Researchers and Founders - Sam Altman

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.

What Sam looks for in founders: breadcrumbs from their past that hint at their trajectory, outsiders with a unique insight, unusually strong in one area, cognizant of their weaknesses, understand where they need to focus right now, have a way to inspire and bring people together

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.

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 rea... See more

In my experience most of the companies are run by highly creative, idealistic people. Many of them started off with products that were optimized for the needs of the users and community and almost all of them ended up optimized for the needs of the company.

For the past decade, our idolatry of startups and innovation has meant the focus has been: What can we disrupt? How fast can we grow? How big can we get? How much can we raise?

Founders are taught to possess enough faith that they can build something very big very fast. This creates a pressure cooker of responsibility that distorts reality to the p... See more