Startup Advice from Sam Altman

Photo by TechCrunch

Notes from Startup Advice by Sam Altman.

Sam is the former president of Y Combinator and the current CEO of OpenAI. His writing and his words have had a great impact on my entrepreneurial journey.

Some highlights from his post…

• “It’s easier to sell painkillers than vitamins.”

• “Startups should require as few miracles as possible, but at least one.”

• “Have a good operational cadence where projects are short and you’re releasing something new on a regular basis.”

• “It’s better to make a decision and be wrong than to equivocate.”

• “You can create value with breakthrough innovation, incremental refinement, or complex coordination.  Great companies often do two of these.  The very best companies do all three.”

• “Get on planes in marginal situations. In-person is still better than tele-anything.”

• “Most things are not as risky as they seem.”

I’m always reminded of Jim Carey’s famous commencement speech in which he tells a story about his father taking a ‘less risky’ job, only to later lose his job.

• “Be formidable—do not be easy to push around.”

• “Remember that you are more likely to die because you execute badly than get crushed by a competitor.”

Jess Bezos talks about this mistake of focusing on competitors vs. customers. It’s a mistake I/my teams have made, most notably at Fancred where we were at times overly focused on winning sports fans from Twitter.

• “Write code, talk to users, and build the company (hire the best people you can find, get the culture right, fundraise, close sales, etc.)  Most other things that founders do are a waste of time.”

• “A great team and a great market are both critically important—you have to have both.”