Loading video...

Video Failed to Load

There was a problem loading this video. This could be due to a temporary network issue or the video might be unavailable.

some takeaways from Sam Altman today at Y Combinator startup school • this is one of the best times in history to start a company. ai is lowering costs, shortening build cycles, and expanding what’s possible. • the next 6 months of model progress could be comparable to the... last 2 years. • the best startups often start with ideas experts think are bad. • develop conviction despite conventional wisdom, and be willing to wait. • vision can be clear even when the first steps aren’t. • if everyone believes your idea, that’s a bad sign. if no one believes it, pay attention to that too. • be mildly helpful to lots of people. it compounds. • the best cofounder relationships are often built years before the company starts. • earnestness beats cynicism. spend your energy building, not taking cheap shots online. • startups help prevent the concentration of economic and technological power. • demand for high-quality, low-cost intelligence is still largely untapped. • have the ambition to build, but be a little happier along the way.show more

Blaire Pang

1,464 subscribers

16,511 views • 2 months ago •via X (Twitter)

Anya Rossi• Live Now

Private livecam show

13 Comments

mrclhnz2 months ago

@sama @ycombinator @garrytan The last one from your list is important

Martin Lee2 months ago

@sama @ycombinator @garrytan fire

AlexConway.eth ⌬⃤⟁2 months ago

@sama @ycombinator @garrytan excellent notes thank you 🙏

Tato2 months ago

@sama @ycombinator @garrytan 未来半年模型进步能抵过去两年？有点吓人但也超期待

Eric Zou2 months ago

@sama @ycombinator @garrytan I love takeaways!

Julia Li2 months ago

@sama @ycombinator @garrytan mmm blaireee

Nanu072 months ago

@sama @ycombinator @garrytan love it

Umutcan Duman2 months ago

@sama @ycombinator @garrytan Nice summary @blaire_pang thanks

liquidated (Dev Arc)2 months ago

@sama @ycombinator @garrytan omo these points hit hard fr especially the one about mild helpfulness compounding over time

Modish Money2 months ago

@sama @ycombinator @garrytan The line about 'earnestness beats cynicism' hits different. Too many founders are building audiences by being critics instead of builders. The ones who win are the ones shipping while everyone else is debating.

Kevin Rajan2 months ago

@sama @ycombinator @garrytan Which of those do you think would resonate with the widest audience? what about narrowest?

Erick Contreras2 months ago

@sama @ycombinator @garrytan as always, ignorance dominates people wallet

Mary Chandran2 months ago

@sama @ycombinator @garrytan All these people and I don’t get just one teeny tiny place 😔

Related Videos

Mark Zuckerberg’s advice to 19 year olds that want to have an impact Even though Zuckerberg was 19 when he started Facebook, he advises not turning your idea into a company until it’s working: “I always think the most important thing entrepreneurs should do is pick something they care about and work on it, but don’t actually commit to turning it into a company until it’s working. If you look at the data of the very best companies, I think a tremendous percentage of them have been built that way and not from people who decided upfront that they wanted to start a company because you just get locked into a local maxima a lot of the time.” Sam Altman agrees. Facebook didn’t become a formal company until 6 months in when Peter Thiel invested. In fact, Mark and Dustin Moskovitz even told Peter that they were still planning on going back to school for their Fall semester. Paul Graham gives similar advice in his essay “Want to start a startup?”: “So if you want to start a startup one day, what should you do in college? There are only two things you need initially: an idea and cofounders… [and] the way to get startup ideas is not to try to think of startup ideas… if you make a conscious effort to think of startup ideas, the ideas you come up with will not merely be bad, but bad and plausible-sounding, meaning you'll waste a lot of time on them before realizing they're bad. The way to come up with good startup ideas is to take a step back. Instead of making a conscious effort to think of startup ideas, turn your mind into the type that startup ideas form in without any conscious effort. In fact, so unconsciously that you don't even realize at first that they're startup ideas. This is not only possible, it's how Apple, Yahoo, Google, and Facebook all got started. None of these companies were even meant to be companies at first. They were all just side projects. The best startups almost have to start as side projects, because great ideas tend to be such outliers that your conscious mind would reject them as ideas for companies.”

Mark Zuckerberg’s advice to 19 year olds that want to have an impact Even though Zuckerberg was 19 when he started Facebook, he advises not turning your idea into a company until it’s working: “I always think the most important thing entrepreneurs should do is pick something they care about and work on it, but don’t actually commit to turning it into a company until it’s working. If you look at the data of the very best companies, I think a tremendous percentage of them have been built that way and not from people who decided upfront that they wanted to start a company because you just get locked into a local maxima a lot of the time.” Sam Altman agrees. Facebook didn’t become a formal company until 6 months in when Peter Thiel invested. In fact, Mark and Dustin Moskovitz even told Peter that they were still planning on going back to school for their Fall semester. Paul Graham gives similar advice in his essay “Want to start a startup?”: “So if you want to start a startup one day, what should you do in college? There are only two things you need initially: an idea and cofounders… [and] the way to get startup ideas is not to try to think of startup ideas… if you make a conscious effort to think of startup ideas, the ideas you come up with will not merely be bad, but bad and plausible-sounding, meaning you'll waste a lot of time on them before realizing they're bad. The way to come up with good startup ideas is to take a step back. Instead of making a conscious effort to think of startup ideas, turn your mind into the type that startup ideas form in without any conscious effort. In fact, so unconsciously that you don't even realize at first that they're startup ideas. This is not only possible, it's how Apple, Yahoo, Google, and Facebook all got started. None of these companies were even meant to be companies at first. They were all just side projects. The best startups almost have to start as side projects, because great ideas tend to be such outliers that your conscious mind would reject them as ideas for companies.”

Startup Archive

147,627 views • 2 years ago

Q: I’m 19 today and want to have a big impact on the world. Should I start a company? Even though Mark Zuckerberg was 19 when he started Facebook, he advises not turning your idea into a company until it’s working: “I always think the most important thing entrepreneurs should do is pick something they care about and work on it, but don’t actually commit to turning it into a company until it’s working. If you look at the data of the very best companies, I think a tremendous percentage of them have been built that way and not from people who decided upfront that they wanted to start a company because you just get locked into a local maxima a lot of the time.” Sam Altman agrees. Facebook didn’t become a formal company until 6 months in when Peter Thiel invested. In fact, Mark and Dustin Moskovitz even told Peter that they were still planning on going back to school for their Fall semester. Paul Graham gives similar advice in his essay “Want to start a startup?”: “So if you want to start a startup one day, what should you do in college? There are only two things you need initially: an idea and cofounders… [and] the way to get startup ideas is not to try to think of startup ideas… if you make a conscious effort to think of startup ideas, the ideas you come up with will not merely be bad, but bad and plausible-sounding, meaning you'll waste a lot of time on them before realizing they're bad. The way to come up with good startup ideas is to take a step back. Instead of making a conscious effort to think of startup ideas, turn your mind into the type that startup ideas form in without any conscious effort. In fact, so unconsciously that you don't even realize at first that they're startup ideas. This is not only possible, it's how Apple, Yahoo, Google, and Facebook all got started. None of these companies were even meant to be companies at first. They were all just side projects. The best startups almost have to start as side projects, because great ideas tend to be such outliers that your conscious mind would reject them as ideas for companies.”

Q: I’m 19 today and want to have a big impact on the world. Should I start a company? Even though Mark Zuckerberg was 19 when he started Facebook, he advises not turning your idea into a company until it’s working: “I always think the most important thing entrepreneurs should do is pick something they care about and work on it, but don’t actually commit to turning it into a company until it’s working. If you look at the data of the very best companies, I think a tremendous percentage of them have been built that way and not from people who decided upfront that they wanted to start a company because you just get locked into a local maxima a lot of the time.” Sam Altman agrees. Facebook didn’t become a formal company until 6 months in when Peter Thiel invested. In fact, Mark and Dustin Moskovitz even told Peter that they were still planning on going back to school for their Fall semester. Paul Graham gives similar advice in his essay “Want to start a startup?”: “So if you want to start a startup one day, what should you do in college? There are only two things you need initially: an idea and cofounders… [and] the way to get startup ideas is not to try to think of startup ideas… if you make a conscious effort to think of startup ideas, the ideas you come up with will not merely be bad, but bad and plausible-sounding, meaning you'll waste a lot of time on them before realizing they're bad. The way to come up with good startup ideas is to take a step back. Instead of making a conscious effort to think of startup ideas, turn your mind into the type that startup ideas form in without any conscious effort. In fact, so unconsciously that you don't even realize at first that they're startup ideas. This is not only possible, it's how Apple, Yahoo, Google, and Facebook all got started. None of these companies were even meant to be companies at first. They were all just side projects. The best startups almost have to start as side projects, because great ideas tend to be such outliers that your conscious mind would reject them as ideas for companies.”

Michael McGuiness

494,591 views • 3 years ago

Sam Altman: "I can kind of automate an entire startup of agents and four of us. Four people and all this compute." This might be the biggest startup opportunity of 2026. He says the startups being created today could be far more valuable than the startups of the past. Why? What took his first YC startup 3 months to build can now be done by a coding agent in minutes. And his advice is simple: "You can now do three months of work in 17 minutes, but you better just go do three months of work." Most founders are still using agents to write code. The next ones will build entire companies around them. But that starts with knowing how to build agents that actually work. Here's your chance to learn and build one today ↓

Sam Altman: "I can kind of automate an entire startup of agents and four of us. Four people and all this compute." This might be the biggest startup opportunity of 2026. He says the startups being created today could be far more valuable than the startups of the past. Why? What took his first YC startup 3 months to build can now be done by a coding agent in minutes. And his advice is simple: "You can now do three months of work in 17 minutes, but you better just go do three months of work." Most founders are still using agents to write code. The next ones will build entire companies around them. But that starts with knowing how to build agents that actually work. Here's your chance to learn and build one today ↓

Rahul

22,194 views • 1 month ago

Sam Altman on what startups get wrong about culture A lot of startups think they have a great culture because there’s free food, everyone does yoga together, and everyone’s super nice to each other. But as Sam explains: “The culture that matters to the best people is one where they can just come and be really productive and be around other great people. If you have a culture which looks good on the surface but somehow rejects super talented people… I think that can be a real problem.” In this interview from 2017, Sam warns that it’s very easy to get entitled employees: “Everyone wants to work exactly how they want. They want to be really rich right now. If the company is not going to get liquid next year, they’re going to go somewhere else.” It may sound crazy to expect employees to join a company and stay there for 5-10 years, but at the best companies, that’s what happens. Sam urges founders to ask themselves: “What do we have to do to get the best people to stay at our company for 5-10 years?” Then go make that your culture. “One of the things that is included in that is wild success for the company and a mission that people care about,” Sam argues. “You need to create an environment where really great people will want to come, work with each other, and not have to deal with the crap that they do at most companies.” Culture isn’t benefits. Culture is how you hold each other accountable to the mission and help your team do the best work of their lives. Video source: Y Combinator (2017)

Sam Altman on what startups get wrong about culture A lot of startups think they have a great culture because there’s free food, everyone does yoga together, and everyone’s super nice to each other. But as Sam explains: “The culture that matters to the best people is one where they can just come and be really productive and be around other great people. If you have a culture which looks good on the surface but somehow rejects super talented people… I think that can be a real problem.” In this interview from 2017, Sam warns that it’s very easy to get entitled employees: “Everyone wants to work exactly how they want. They want to be really rich right now. If the company is not going to get liquid next year, they’re going to go somewhere else.” It may sound crazy to expect employees to join a company and stay there for 5-10 years, but at the best companies, that’s what happens. Sam urges founders to ask themselves: “What do we have to do to get the best people to stay at our company for 5-10 years?” Then go make that your culture. “One of the things that is included in that is wild success for the company and a mission that people care about,” Sam argues. “You need to create an environment where really great people will want to come, work with each other, and not have to deal with the crap that they do at most companies.” Culture isn’t benefits. Culture is how you hold each other accountable to the mission and help your team do the best work of their lives. Video source: Y Combinator (2017)

Startup Archive

17,790 views • 7 months ago

Q: How do you build a great company? In the clip below, Sam Altman walks through 9 things he has seen the best founders do: #1 Get to know your users really well “The best founders do customer support themselves. They go visit their users—in the case of Airbnb they go live with them. You want to get to know your users really really well.” #2 Have a short cycle time & understand compound growth “The cycle here is basically: talk to customer to understand pain point → build product to address that → get product in front of user → see what they do → repeat cycle. This cycle is how you iterate and improve. The law of compound growth being what it is: if you can get 2% better every iteration cycle, your iteration cycle is every four hours rather than every four weeks, and you compound that over the course of a few years, you’ll be in a very very different place. Make it one of your top goals to build one of the fastest iterating companies the world has ever seen.” #3 Make a long-term commitment “Most companies have a 2-3 year time horizon. But companies are almost always a 10 year project if they work. If you think about it that way from the very beginning, you will make very different and much better decisions. I think this is the only arbitrage opportunity left in the market. Almost no one makes a fairly long-term commitment to a new project. But if you do that, you will think in a different way, you will hire different people, and it will work very well.” #4 Stay lean until everything is working really well “In the early days, when you’re experimenting and zig zagging, you’re like a fast little speed boat and want to be able to turn the whole company on a dime. You can’t do that if you’re a big company—cash burn aside, which is another problem. The flexibility of the company basically decreases with the square of the number of employees, so you want to stay really small until you’re sure things are working. Once things are working, then you can get really big.” #5 Resist the urge to hire; especially resist the urge to hire mediocre people “Vinod Khosla has a saying that I love: ‘the team you build is the company you build.’ This is really true and I never appreciated how true this was for a long time. If you build a team of great people and you have a product that people love, you’ll have a 90%+ chance of success. Those are both really hard to do, and they’re independent variables. But don’t ignore the team component. The best CEOs I know spend huge amounts of their time recruiting and retaining good talent.” #6 Relentless execution “You have to keep going, and do things perfectly, and get all of the details right. You have to care too much about every experience that a customer has with your company.” #7 Startups are about not giving up “One of the very best companies in the last YC batch applied 7 times before they got in. This is just a version of what happens in startups all of the time: you get beat down, again, and again, and again. And that last time when you get pushed down and don’t think you have enough energy to get back up—that’s the time it actually works. This is what you sign up for if you’re going to start a startup.” #8 Fiduciary duty to take care of yourself “This is a 10-year marathon and you have a fiduciary duty to your shareholders to take care of yourself. Some people treat startups like an all-nighter: they don’t take care of their health, they don’t sleep, they don’t maintain their personal relationships. It is true that startups are a bad choice for work-life balance. But you have a duty to yourself, your team, and your investors to take care of yourself.” #9 Clear mission “You don’t have to figure this out on Day 1, but all of the most successful startups I’ve been fortunate enough to be a part of pretty quickly—in the first one to two years—figure out a really important mission. It’s this mission that gets people to join them. It drives the founders. It gets the media to write about them. And even if you start off building a project that’s just interesting to you and solves a problem in your life—which is how you should start—remember that you should have a clear mission at some point… That is what will convince people to come help you, and that is how you will build this idea into a huge company with a ton of people that really love your product.” Follow Startup Archive for more tactical startup advice!

Q: How do you build a great company? In the clip below, Sam Altman walks through 9 things he has seen the best founders do: #1 Get to know your users really well “The best founders do customer support themselves. They go visit their users—in the case of Airbnb they go live with them. You want to get to know your users really really well.” #2 Have a short cycle time & understand compound growth “The cycle here is basically: talk to customer to understand pain point → build product to address that → get product in front of user → see what they do → repeat cycle. This cycle is how you iterate and improve. The law of compound growth being what it is: if you can get 2% better every iteration cycle, your iteration cycle is every four hours rather than every four weeks, and you compound that over the course of a few years, you’ll be in a very very different place. Make it one of your top goals to build one of the fastest iterating companies the world has ever seen.” #3 Make a long-term commitment “Most companies have a 2-3 year time horizon. But companies are almost always a 10 year project if they work. If you think about it that way from the very beginning, you will make very different and much better decisions. I think this is the only arbitrage opportunity left in the market. Almost no one makes a fairly long-term commitment to a new project. But if you do that, you will think in a different way, you will hire different people, and it will work very well.” #4 Stay lean until everything is working really well “In the early days, when you’re experimenting and zig zagging, you’re like a fast little speed boat and want to be able to turn the whole company on a dime. You can’t do that if you’re a big company—cash burn aside, which is another problem. The flexibility of the company basically decreases with the square of the number of employees, so you want to stay really small until you’re sure things are working. Once things are working, then you can get really big.” #5 Resist the urge to hire; especially resist the urge to hire mediocre people “Vinod Khosla has a saying that I love: ‘the team you build is the company you build.’ This is really true and I never appreciated how true this was for a long time. If you build a team of great people and you have a product that people love, you’ll have a 90%+ chance of success. Those are both really hard to do, and they’re independent variables. But don’t ignore the team component. The best CEOs I know spend huge amounts of their time recruiting and retaining good talent.” #6 Relentless execution “You have to keep going, and do things perfectly, and get all of the details right. You have to care too much about every experience that a customer has with your company.” #7 Startups are about not giving up “One of the very best companies in the last YC batch applied 7 times before they got in. This is just a version of what happens in startups all of the time: you get beat down, again, and again, and again. And that last time when you get pushed down and don’t think you have enough energy to get back up—that’s the time it actually works. This is what you sign up for if you’re going to start a startup.” #8 Fiduciary duty to take care of yourself “This is a 10-year marathon and you have a fiduciary duty to your shareholders to take care of yourself. Some people treat startups like an all-nighter: they don’t take care of their health, they don’t sleep, they don’t maintain their personal relationships. It is true that startups are a bad choice for work-life balance. But you have a duty to yourself, your team, and your investors to take care of yourself.” #9 Clear mission “You don’t have to figure this out on Day 1, but all of the most successful startups I’ve been fortunate enough to be a part of pretty quickly—in the first one to two years—figure out a really important mission. It’s this mission that gets people to join them. It drives the founders. It gets the media to write about them. And even if you start off building a project that’s just interesting to you and solves a problem in your life—which is how you should start—remember that you should have a clear mission at some point… That is what will convince people to come help you, and that is how you will build this idea into a huge company with a ton of people that really love your product.” Follow Startup Archive for more tactical startup advice!

Startup Archive

407,763 views • 3 years ago

Q: How do you build a great company? In the clip below, Sam Altman walks through 9 things he has seen the best founders do: #1 Get to know your users really well “The best founders do customer support themselves. They go visit their users—in the case of Airbnb they go live with them. You want to get to know your users really really well.” #2 Have a short cycle time & understand compound growth “The cycle here is basically: talk to customer to understand pain point → build product to address that → get product in front of user → see what they do → repeat cycle. This cycle is how you iterate and improve. The law of compound growth being what it is: if you can get 2% better every iteration cycle, your iteration cycle is every four hours rather than every four weeks, and you compound that over the course of a few years, you’ll be in a very very different place. Make it one of your top goals to build one of the fastest iterating companies the world has ever seen.” #3 Make a long-term commitment “Most companies have a 2-3 year time horizon. But companies are almost always a 10 year project if they work. If you think about it that way from the very beginning, you will make very different and much better decisions. I think this is the only arbitrage opportunity left in the market. Almost no one makes a fairly long-term commitment to a new project. But if you do that, you will think in a different way, you will hire different people, and it will work very well.” #4 Stay lean until everything is working really well “In the early days, when you’re experimenting and zig zagging, you’re like a fast little speed boat and want to be able to turn the whole company on a dime. You can’t do that if you’re a big company—cash burn aside, which is another problem. The flexibility of the company basically decreases with the square of the number of employees, so you want to stay really small until you’re sure things are working. Once things are working, then you can get really big.” #5 Resist the urge to hire; especially resist the urge to hire mediocre people “Vinod Khosla has a saying that I love: ‘the team you build is the company you build.’ This is really true and I never appreciated how true this was for a long time. If you build a team of great people and you have a product that people love, you’ll have a 90%+ chance of success. Those are both really hard to do, and they’re independent variables. But don’t ignore the team component. The best CEOs I know spend huge amounts of their time recruiting and retaining good talent.” #6 Relentless execution “You have to keep going, and do things perfectly, and get all of the details right. You have to care too much about every experience that a customer has with your company.” #7 Startups are about not giving up “One of the very best companies in the last YC batch applied 7 times before they got in. This is just a version of what happens in startups all of the time: you get beat down, again, and again, and again. And that last time when you get pushed down and don’t think you have enough energy to get back up—that’s the time it actually works. This is what you sign up for if you’re going to start a startup.” #8 Fiduciary duty to take care of yourself “This is a 10 year marathon and you have a fiduciary duty to your shareholders to take care of yourself. Some people treat startups like an all-nighter: they don’t take care of their health, they don’t sleep, they don’t maintain their personal relationships. It is true that startups are a bad choice for work-life balance. But you have a duty to yourself, your team, and your investors to take care of yourself.” #9 Clear mission “You don’t have to figure this out on Day 1, but all of the most successful startups I’ve been fortunate enough to be a part of pretty quickly—in the first one to two years—figure out a really important mission. It’s this mission that gets people to join them. It drives the founders. It gets the media to write about them. And even if you start off building a project that’s just interesting to you and solves a problem in your life—which is how you should start—remember that you should have a clear mission at some point… That is what will convince people to come help you, and that is how you will build this idea into a huge company with a ton of people that really love your product.”

Q: How do you build a great company? In the clip below, Sam Altman walks through 9 things he has seen the best founders do: #1 Get to know your users really well “The best founders do customer support themselves. They go visit their users—in the case of Airbnb they go live with them. You want to get to know your users really really well.” #2 Have a short cycle time & understand compound growth “The cycle here is basically: talk to customer to understand pain point → build product to address that → get product in front of user → see what they do → repeat cycle. This cycle is how you iterate and improve. The law of compound growth being what it is: if you can get 2% better every iteration cycle, your iteration cycle is every four hours rather than every four weeks, and you compound that over the course of a few years, you’ll be in a very very different place. Make it one of your top goals to build one of the fastest iterating companies the world has ever seen.” #3 Make a long-term commitment “Most companies have a 2-3 year time horizon. But companies are almost always a 10 year project if they work. If you think about it that way from the very beginning, you will make very different and much better decisions. I think this is the only arbitrage opportunity left in the market. Almost no one makes a fairly long-term commitment to a new project. But if you do that, you will think in a different way, you will hire different people, and it will work very well.” #4 Stay lean until everything is working really well “In the early days, when you’re experimenting and zig zagging, you’re like a fast little speed boat and want to be able to turn the whole company on a dime. You can’t do that if you’re a big company—cash burn aside, which is another problem. The flexibility of the company basically decreases with the square of the number of employees, so you want to stay really small until you’re sure things are working. Once things are working, then you can get really big.” #5 Resist the urge to hire; especially resist the urge to hire mediocre people “Vinod Khosla has a saying that I love: ‘the team you build is the company you build.’ This is really true and I never appreciated how true this was for a long time. If you build a team of great people and you have a product that people love, you’ll have a 90%+ chance of success. Those are both really hard to do, and they’re independent variables. But don’t ignore the team component. The best CEOs I know spend huge amounts of their time recruiting and retaining good talent.” #6 Relentless execution “You have to keep going, and do things perfectly, and get all of the details right. You have to care too much about every experience that a customer has with your company.” #7 Startups are about not giving up “One of the very best companies in the last YC batch applied 7 times before they got in. This is just a version of what happens in startups all of the time: you get beat down, again, and again, and again. And that last time when you get pushed down and don’t think you have enough energy to get back up—that’s the time it actually works. This is what you sign up for if you’re going to start a startup.” #8 Fiduciary duty to take care of yourself “This is a 10 year marathon and you have a fiduciary duty to your shareholders to take care of yourself. Some people treat startups like an all-nighter: they don’t take care of their health, they don’t sleep, they don’t maintain their personal relationships. It is true that startups are a bad choice for work-life balance. But you have a duty to yourself, your team, and your investors to take care of yourself.” #9 Clear mission “You don’t have to figure this out on Day 1, but all of the most successful startups I’ve been fortunate enough to be a part of pretty quickly—in the first one to two years—figure out a really important mission. It’s this mission that gets people to join them. It drives the founders. It gets the media to write about them. And even if you start off building a project that’s just interesting to you and solves a problem in your life—which is how you should start—remember that you should have a clear mission at some point… That is what will convince people to come help you, and that is how you will build this idea into a huge company with a ton of people that really love your product.”

Michael McGuiness

500,098 views • 3 years ago

The founders of Stripe and Pinterest on how to convince people to join your startup Stripe CEO Patrick Collison argues that part of the reason startups resonate so much is because the outcome is not guaranteed: "If it were guaranteed, it would be boring... Whether or not you're the best person in the world at what you do, you're probably not going to alter Google's trajectory. But if you really want to benchmark yourself and see how much of a contribution and impact you can make--which is a really compelling prospect for a lot of the best people--a startup is a much better place to test that." Pinterest founder Ben Silbermann emphasized this as well: "No smart person that you're hiring is under the illusion that you have a crystal ball into the future and that joining is a guaranteed thing. In fact, if you're telling them that and they select in, you shouldn't hire them because they didn't pass a basic intelligence test. I think it's important to tell them what's exciting and where you think the company can go. But also tell them where it will be hard and chart your best plan. And then tell them why their role can be instrumental--because it will be... What I would discourage doing is whitewashing all of that. If people are joining your company because they want all of the certainty and safety of working at Google but also the perks of working at a small startup with lots of responsibility and transparency, that's a really negative sign." Apparently in the early days of PayPal, Peter Thiel and Max Levchin would tell people after they interviewed all the reasons that the company would fail: "Visa and MasterCard want to kill us. We also might be doing something that's illegal. But if we succeed, we'll redefine payments." Don't whitewash the risks. Instead tell them how your startup will change the world if you succeed and how their role will be instrumental in affecting that change. Video source: Y Combinator (2014)

The founders of Stripe and Pinterest on how to convince people to join your startup Stripe CEO Patrick Collison argues that part of the reason startups resonate so much is because the outcome is not guaranteed: "If it were guaranteed, it would be boring... Whether or not you're the best person in the world at what you do, you're probably not going to alter Google's trajectory. But if you really want to benchmark yourself and see how much of a contribution and impact you can make--which is a really compelling prospect for a lot of the best people--a startup is a much better place to test that." Pinterest founder Ben Silbermann emphasized this as well: "No smart person that you're hiring is under the illusion that you have a crystal ball into the future and that joining is a guaranteed thing. In fact, if you're telling them that and they select in, you shouldn't hire them because they didn't pass a basic intelligence test. I think it's important to tell them what's exciting and where you think the company can go. But also tell them where it will be hard and chart your best plan. And then tell them why their role can be instrumental--because it will be... What I would discourage doing is whitewashing all of that. If people are joining your company because they want all of the certainty and safety of working at Google but also the perks of working at a small startup with lots of responsibility and transparency, that's a really negative sign." Apparently in the early days of PayPal, Peter Thiel and Max Levchin would tell people after they interviewed all the reasons that the company would fail: "Visa and MasterCard want to kill us. We also might be doing something that's illegal. But if we succeed, we'll redefine payments." Don't whitewash the risks. Instead tell them how your startup will change the world if you succeed and how their role will be instrumental in affecting that change. Video source: Y Combinator (2014)

Startup Archive

11,811 views • 10 months ago

Michael Seibel on how to get and test startup ideas As the former CEO of Y Combinator puts it in the clip below: “There’s a common misconception that your idea has to be great to start a company, and the first thing I want to do is destroy that misconception.” Michael was one of the cofounders of JustinTV, which later become Twitch and sold to Amazon for almost $1B. Their original idea was to create an online reality TV show—very different from where Twitch eventually ended up. Rather than falling for the trap of thinking that your initial startup idea has to be great, Michael advises founders to start with a problem: “Starting with ideas is tricky because people immediately want to grade your idea. It’s a lot easier to start with a problem and think about how you grade a problem.” Ideally the problem you set out to solve is one you've experienced personally or have some sort of connection to. You should ask yourself: “why am I uniquely qualified to work on this problem?” Is there some unique angle or approach you're taking to the problem that you understand but you don't believe others understand? Peter Thiel argues that “great companies have secrets: specific reasons for success that other people don’t see." After identifying a problem, you’ll want to start thinking about your MVP. What's the first solution you're going to build and release to see if you can help your initial users solve this problem? But don’t fall in love with your MVP. As Michael puts it: “A lot of people fall in love with their product and are not in love with their problem or their customer. I advise the opposite. Be in love with your problem. Be in love with your customer. And treat your product in a way that can change, develop, and improve.” And once you have an MVP, you should have a strong opinion about who your initial customer is and handpick all of your initial users. The goal with an MVP is not to see how many people want to use your product. It's to see if your solution actually solves the problem for your initial target customers. “The best startups very heavily filter the people who are able to use the initial product and make sure that they’re the right type of initial customer.”

Michael Seibel on how to get and test startup ideas As the former CEO of Y Combinator puts it in the clip below: “There’s a common misconception that your idea has to be great to start a company, and the first thing I want to do is destroy that misconception.” Michael was one of the cofounders of JustinTV, which later become Twitch and sold to Amazon for almost $1B. Their original idea was to create an online reality TV show—very different from where Twitch eventually ended up. Rather than falling for the trap of thinking that your initial startup idea has to be great, Michael advises founders to start with a problem: “Starting with ideas is tricky because people immediately want to grade your idea. It’s a lot easier to start with a problem and think about how you grade a problem.” Ideally the problem you set out to solve is one you've experienced personally or have some sort of connection to. You should ask yourself: “why am I uniquely qualified to work on this problem?” Is there some unique angle or approach you're taking to the problem that you understand but you don't believe others understand? Peter Thiel argues that “great companies have secrets: specific reasons for success that other people don’t see." After identifying a problem, you’ll want to start thinking about your MVP. What's the first solution you're going to build and release to see if you can help your initial users solve this problem? But don’t fall in love with your MVP. As Michael puts it: “A lot of people fall in love with their product and are not in love with their problem or their customer. I advise the opposite. Be in love with your problem. Be in love with your customer. And treat your product in a way that can change, develop, and improve.” And once you have an MVP, you should have a strong opinion about who your initial customer is and handpick all of your initial users. The goal with an MVP is not to see how many people want to use your product. It's to see if your solution actually solves the problem for your initial target customers. “The best startups very heavily filter the people who are able to use the initial product and make sure that they’re the right type of initial customer.”

Startup Archive

101,033 views • 2 years ago

.tae kim believes the next six to nine months could be the biggest period of AI progress yet because of RSI. "The next six to nine months are going to be bigger than anyone believes... It'll be dramatically better for AI than the last two years in terms of advancements in capabilities." "RSI is a lot closer than people think... If RSI actually happens, and I think it sounds like both frontier labs think it's going to happen very soon, that's going to soak up an unbelievable amount of compute."

.tae kim believes the next six to nine months could be the biggest period of AI progress yet because of RSI. "The next six to nine months are going to be bigger than anyone believes... It'll be dramatically better for AI than the last two years in terms of advancements in capabilities." "RSI is a lot closer than people think... If RSI actually happens, and I think it sounds like both frontier labs think it's going to happen very soon, that's going to soak up an unbelievable amount of compute."

TBPN

73,014 views • 2 months ago

Peter Thiel on the question he asks every startup founder he invests in “Why will the 20th talented person join your company when they can get paid way more at Google, they will have to work way less hard at Google, and it will look better on their resume to go to Google?” The 20th employee won’t get the equity or prestige that someone on the founding team will get, so there needs to be another incentive if you’re going to build a truly great company and attract the best people in the world. Thiel believes the best answer is something along the lines of: “This is the only place in the world where you can work on this incredibly important problem.” He continues: “It has to—on some dimension—be a really important problem that at least some people think is the most important problem in the world. Those are the kind of businesses that are unique, and when they work, they end up being leaders in their respective markets.” If it’s a problem that a bunch of other team are working on, it will be hard to attract a truly world-class employee #20.

Peter Thiel on the question he asks every startup founder he invests in “Why will the 20th talented person join your company when they can get paid way more at Google, they will have to work way less hard at Google, and it will look better on their resume to go to Google?” The 20th employee won’t get the equity or prestige that someone on the founding team will get, so there needs to be another incentive if you’re going to build a truly great company and attract the best people in the world. Thiel believes the best answer is something along the lines of: “This is the only place in the world where you can work on this incredibly important problem.” He continues: “It has to—on some dimension—be a really important problem that at least some people think is the most important problem in the world. Those are the kind of businesses that are unique, and when they work, they end up being leaders in their respective markets.” If it’s a problem that a bunch of other team are working on, it will be hard to attract a truly world-class employee #20.

Startup Archive

316,188 views • 1 year ago

Sam Altman says the best startup ideas look stupid to every expert. For years, the whole field said building AGI was wrong and irresponsible. He says the doubt turned out to be a gift. It gave OpenAI time and no real rivals. He says if the smart money already agrees with you, the big prize is gone. “Everybody was calling us an idiot.” Being dismissed early is often the sign you are right. — Sam Altman (.Sam Altman) with Garry Tan (.Garry Tan) at Startup School.

Sam Altman says the best startup ideas look stupid to every expert. For years, the whole field said building AGI was wrong and irresponsible. He says the doubt turned out to be a gift. It gave OpenAI time and no real rivals. He says if the smart money already agrees with you, the big prize is gone. “Everybody was calling us an idiot.” Being dismissed early is often the sign you are right. — Sam Altman (.Sam Altman) with Garry Tan (.Garry Tan) at Startup School.

Genius Thinking

24,005 views • 1 month ago

Not to be that guy and to be clear I think Sagat is too good ( damage and carry is too high), but this is actually one of the easiest ways to get the match on your terms, especially if you have a fast walk speed he has some of the most whiff punishable buttons in the game 😬

Not to be that guy and to be clear I think Sagat is too good ( damage and carry is too high), but this is actually one of the easiest ways to get the match on your terms, especially if you have a fast walk speed he has some of the most whiff punishable buttons in the game 😬

Totalsagat

219,638 views • 2 months ago

Sam Altman says Trump and Xi would win the Nobel Peace Prize for a one-page AI agreement “I think Presidents Trump and Xi would get the Nobel Peace Prize together if they could agree on something that should be easy to agree to. And it would be wonderful.” “I think that clearly the two countries are going to compete in lots of ways, and this is going to be important socioeconomically, geopolitically. But they should be able to agree that no one should be taking a certain level of risk with the development process of this.” “And even if just the US and China could agree on some shared standards and testing for development of this technology, I think that'd be a wonderful accomplishment that the two of them can deliver.” “I don’t think this is hard. This is like a one page document.”

Sam Altman says Trump and Xi would win the Nobel Peace Prize for a one-page AI agreement “I think Presidents Trump and Xi would get the Nobel Peace Prize together if they could agree on something that should be easy to agree to. And it would be wonderful.” “I think that clearly the two countries are going to compete in lots of ways, and this is going to be important socioeconomically, geopolitically. But they should be able to agree that no one should be taking a certain level of risk with the development process of this.” “And even if just the US and China could agree on some shared standards and testing for development of this technology, I think that'd be a wonderful accomplishment that the two of them can deliver.” “I don’t think this is hard. This is like a one page document.”

dnap

2,201,193 views • 20 days ago

Peter Thiel: Why will the 20th employee join your company? When deciding whether or not to invest in a founder, Thiel asks: “Why will the 20th talented person join your company when they can get paid way more at Google, they will have to work way less hard at Google, and it will look better on their resume to go to Google?” The 20th employee won’t get the equity or prestige that someone on the founding team will get, so there needs to be another incentive if you’re going to build a truly great company and attract the best people in the world. Thiel believes the best answer is something along the lines of: “This is the only place in the world where you can work on this incredibly important problem.” He continues: “It has to—on some dimension—be a really important problem that at least some people think is the most important problem in the world. Those are the kind of businesses that are unique, and when they work, they end up being leaders in their respective markets.” If it’s a problem that a bunch of other teams are working on, it will be hard to attract a truly world-class employee #20. Source: Pando

Peter Thiel: Why will the 20th employee join your company? When deciding whether or not to invest in a founder, Thiel asks: “Why will the 20th talented person join your company when they can get paid way more at Google, they will have to work way less hard at Google, and it will look better on their resume to go to Google?” The 20th employee won’t get the equity or prestige that someone on the founding team will get, so there needs to be another incentive if you’re going to build a truly great company and attract the best people in the world. Thiel believes the best answer is something along the lines of: “This is the only place in the world where you can work on this incredibly important problem.” He continues: “It has to—on some dimension—be a really important problem that at least some people think is the most important problem in the world. Those are the kind of businesses that are unique, and when they work, they end up being leaders in their respective markets.” If it’s a problem that a bunch of other teams are working on, it will be hard to attract a truly world-class employee #20. Source: Pando

Startup Archive

40,425 views • 2 years ago

Raising a round may not be a signal to spend aggressively, and many of the best founders stay disciplined. Yuri Sagalov from General Catalyst advises to wait until the pain is real, then hire with intention. Taking your time can prevent painful layoffs, protect culture, and give your startup a longer runway to win. Listen to the full episode of Build Mode:

Raising a round may not be a signal to spend aggressively, and many of the best founders stay disciplined. Yuri Sagalov from General Catalyst advises to wait until the pain is real, then hire with intention. Taking your time can prevent painful layoffs, protect culture, and give your startup a longer runway to win. Listen to the full episode of Build Mode:

TechCrunch

24,567 views • 7 months ago

One of the toughest parts of being a founder is putting your ideas into the world, seeing if anyone cares (usually they don't - or worse, are rooting against you), and then seeing if you can actually pull it off (usually way more setbacks along the way than you thought!). You have to: (1) develop thick skin and find a way to ignore the haters (2) still take advice from people who have your best interests at heart (3) have the wisdom to know the difference Then move from one setback to the next with no loss of enthusiasm for longer than you thought. Be borderline delusional, get after it every day for a decade, and turn out to be right. Finally, when your tenth or hundredth approach to a problem doesn't work, just keep coming up with more ideas. Had a great day at Base Batches yesterday, meeting founders building on Base and hearing about the latest onchain innovations. Shout out to all the founders!

One of the toughest parts of being a founder is putting your ideas into the world, seeing if anyone cares (usually they don't - or worse, are rooting against you), and then seeing if you can actually pull it off (usually way more setbacks along the way than you thought!). You have to: (1) develop thick skin and find a way to ignore the haters (2) still take advice from people who have your best interests at heart (3) have the wisdom to know the difference Then move from one setback to the next with no loss of enthusiasm for longer than you thought. Be borderline delusional, get after it every day for a decade, and turn out to be right. Finally, when your tenth or hundredth approach to a problem doesn't work, just keep coming up with more ideas. Had a great day at Base Batches yesterday, meeting founders building on Base and hearing about the latest onchain innovations. Shout out to all the founders!

Brian Armstrong

93,902 views • 4 months ago

The 9 traits Sam Altman looks for to identify founders who can build a $10 billion company “It’s difficult to hear an idea at the very early stage and say: ‘Yeah, this idea has what it takes to be a $10 billion company.’ However, I think you can, with practice, identify founders that have a chance at creating one of those companies.’” The first four traits Sam looks for comes from gmail creator Paul Buchhiet: obsession, focus, frugality, and love. Next, Sam looks for intelligence: “You can give a founder an idea, but the problem is they need to come up with new ideas for the company basically every week… We tried an experiment at Y Combinator where we funded 20 teams of strong founders that didn’t have ideas but otherwise were really good, and they all failed. What we learned is that good founders have ideas all the time.” #6 is communication skills: “So much of your job as a founder is about communication—every time you hire someone, go to raise money, try to sell the product, and set a direction for the company. A huge amount of a founder’s job is being an evangelist for the company. If you don’t have strong communication skills or you don’t develop them quickly, you’re at a big disadvantage.” #7 is execution speed. How quickly can you generate a hypothesis, test it, and implement it? Sam observes that most slow-moving founders who went through Y Combinator didn’t go on to be successful: “A relentless cadence of execution is incredibly correlated with success.” #8 is the rate of improvement of the founder: “If you look at a founder who comes to meet you for a seed round and compare that founder to Brian Chesky, you will be disappointed 100% of the time. That’s the wrong comparison… You should look at the at the growth rate of the founder… Humans always underestimate exponential growth.” #9 is the right motivations: “There a lot of people who start a startup because they think it’s a way to get rich quickly, and unfortunately it’s just not. So startups have become the new default career trajectory for ambitious people… This does not work given the amount of pain you have to suffer for a startup… In our portfolio at YC, every time we thought a company was going to go really well and didn’t, the founder did not have a deep sense of mission.” Video Source: Y Combinator

The 9 traits Sam Altman looks for to identify founders who can build a $10 billion company “It’s difficult to hear an idea at the very early stage and say: ‘Yeah, this idea has what it takes to be a $10 billion company.’ However, I think you can, with practice, identify founders that have a chance at creating one of those companies.’” The first four traits Sam looks for comes from gmail creator Paul Buchhiet: obsession, focus, frugality, and love. Next, Sam looks for intelligence: “You can give a founder an idea, but the problem is they need to come up with new ideas for the company basically every week… We tried an experiment at Y Combinator where we funded 20 teams of strong founders that didn’t have ideas but otherwise were really good, and they all failed. What we learned is that good founders have ideas all the time.” #6 is communication skills: “So much of your job as a founder is about communication—every time you hire someone, go to raise money, try to sell the product, and set a direction for the company. A huge amount of a founder’s job is being an evangelist for the company. If you don’t have strong communication skills or you don’t develop them quickly, you’re at a big disadvantage.” #7 is execution speed. How quickly can you generate a hypothesis, test it, and implement it? Sam observes that most slow-moving founders who went through Y Combinator didn’t go on to be successful: “A relentless cadence of execution is incredibly correlated with success.” #8 is the rate of improvement of the founder: “If you look at a founder who comes to meet you for a seed round and compare that founder to Brian Chesky, you will be disappointed 100% of the time. That’s the wrong comparison… You should look at the at the growth rate of the founder… Humans always underestimate exponential growth.” #9 is the right motivations: “There a lot of people who start a startup because they think it’s a way to get rich quickly, and unfortunately it’s just not. So startups have become the new default career trajectory for ambitious people… This does not work given the amount of pain you have to suffer for a startup… In our portfolio at YC, every time we thought a company was going to go really well and didn’t, the founder did not have a deep sense of mission.” Video Source: Y Combinator

Startup Archive

85,860 views • 2 years ago

.Second Lady Usha Vance responds to a student's question about how to be the best Second Lady: "I think they key thing, for anyone who is in this kind of role, is to try to just continue to be yourself. You have to do the best job that you can. And there are some responsibilities that come with it...you don't always choose what you are doing...But the most important thing is to remember the kind of person that you were before it, and the kind of person you want to be. If you can do that all the way through, then you can have a lot of fun — and maybe be helpful. You don't want to just start thinking of yourself as the Second Lady, because then you're probably not that fun a person anymore."

.Second Lady Usha Vance responds to a student's question about how to be the best Second Lady: "I think they key thing, for anyone who is in this kind of role, is to try to just continue to be yourself. You have to do the best job that you can. And there are some responsibilities that come with it...you don't always choose what you are doing...But the most important thing is to remember the kind of person that you were before it, and the kind of person you want to be. If you can do that all the way through, then you can have a lot of fun — and maybe be helpful. You don't want to just start thinking of yourself as the Second Lady, because then you're probably not that fun a person anymore."

Mary Margaret Olohan

1,111,670 views • 1 year ago

Q: Why is it easier to start a hard company than an easy company? In the clip below, Sam Altman tells the class at Stanford: “It’s easier to start a hard company than an easy company. Most people—especially young people—want to pick something that doesn’t sound too ambitious. They say to themselves: ‘starting a company sounds really hard. I better pick the easiest possible company.’” But as Sam explains: “Starting a company is always hard and it’s about equally hard no matter what you do. If you start a hard company though and you inspire passionate people—for example, if you are working on general AI or supersonic airplanes or nuclear power—you’ll find a lot more people who are excited about that than another derivative idea.” He elaborates on this idea even further in a blog post from four years ago: “The most precious commodity in the startup ecosystem right now is talented people, and for the most part talented people want to work on something they find meaningful… An easy startup is a headwind; a hard startup is a tailwind. If people care about your success because you seem committed to doing something significant, it’s a background force helping you with hiring, advice, partnerships, fundraising, etc.” He continues: “Let yourself become more ambitious—figure out the most interesting version of where what you’re working on could go. Then talk about that big vision and work relentlessly towards it, but always have a reasonable next step. You don’t want step one to be incorporating the company and step two to be going to Mars. Be willing to make a very long-term commitment to what you’re doing. Most people aren’t, which is part of the reason they pick ‘easy’ startups. In a world of compounding advantages where most people are operating on a 3 year timeframe and you’re operating on a 10 year timeframe, you’ll have a very large edge.”

Q: Why is it easier to start a hard company than an easy company? In the clip below, Sam Altman tells the class at Stanford: “It’s easier to start a hard company than an easy company. Most people—especially young people—want to pick something that doesn’t sound too ambitious. They say to themselves: ‘starting a company sounds really hard. I better pick the easiest possible company.’” But as Sam explains: “Starting a company is always hard and it’s about equally hard no matter what you do. If you start a hard company though and you inspire passionate people—for example, if you are working on general AI or supersonic airplanes or nuclear power—you’ll find a lot more people who are excited about that than another derivative idea.” He elaborates on this idea even further in a blog post from four years ago: “The most precious commodity in the startup ecosystem right now is talented people, and for the most part talented people want to work on something they find meaningful… An easy startup is a headwind; a hard startup is a tailwind. If people care about your success because you seem committed to doing something significant, it’s a background force helping you with hiring, advice, partnerships, fundraising, etc.” He continues: “Let yourself become more ambitious—figure out the most interesting version of where what you’re working on could go. Then talk about that big vision and work relentlessly towards it, but always have a reasonable next step. You don’t want step one to be incorporating the company and step two to be going to Mars. Be willing to make a very long-term commitment to what you’re doing. Most people aren’t, which is part of the reason they pick ‘easy’ startups. In a world of compounding advantages where most people are operating on a 3 year timeframe and you’re operating on a 10 year timeframe, you’ll have a very large edge.”

Michael McGuiness

504,007 views • 3 years ago

Scott on why conviction in an idea is dangerous as an investor but required as a founder: "From the investor seat, I don't think you want to be in love with an idea. That's a risky thing because you'll find a way to express that by investing and make some compromises on the team because you know this idea is just so good, its time has come. But if the team isn't there, 90% of the time it doesn't work. Then there's a whole thing can you swap out the team? But the whole Founders Fund thesis was always no, you need the founder to run the company. But on the company side, you have to be in love with the idea. It's not that rational to start a company. There's a lot easier, more comfortable ways to make money if that's the goal. So it's got to be about what the company is doing specifically. If you want to actually start a company, it better be something that you're really passionate about, or you think that the problem is really important."

Scott on why conviction in an idea is dangerous as an investor but required as a founder: "From the investor seat, I don't think you want to be in love with an idea. That's a risky thing because you'll find a way to express that by investing and make some compromises on the team because you know this idea is just so good, its time has come. But if the team isn't there, 90% of the time it doesn't work. Then there's a whole thing can you swap out the team? But the whole Founders Fund thesis was always no, you need the founder to run the company. But on the company side, you have to be in love with the idea. It's not that rational to start a company. There's a lot easier, more comfortable ways to make money if that's the goal. So it's got to be about what the company is doing specifically. If you want to actually start a company, it better be something that you're really passionate about, or you think that the problem is really important."

Patrick OShaughnessy

33,016 views • 5 months ago