Sam Altman Quotes
-
Ideas are cheap and easy, and there are a lot of them.
-
Companies generally work better when they are smaller. It's always worth spending time to think about the least amount of projects/work you can feasibly do, and then having as small a team as possible to do it.
-
There is a lot of stuff I like. I love backpacking. I love going to an island where I can just sit on the beach and read or scuba dive and sail. I do a lot of that. I still go backpacking around Europe in the summers and staying in hostels. I love that.
-
I suppose if I didn't have Loopt, I'd have to, I don't know, pick up the phone and just start calling people, a lot more texting and certainly more Googling.
-
If you go to a paintball subreddit, paintball companies can advertise to you.
-
With Loopt Star, consumers get to tap interactive rewards wherever they may be.
-
There is a long history of founders returning to companies and doing great things. Founders are able to set the vision for their companies with an authority no one else can.
-
People always make the mistake of calling an idea small or stupid because they don't understand how it's going to evolve.
-
Set a clear, easy-to-understand vision for your company, and make it be a mission people believe in.
-
I think you can say a lot of evil behavior by companies is short-term optimization.
-
The point of an accelerator is to teach you about companies and business, not about technology.
-
I think that inexpensive sources of planet-friendly energy are one of the most important things for us to pursue.
-
Being a public company is really terrible for most companies. I'd say Facebook and Google have done a pretty good job of standing up to the incredible quarterly pressure to hit numbers, but most companies - and I've observed a lot now - don't do a very good job of that.
-
The only way to generate sustained exponential growth is to make whatever you're making sufficiently good.
-
Traditional local advertising is not what retailers want. They want not just for you to see an ad - they want you to come into the store, to be a repeat customer and to spread the word.
-
I don't think people spend nearly enough time thinking about what they like and what they're good at.
-
If you ask a founder how their company is doing, they always say, 'Oh it's great. We're totally crushing it,' and that's almost never true.
-
People appreciate when you make an effort to speak their language.
-
That culture of frugality and discipline is really important for the Y Combinator mindset.
-
I believe that sexism in tech is a real problem.
-
It's easy to say, 'I'm going to build something that already exists,' but it's difficult to clearly and succinctly describe something new.
-
AI will probably most likely lead to the end of the world, but in the meantime, there'll be great companies.
-
Maybe I am a bit unusual here, but I am less stressed if I have my phone with me. Because I can spend like an hour in the morning taking care of everything instead of I sit there and wonder what I missed or wonder what's happening. So it's way less stressful for me to just answer my phone.
-
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.