Sam Altman
Sam Altman
Samuel H. "Sam" Altmanis an American entrepreneur, programmer, venture capitalist and blogger. He is the president of Y Combinator and co-chairman of OpenAI...
NationalityAmerican
ProfessionBusinessman
CountryUnited States of America
lose model money plenty
I have plenty of investments that I wish I'd never made. But the model is to lose money on a lot of investments and then make 1,000X or 10,000X on an investment.
crazy lines sides
The hard part is that this is a very fine line. There's right on one side of it, and crazy on the other.
time
The start-ups that do well are the ones that are working all the time.
calling mistake people small stupid understand
People always make the mistake of calling an idea small or stupid because they don't understand how it's going to evolve.
scale
The way to really scale a venture firm is with software.
feature
Asking what I'd do without Loopt is almost like asking what I would do if I didn't have a smartphone because the feature set has become the norm for me.
billion build companies dollar love people shortcut
The way to build billion dollar companies is to first build something people love. There isn't really a shortcut there.
early love maybe outcome runway stage
I love working with really early stage startups where the outcome is still in doubt. Maybe they'll go on to greatness, or maybe they'll never get off the runway at all.
cost life
The correlation of quality of life and cost of energy is huge.
call current failure learned led money regret start turn
I wouldn't call Loopt a failure. It didn't turn out like I wanted, for sure, but it was fun, I learned a lot, and I made enough money to start investing, which led me to my current job. I don't regret it at all.
billion companies difficult fund job partners worth
I always tell my partners that our job is to fund all the companies we can that can be worth $10 billion or more. That's such a difficult constraint, we can't have any other constraints.
determination intelligence
Intelligence is usually easy to tell in a 10-minute conversation. Determination is harder.
advertising
The market for local advertising is in the billions.
investing people silicon status symbol
Seed investing is the status symbol of Silicon Valley. Most people don't want Ferraris, they want a winning seed investment.