risks early in your career; you don’t have much to lose, and you potentially have a lot to gain. Once you’ve gotten yourself to a point where you have your basic obligations covered you should try to make it easy to take risks. Look for small bets you can make where you lose 1x if you’re wrong but make 100x if it works. Then make a bigger bet in that direction.</p><p>Don’t save up for too long, though. At YC, we’ve often noticed a problem with founders that have spent a lot of time working at Google or Facebook. When people get used to a comfortable life, a predictable job, and a reputation of succeeding at whatever they do, it gets very hard to leave that behind (and people have an incredible ability to always match their lifestyle to next year’s salary). Even if they do leave, the temptation to return is great. It’s easy—and human nature—to prioritize short-term gain and convenience over long-term fulfillment.</p><p>But when you aren’t on the treadmill, you can follow your hunches and spend time on things that might turn out to be really interesting. Keeping your life cheap and flexible for as long as you can is a powerful way to do this, but obviously comes with tradeoffs.</p><p>05</p></div><div><h2>Focus</h2><p>Focus is a force multiplier on work.</p><p>Almost everyone I’ve ever met would be well-served by spending more time thinking about what to focus on. It is much more important to work on the right thing than it is to work many hours. Most people waste most of their time on stuff that doesn’t matter.</p><p>Once you have figured out what to do, be unstoppable about getting your small handful of priorities accomplished quickly. I have yet to meet a slow-moving person who is very successful.</p><p>06</p></div><div><h2>Work hard</h2><p>You can get to about the 90th percentile in your field by working either smart or hard, which is still a great accomplishment. But getting to the 99th percentile requires both—you will be competing with other very talented people who will have great ideas and be willing to work a lot.</p><p>Extreme people get extreme results. Working a lot comes with huge life trade-offs, and it’s perfectly rational to decide not to do it. But it has a lot of advantages. As in most cases, momentum compounds, and success begets success.</p><p>And it’s often really fun. One of the great joys in life is finding your purpose, excelling at it, and discovering that your impact matters to something larger than yourself. A YC founder recently expressed great surprise about how much happier and more fulfilled he was after leaving his job at a big company and working towards his maximum possible impact. Working hard at that should be celebrated.</p><p>It’s not entirely clear to me why working hard has become a Bad Thing in certain parts of the US, but this is certainly not the case in other parts of the world—the amount of energy and drive exhibited by entrepreneurs outside of the US is quickly becoming the new benchmark.</p><p>You have to figure out how to work hard without burning out. People find their own strategies for this, but one that almost always works is to find work you like doing with people you enjoy spending a lot of time with.</p><p>I think people who pretend you can be super successful professionally without working most of the time (for some period of your life) are doing a disservice. In fact, work stamina seems to be one of the biggest predictors of long-term success.</p><p>One more thought about working hard: do it at the beginning of your career. Hard work compounds like interest, and the earlier you do it, the more time you have for the benefits to pay off. It’s also easier to work hard when you have fewer other responsibilities, which is frequently but not always the case when you’re young.</p><p>07</p></div><div><h2>Be bold</h2><p>I believe that it’s easier to do a hard startup than an easy startup. People want to be part of something exciting and feel that their work matters.</p><p>If you are making progress on an important problem, you will have a constant tailwind of people wanting to help you. Let yourself grow more ambitious, and don’t be afraid to work on what you really want to work on.</p><p>If everyone else is starting meme companies, and you want to start a gene-editing company, then do that and don’t second guess it.</p><p>Follow your curiosity. Things that seem exciting to you will often seem exciting to other people too.</p><p>08</p></div><div><h2>Be willful</h2><p>A big secret is that you can bend the world to your will a surprising percentage of the time—most people don’t even try, and just accept that things are the way that they are.</p><p>People have an enormous capacity to make things happen. A combination of self-doubt, giving up too early, and not pushing hard enough prevents most people from ever reaching anywhere near their potential.</p><p>Ask for what you want. You usually won’t get it, and often the rejection will be painful. But when this works, it works surprisingly well.</p><p>Almost always, the people who say “I am going to keep going until this works, and no matter what the challenges are I’m going to figure them out”, and mean it, go on to succeed. They are persistent long enough to give themselves a chance for luck to go their way.</p><p>Airbnb is my benchmark for this. There are so many stories they tell that I wouldn’t recommend trying to reproduce (keeping maxed-out credit cards in those nine-slot three-ring binder pages kids use for baseball cards, eating dollar store cereal for every meal, battle after battle with powerful entrenched interest, and on and on) but they managed to survive long enough for luck to go their way.</p><p>To be willful, you have to be optimistic—hopefully this is a personality trait that can be improved with practice. I have never met a very successful pessimistic person.</p><p>09</p></div><div><h2>Be hard to compete with</h2><p>Most people understand that companies are more valuable if they are difficult to compete with. This is important, and obviously true.</p><p>But this holds true for you as an individual as well. If what you do can be done by someone else, it eventually will be, and for less money.</p><p>The best way to become difficult to compete with is to build up leverage. For example, you can do it with personal relationships, by building a strong personal brand, or by getting good at the intersection of multiple different fields. There are many other strategies, but you have to figure out some way to do it.</p><p>Most people do whatever most people they hang out with do. This mimetic behavior is usually a mistake—if you’re doing the same thing everyone else is doing, you will not be hard to compete with.</p><p>10</p></div><div><h2>Build a network</h2><p>Great work requires teams. Developing a network of talented people to work with—sometimes closely, sometimes loosely—is an essential part of a great career. The size of the network of really talented people you know often becomes the limiter for what you can accomplish.</p><p>An effective way to build a network is to help people as much as you can. Doing this, over a long period of time, is what lead to most of my best career opportunities and three of my four best investments. I’m continually surprised how often something good happens to me because of something I did to help a founder ten years ago.</p><p>One of the best ways to build a network is to develop a reputation for really taking care of the people who work with you. Be overly generous with sharing the upside; it will come back to you 10x. Also, learn how to evaluate what people are great at, and put them in those roles. (This is the most important thing I have learned about management, and I haven’t read much about it.) You want to have a reputation for pushing people hard enough that they accomplish more than they thought they could, but not so hard they burn out.</p><p>Everyone is better at some things than others. Define yourself by your strengths, not your weaknesses. Acknowledge your weaknesses and figure out how to work around them, but don’t let them stop you from doing what you want to do. “I can’t do X because I’m not good at Y” is something I hear from entrepreneurs surprisingly often, and almost always reflects a lack of creativity. The best way to make up for your weaknesses is to hire complementary team members instead of just hiring people who are good at the same things you are.</p><p>A particularly valuable part of building a network is to get good at discovering undiscovered talent. Quickly spotting intelligence, drive, and creativity gets much easier with practice. The easiest way to learn is just to meet a lot of people, and keep track of who goes on to impress you and who doesn’t. Remember that you are mostly looking for rate of improvement, and don’t overvalue experience or current accomplishment.</p><p>I try to always ask myself when I meet someone new “is this person a force of nature?” It’s a pretty good heuristic for finding people who are likely to accomplish great things.</p><p>A special case of developing a network is finding someone eminent to take a bet on you, ideally early in your career. The best way to do this, no surprise, is to go out of your way to be helpful. (And remember that you have to pay this forward at some point later!)</p><p>Finally, remember to spend your time with positive people who support your ambitions.</p><p>11</p></div><div><h2>You get rich by owning things</h2><p>The biggest economic misunderstanding of my childhood was that people got rich from high salaries. Though there are some exceptions—entertainers for example —almost no one in the history of the Forbes list has gotten there with a salary.</p><p>You get truly rich by owning things that increase rapidly in value.</p><p>This can be a piece of a business, real estate, natural resource, intellectual property, or other similar things. But somehow or other, you need to own equity in something, instead of just selling your time. Time only scales linearly.</p><p>The best way to make things that increase rapidly in value is by making things people want at scale.</p><p>12</p></div><div><h2>Be internally driven</h2><p>Most people are primarily externally driven; they do what they do because they want to impress other people. This is bad for many reasons, but here are two important ones.</p><p>First, you will work on consensus ideas and on consensus career tracks.  You will care a lot—much more than you realize—if other people think you’re doing the right thing. This will probably prevent you from doing truly interesting work, and even if you do, someone else would have done it anyway.</p><p>Second, you will usually get risk calculations wrong. You’ll be very focused on keeping up with other people and not falling behind in competitive games, even in the short term.</p><p>Smart people seem to be especially at risk of such externally-driven behavior. Being aware of it helps, but only a little—you will likely have to work super-hard to not fall in the mimetic trap.</p><p>The most successful people I know are primarily internally driven; they do what they do to impress themselves and because they feel compelled to make something happen in the world. After you’ve made enough money to buy whatever you want and gotten enough social status that it stops being fun to get more, this is the only force I know of that will continue to drive you to higher levels of performance.</p><p>This is why the question of a person’s motivation is so important. It’s the first thing I try to understand about someone. The right motivations are hard to define a set of rules for, but you know it when you see it.</p><p>Jessica Livingston and Paul Graham are my benchmarks for this. YC was widely mocked for the first few years, and almost no one thought it would be a big success when they first started. But they thought it would be great for the world if it worked, and they love helping people, and they were convinced their new model was better than the existing model.</p><p>Eventually, you will define your success by performing excellent work in areas that are important to you. The sooner you can start off in that direction, the further you will be able to go. It is hard to be wildly successful at anything you aren’t obsessed with.</p><p>13</p></div></div>||||I|||| sam altman
 homeblogcontact

 How to be

 How to be SUCCESSFUL

 I’ve observed thousands of founders and thought a lot about what it takes to make a huge amount of money or to create something important. Usually, people start off wanting the former and end up wanting the latter.

 Here are 13 thoughts about how to achieve such outlier success. Everything here is easier to do once you’ve already reached a baseline degree of success (through privilege or effort) and want to put in the work to turn that into outlier success. But much of it applies to anyone.

 by sam altman

 01
 01

 Compound yourself

 Compounding is magic. Look for it everywhere. Exponential curves are the key to wealth generation.

 A medium-sized business that grows 50% in value every year becomes huge in a very short amount of time. Few businesses in the world have true network effects and extreme scalability. But with technology, more and more will. It’s worth a lot of effort to find them and create them.

 You also want to be an exponential curve yourself—you should aim for your life to follow an ever-increasing up-and-to-the-right trajectory. It’s important to move towards a career that has a compounding effect—most careers progress fairly linearly.

 You don't want to be in a career where people who have been doing it for two years can be as effective as people who have been doing it for twenty—your rate of learning should always be high. As your career progresses, each unit of work you do should generate more and more results. There are many ways to get this leverage, such as capital, technology, brand, network effects, and managing people.

 It’s useful to focus on adding another zero to whatever you define as your success metric—money, status, impact on the world, or whatever. I am willing to take as much time as needed between projects to find my next thing. But I always want it to be a project that, if successful, will make the rest of my career look like a footnote.

 Most people get bogged down in linear opportunities. Be willing to let small opportunities go to focus on potential step changes.

 I think the biggest competitive advantage in business—either for a company or for an individual’s career—is long-term thinking with a broad view of how different systems in the world are going to come together. One of the notable aspects of compound growth is that the furthest out years are the most important. In a world where almost no one takes a truly long-term view, the market richly rewards those who do.

 Trust the exponential, be patient, and be pleasantly surprised.

 02

 Have almost too much self-belief

 Self-belief is immensely powerful. The most successful people I know believe in themselves almost to the point of delusion.

 Cultivate this early. As you get more data points that your judgment is good and you can consistently deliver results, trust yourself more.

 If you don’t believe in yourself, it’s hard to let yourself have contrarian ideas about the future. But this is where most value gets created.

 I remember when Elon Musk took me on a tour of the SpaceX factory many years ago. He talked in detail about manufacturing every part of the rocket, but the thing that sticks in memory was the look of absolute certainty on his face when he talked about sending large rockets to Mars. I left thinking “huh, so that’s the benchmark for what conviction looks like.”

 Managing your own morale—and your team’s morale—is one of the greatest challenges of most endeavors. It’s almost impossible without a lot of self-belief. And unfortunately, the more ambitious you are, the more the world will try to tear you down.

 Most highly successful people have been really right about the future at least once at a time when people thought they were wrong. If not, they would have faced much more competition.

 Self-belief must be balanced with self-awareness. I used to hate criticism of any sort and actively avoided it. Now I try to always listen to it with the assumption that it’s true, and then decide if I want to act on it or not. Truth-seeking is hard and often painful, but it is what separates self-belief from self-delusion.

 This balance also helps you avoid coming across as entitled and out of touch.

 02
 03

 Learn to think independently

 Entrepreneurship is very difficult to teach because original thinking is very difficult to teach. School is not set up to teach this—in fact, it generally rewards the opposite. So you have to cultivate it on your own.

 Thinking from first principles and trying to generate new ideas is fun, and finding people to exchange them with is a great way to get better at this. The next step is to find easy, fast ways to test these ideas in the real world.

 “I will fail many times, and I will be really right once” is the entrepreneurs’ way. You have to give yourself a lot of chances to get lucky.

 One of the most powerful lessons to learn is that you can figure out what to do in situations that seem to have no solution. The more times you do this, the more you will believe it. Grit comes from learning you can get back up after you get knocked down.

 03
 04

 Get good at “sales”

 Self-belief alone is not sufficient—you also have to be able to convince other people of what you believe.

 All great careers, to some degree, become sales jobs. You have to evangelize your plans to customers, prospective employees, the press, investors, etc. This requires an inspiring vision, strong communication skills, some degree of charisma, and evidence of execution ability.

 Getting good at communication—particularly written communication—is an investment worth making. My best advice for communicating clearly is to first make sure your thinking is clear and then use plain, concise language.

 The best way to be good at sales is to genuinely believe in what you’re selling. Selling what you truly believe in feels great, and trying to sell snake oil feels awful.

 Getting good at sales is like improving at any other skill—anyone can get better at it with deliberate practice. But for some reason, perhaps because it feels distasteful, many people treat it as something unlearnable.

 My other big sales tip is to show up in person whenever it’s important. When I was first starting out, I was always willing to get on a plane. It was frequently unnecessary, but three times it led to career-making turning points for me that otherwise would have gone the other way.

 04
 05

 Make it easy to take risks

 Most people overestimate risk and underestimate reward. Taking risks is important because it’s impossible to be right all the time—you have to try many things and adapt quickly as you learn more.

 It’s often easier to take risks early in your career; you don’t have much to lose, and you potentially have a lot to gain. Once you’ve gotten yourself to a point where you have your basic obligations covered you should try to make it easy to take risks. Look for small bets you can make where you lose 1x if you’re wrong but make 100x if it works. Then make a bigger bet in that direction.

 Don’t save up for too long, though. At YC, we’ve often noticed a problem with founders that have spent a lot of time working at Google or Facebook. When people get used to a comfortable life, a predictable job, and a reputation of succeeding at whatever they do, it gets very hard to leave that behind (and people have an incredible ability to always match their lifestyle to next year’s salary). Even if they do leave, the temptation to return is great. It’s easy—and human nature—to prioritize short-term gain and convenience over long-term fulfillment.

 But when you aren’t on the treadmill, you can follow your hunches and spend time on things that might turn out to be really interesting. Keeping your life cheap and flexible for as long as you can is a powerful way to do this, but obviously comes with tradeoffs.

 05
 06

 Focus

 Focus is a force multiplier on work.

 Almost everyone I’ve ever met would be well-served by spending more time thinking about what to focus on. It is much more important to work on the right thing than it is to work many hours. Most people waste most of their time on stuff that doesn’t matter.

 Once you have figured out what to do, be unstoppable about getting your small handful of priorities accomplished quickly. I have yet to meet a slow-moving person who is very successful.

 06
 07

 Work hard

 You can get to about the 90th percentile in your field by working either smart or hard, which is still a great accomplishment. But getting to the 99th percentile requires both—you will be competing with other very talented people who will have great ideas and be willing to work a lot.

 Extreme people get extreme results. Working a lot comes with huge life trade-offs, and it’s perfectly rational to decide not to do it. But it has a lot of advantages. As in most cases, momentum compounds, and success begets success.

 And it’s often really fun. One of the great joys in life is finding your purpose, excelling at it, and discovering that your impact matters to something larger than yourself. A YC founder recently expressed great surprise about how much happier and more fulfilled he was after leaving his job at a big company and working towards his maximum possible impact. Working hard at that should be celebrated.

 It’s not entirely clear to me why working hard has become a Bad Thing in certain parts of the US, but this is certainly not the case in other parts of the world—the amount of energy and drive exhibited by entrepreneurs outside of the US is quickly becoming the new benchmark.

 You have to figure out how to work hard without burning out. People find their own strategies for this, but one that almost always works is to find work you like doing with people you enjoy spending a lot of time with.

 I think people who pretend you can be super successful professionally without working most of the time (for some period of your life) are doing a disservice. In fact, work stamina seems to be one of the biggest predictors of long-term success.

 One more thought about working hard: do it at the beginning of your career. Hard work compounds like interest, and the earlier you do it, the more time you have for the benefits to pay off. It’s also easier to work hard when you have fewer other responsibilities, which is frequently but not always the case when you’re young.

 07
 08

 Be bold

 I believe that it’s easier to do a hard startup than an easy startup. People want to be part of something exciting and feel that their work matters.

 If you are making progress on an important problem, you will have a constant tailwind of people wanting to help you. Let yourself grow more ambitious, and don’t be afraid to work on what you really want to work on.

 If everyone else is starting meme companies, and you want to start a gene-editing company, then do that and don’t second guess it.

 Follow your curiosity. Things that seem exciting to you will often seem exciting to other people too.

 08
 09

 Be willful

 A big secret is that you can bend the world to your will a surprising percentage of the time—most people don’t even try, and just accept that things are the way that they are.

 People have an enormous capacity to make things happen. A combination of self-doubt, giving up too early, and not pushing hard enough prevents most people from ever reaching anywhere near their potential.

 Ask for what you want. You usually won’t get it, and often the rejection will be painful. But when this works, it works surprisingly well.

 Almost always, the people who say “I am going to keep going until this works, and no matter what the challenges are I’m going to figure them out”, and mean it, go on to succeed. They are persistent long enough to give themselves a chance for luck to go their way.

 Airbnb is my benchmark for this. There are so many stories they tell that I wouldn’t recommend trying to reproduce (keeping maxed-out credit cards in those nine-slot three-ring binder pages kids use for baseball cards, eating dollar store cereal for every meal, battle after battle with powerful entrenched interest, and on and on) but they managed to survive long enough for luck to go their way.

 To be willful, you have to be optimistic—hopefully this is a personality trait that can be improved with practice. I have never met a very successful pessimistic person.

 09
 10

 Be hard to compete with

 Most people understand that companies are more valuable if they are difficult to compete with. This is important, and obviously true.

 But this holds true for you as an individual as well. If what you do can be done by someone else, it eventually will be, and for less money.

 The best way to become difficult to compete with is to build up leverage. For example, you can do it with personal relationships, by building a strong personal brand, or by getting good at the intersection of multiple different fields. There are many other strategies, but you have to figure out some way to do it.

 Most people do whatever most people they hang out with do. This mimetic behavior is usually a mistake—if you’re doing the same thing everyone else is doing, you will not be hard to compete with.

 10
 11

 Build a network

 Great work requires teams. Developing a network of talented people to work with—sometimes closely, sometimes loosely—is an essential part of a great career. The size of the network of really talented people you know often becomes the limiter for what you can accomplish.

 An effective way to build a network is to help people as much as you can. Doing this, over a long period of time, is what lead to most of my best career opportunities and three of my four best investments. I’m continually surprised how often something good happens to me because of something I did to help a founder ten years ago.

 One of the best ways to build a network is to develop a reputation for really taking care of the people who work with you. Be overly generous with sharing the upside; it will come back to you 10x. Also, learn how to evaluate what people are great at, and put them in those roles. (This is the most important thing I have learned about management, and I haven’t read much about it.) You want to have a reputation for pushing people hard enough that they accomplish more than they thought they could, but not so hard they burn out.

 Everyone is better at some things than others. Define yourself by your strengths, not your weaknesses. Acknowledge your weaknesses and figure out how to work around them, but don’t let them stop you from doing what you want to do. “I can’t do X because I’m not good at Y” is something I hear from entrepreneurs surprisingly often, and almost always reflects a lack of creativity. The best way to make up for your weaknesses is to hire complementary team members instead of just hiring people who are good at the same things you are.

 A particularly valuable part of building a network is to get good at discovering undiscovered talent. Quickly spotting intelligence, drive, and creativity gets much easier with practice. The easiest way to learn is just to meet a lot of people, and keep track of who goes on to impress you and who doesn’t. Remember that you are mostly looking for rate of improvement, and don’t overvalue experience or current accomplishment.

 I try to always ask myself when I meet someone new “is this person a force of nature?” It’s a pretty good heuristic for finding people who are likely to accomplish great things.

 A special case of developing a network is finding someone eminent to take a bet on you, ideally early in your career. The best way to do this, no surprise, is to go out of your way to be helpful. (And remember that you have to pay this forward at some point later!)

 Finally, remember to spend your time with positive people who support your ambitions.

 11
 12

 You get rich by owning things

 The biggest economic misunderstanding of my childhood was that people got rich from high salaries. Though there are some exceptions—entertainers for example —almost no one in the history of the Forbes list has gotten there with a salary.

 You get truly rich by owning things that increase rapidly in value.

 This can be a piece of a business, real estate, natural resource, intellectual property, or other similar things. But somehow or other, you need to own equity in something, instead of just selling your time. Time only scales linearly.

 The best way to make things that increase rapidly in value is by making things people want at scale.

 12
 13

 Be internally driven

 Most people are primarily externally driven; they do what they do because they want to impress other people. This is bad for many reasons, but here are two important ones.

 First, you will work on consensus ideas and on consensus career tracks. You will care a lot—much more than you realize—if other people think you’re doing the right thing. This will probably prevent you from doing truly interesting work, and even if you do, someone else would have done it anyway.

 Second, you will usually get risk calculations wrong. You’ll be very focused on keeping up with other people and not falling behind in competitive games, even in the short term.

 Smart people seem to be especially at risk of such externally-driven behavior. Being aware of it helps, but only a little—you will likely have to work super-hard to not fall in the mimetic trap.

 The most successful people I know are primarily internally driven; they do what they do to impress themselves and because they feel compelled to make something happen in the world. After you’ve made enough money to buy whatever you want and gotten enough social status that it stops being fun to get more, this is the only force I know of that will continue to drive you to higher levels of performance.

 This is why the question of a person’s motivation is so important. It’s the first thing I try to understand about someone. The right motivations are hard to define a set of rules for, but you know it when you see it.

 Jessica Livingston and Paul Graham are my benchmarks for this. YC was widely mocked for the first few years, and almost no one thought it would be a big success when they first started. But they thought it would be great for the world if it worked, and they love helping people, and they were convinced their new model was better than the existing model.

 Eventually, you will define your success by performing excellent work in areas that are important to you. The sooner you can start off in that direction, the further you will be able to go. It is hard to be wildly successful at anything you aren’t obsessed with.

 13

 words by

 sam altman

 ,

 design by

 jordan hughes

 .

01 Compound yourself Compounding is magic. Look for it everywhere. Exponential curves are the key to wealth generation.  A medium-sized business that grows 50% in value every year becomes huge in a very short amount of time. Few businesses in the world have true network effects and extreme scalability. But with technology, more and more will.  It’s worth a lot of effort to find them and create them.  You also want to be an exponential curve yourself—you should aim for your life to follow an ever-increasing up-and-to-the-right trajectory. It’s important to move towards a career that has a compounding effect—most careers progress fairly linearly.  You don't want to be in a career where people who have been doing it for two years can be as effective as people who have been doing it for twenty—your rate of learning should always be high. As your career progresses, each unit of work you do should generate more and more results. There are many ways to get this leverage, such as capital, technology, brand, network effects, and managing people.  It’s useful to focus on adding another zero to whatever you define as your success metric—money, status, impact on the world, or whatever. I am willing to take as much time as needed between projects to find my next thing. But I always want it to be a project that, if successful, will make the rest of my career look like a footnote.  Most people get bogged down in linear opportunities. Be willing to let small opportunities go to focus on potential step changes.  I think the biggest competitive advantage in business—either for a company or for an individual’s career—is long-term thinking with a broad view of how different systems in the world are going to come together. One of the notable aspects of compound growth is that the furthest out years are the most important. In a world where almost no one takes a truly long-term view, the market richly rewards those who do.  Trust the exponential, be patient, and be pleasantly surprised.    Have almost too much self-belief Self-belief is immensely powerful. The most successful people I know believe in themselves almost to the point of delusion. Cultivate this early. As you get more data points that your judgment is good and you can consistently deliver results, trust yourself more. If you don’t believe in yourself, it’s hard to let yourself have contrarian ideas about the future. But this is where most value gets created. I remember when Elon Musk took me on a tour of the SpaceX factory many years ago. He talked in detail about manufacturing every part of the rocket, but the thing that sticks in memory was the look of absolute certainty on his face when he talked about sending large rockets to Mars. I left thinking “huh, so that’s the benchmark for what conviction looks like.” Managing your own morale—and your team’s morale—is one of the greatest challenges of most endeavors. It’s almost impossible without a lot of self-belief. And unfortunately, the more ambitious you are, the more the world will try to tear you down. Most highly successful people have been really right about the future at least once at a time when people thought they were wrong. If not, they would have faced much more competition. Self-belief must be balanced with self-awareness. I used to hate criticism of any sort and actively avoided it. Now I try to always listen to it with the assumption that it’s true, and then decide if I want to act on it or not. Truth-seeking is hard and often painful, but it is what separates self-belief from self-delusion. This balance also helps you avoid coming across as entitled and out of touch. 02   Learn to think independently Entrepreneurship is very difficult to teach because original thinking is very difficult to teach. School is not set up to teach this—in fact, it generally rewards the opposite. So you have to cultivate it on your own. Thinking from first principles and trying to generate new ideas is fun, and finding people to exchange them with is a great way to get better at this. The next step is to find easy, fast ways to test these ideas in the real world. “I will fail many times, and I will be really right once” is the entrepreneurs’ way. You have to give yourself a lot of chances to get lucky. One of the most powerful lessons to learn is that you can figure out what to do in situations that seem to have no solution. The more times you do this, the more you will believe it. Grit comes from learning you can get back up after you get knocked down. 03   Get good at “sales” Self-belief alone is not sufficient—you also have to be able to convince other people of what you believe. All great careers, to some degree, become sales jobs. You have to evangelize your plans to customers, prospective employees, the press, investors, etc. This requires an inspiring vision, strong communication skills, some degree of charisma, and evidence of execution ability. Getting good at communication—particularly written communication—is an investment worth making. My best advice for communicating clearly is to first make sure your thinking is clear and then use plain, concise language. The best way to be good at sales is to genuinely believe in what you’re selling. Selling what you truly believe in feels great, and trying to sell snake oil feels awful. Getting good at sales is like improving at any other skill—anyone can get better at it with deliberate practice. But for some reason, perhaps because it feels distasteful, many people treat it as something unlearnable. My other big sales tip is to show up in person whenever it’s important. When I was first starting out, I was always willing to get on a plane. It was frequently unnecessary, but three times it led to career-making turning points for me that otherwise would have gone the other way. 04   Make it easy to take risks Most people overestimate risk and underestimate reward. Taking risks is important because it’s impossible to be right all the time—you have to try many things and adapt quickly as you learn more. It’s often easier to take risks early in your career; you don’t have much to lose, and you potentially have a lot to gain. Once you’ve gotten yourself to a point where you have your basic obligations covered you should try to make it easy to take risks. Look for small bets you can make where you lose 1x if you’re wrong but make 100x if it works. Then make a bigger bet in that direction. Don’t save up for too long, though. At YC, we’ve often noticed a problem with founders that have spent a lot of time working at Google or Facebook. When people get used to a comfortable life, a predictable job, and a reputation of succeeding at whatever they do, it gets very hard to leave that behind (and people have an incredible ability to always match their lifestyle to next year’s salary). Even if they do leave, the temptation to return is great. It’s easy—and human nature—to prioritize short-term gain and convenience over long-term fulfillment. But when you aren’t on the treadmill, you can follow your hunches and spend time on things that might turn out to be really interesting. Keeping your life cheap and flexible for as long as you can is a powerful way to do this, but obviously comes with tradeoffs. 05   Focus Focus is a force multiplier on work. Almost everyone I’ve ever met would be well-served by spending more time thinking about what to focus on. It is much more important to work on the right thing than it is to work many hours. Most people waste most of their time on stuff that doesn’t matter. Once you have figured out what to do, be unstoppable about getting your small handful of priorities accomplished quickly. I have yet to meet a slow-moving person who is very successful. 06   Work hard You can get to about the 90th percentile in your field by working either smart or hard, which is still a great accomplishment. But getting to the 99th percentile requires both—you will be competing with other very talented people who will have great ideas and be willing to work a lot. Extreme people get extreme results. Working a lot comes with huge life trade-offs, and it’s perfectly rational to decide not to do it. But it has a lot of advantages. As in most cases, momentum compounds, and success begets success. And it’s often really fun. One of the great joys in life is finding your purpose, excelling at it, and discovering that your impact matters to something larger than yourself. A YC founder recently expressed great surprise about how much happier and more fulfilled he was after leaving his job at a big company and working towards his maximum possible impact. Working hard at that should be celebrated. It’s not entirely clear to me why working hard has become a Bad Thing in certain parts of the US, but this is certainly not the case in other parts of the world—the amount of energy and drive exhibited by entrepreneurs outside of the US is quickly becoming the new benchmark. You have to figure out how to work hard without burning out. People find their own strategies for this, but one that almost always works is to find work you like doing with people you enjoy spending a lot of time with. I think people who pretend you can be super successful professionally without working most of the time (for some period of your life) are doing a disservice. In fact, work stamina seems to be one of the biggest predictors of long-term success. One more thought about working hard: do it at the beginning of your career. Hard work compounds like interest, and the earlier you do it, the more time you have for the benefits to pay off. It’s also easier to work hard when you have fewer other responsibilities, which is frequently but not always the case when you’re young. 07   Be bold I believe that it’s easier to do a hard startup than an easy startup. People want to be part of something exciting and feel that their work matters. If you are making progress on an important problem, you will have a constant tailwind of people wanting to help you. Let yourself grow more ambitious, and don’t be afraid to work on what you really want to work on. If everyone else is starting meme companies, and you want to start a gene-editing company, then do that and don’t second guess it. Follow your curiosity. Things that seem exciting to you will often seem exciting to other people too. 08   Be willful A big secret is that you can bend the world to your will a surprising percentage of the time—most people don’t even try, and just accept that things are the way that they are. People have an enormous capacity to make things happen. A combination of self-doubt, giving up too early, and not pushing hard enough prevents most people from ever reaching anywhere near their potential. Ask for what you want. You usually won’t get it, and often the rejection will be painful. But when this works, it works surprisingly well. Almost always, the people who say “I am going to keep going until this works, and no matter what the challenges are I’m going to figure them out”, and mean it, go on to succeed. They are persistent long enough to give themselves a chance for luck to go their way. Airbnb is my benchmark for this. There are so many stories they tell that I wouldn’t recommend trying to reproduce (keeping maxed-out credit cards in those nine-slot three-ring binder pages kids use for baseball cards, eating dollar store cereal for every meal, battle after battle with powerful entrenched interest, and on and on) but they managed to survive long enough for luck to go their way. To be willful, you have to be optimistic—hopefully this is a personality trait that can be improved with practice. I have never met a very successful pessimistic person. 09   Be hard to compete with Most people understand that companies are more valuable if they are difficult to compete with. This is important, and obviously true. But this holds true for you as an individual as well. If what you do can be done by someone else, it eventually will be, and for less money. The best way to become difficult to compete with is to build up leverage. For example, you can do it with personal relationships, by building a strong personal brand, or by getting good at the intersection of multiple different fields. There are many other strategies, but you have to figure out some way to do it. Most people do whatever most people they hang out with do. This mimetic behavior is usually a mistake—if you’re doing the same thing everyone else is doing, you will not be hard to compete with. 10   Build a network Great work requires teams. Developing a network of talented people to work with—sometimes closely, sometimes loosely—is an essential part of a great career. The size of the network of really talented people you know often becomes the limiter for what you can accomplish. An effective way to build a network is to help people as much as you can. Doing this, over a long period of time, is what lead to most of my best career opportunities and three of my four best investments. I’m continually surprised how often something good happens to me because of something I did to help a founder ten years ago. One of the best ways to build a network is to develop a reputation for really taking care of the people who work with you. Be overly generous with sharing the upside; it will come back to you 10x. Also, learn how to evaluate what people are great at, and put them in those roles. (This is the most important thing I have learned about management, and I haven’t read much about it.) You want to have a reputation for pushing people hard enough that they accomplish more than they thought they could, but not so hard they burn out. Everyone is better at some things than others. Define yourself by your strengths, not your weaknesses. Acknowledge your weaknesses and figure out how to work around them, but don’t let them stop you from doing what you want to do. “I can’t do X because I’m not good at Y” is something I hear from entrepreneurs surprisingly often, and almost always reflects a lack of creativity. The best way to make up for your weaknesses is to hire complementary team members instead of just hiring people who are good at the same things you are. A particularly valuable part of building a network is to get good at discovering undiscovered talent. Quickly spotting intelligence, drive, and creativity gets much easier with practice. The easiest way to learn is just to meet a lot of people, and keep track of who goes on to impress you and who doesn’t. Remember that you are mostly looking for rate of improvement, and don’t overvalue experience or current accomplishment. I try to always ask myself when I meet someone new “is this person a force of nature?” It’s a pretty good heuristic for finding people who are likely to accomplish great things. A special case of developing a network is finding someone eminent to take a bet on you, ideally early in your career. The best way to do this, no surprise, is to go out of your way to be helpful. (And remember that you have to pay this forward at some point later!) Finally, remember to spend your time with positive people who support your ambitions. 11   You get rich by owning things The biggest economic misunderstanding of my childhood was that people got rich from high salaries. Though there are some exceptions—entertainers for example —almost no one in the history of the Forbes list has gotten there with a salary. You get truly rich by owning things that increase rapidly in value. This can be a piece of a business, real estate, natural resource, intellectual property, or other similar things. But somehow or other, you need to own equity in something, instead of just selling your time. Time only scales linearly. The best way to make things that increase rapidly in value is by making things people want at scale. 12   Be internally driven Most people are primarily externally driven; they do what they do because they want to impress other people. This is bad for many reasons, but here are two important ones. First, you will work on consensus ideas and on consensus career tracks.  You will care a lot—much more than you realize—if other people think you’re doing the right thing. This will probably prevent you from doing truly interesting work, and even if you do, someone else would have done it anyway. Second, you will usually get risk calculations wrong. You’ll be very focused on keeping up with other people and not falling behind in competitive games, even in the short term. Smart people seem to be especially at risk of such externally-driven behavior. Being aware of it helps, but only a little—you will likely have to work super-hard to not fall in the mimetic trap. The most successful people I know are primarily internally driven; they do what they do to impress themselves and because they feel compelled to make something happen in the world. After you’ve made enough money to buy whatever you want and gotten enough social status that it stops being fun to get more, this is the only force I know of that will continue to drive you to higher levels of performance. This is why the question of a person’s motivation is so important. It’s the first thing I try to understand about someone. The right motivations are hard to define a set of rules for, but you know it when you see it. Jessica Livingston and Paul Graham are my benchmarks for this. YC was widely mocked for the first few years, and almost no one thought it would be a big success when they first started. But they thought it would be great for the world if it worked, and they love helping people, and they were convinced their new model was better than the existing model. Eventually, you will define your success by performing excellent work in areas that are important to you. The sooner you can start off in that direction, the further you will be able to go. It is hard to be wildly successful at anything you aren’t obsessed with. 13
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