I'm constantly surprised by the fact that Sam Altman is the one in charge of OpenAI. As far as I know, he dropped out of college to start a company that folded (Edit: this is wrong, he sold it, was a bust for investors though), ended up advising companies at YCombinator, Paul G liked him, and he just sort of made lots of connections. Then he became CEO of Open AI? I'm likely missing a step, right?
Don't get me wrong, I don't think he's a moron or anything, but it's fascinating to me that he doesn't have ANY of the following things that I'd assume makes one qualified: * Published AI research * Sold a company * Worked at a Unicorn or top tech company * Reputation in OSS as a hacker/builder
Surely there's more to the story? Do people who he has advised at YCombinator all agree he's brilliant and insightful? What am I missing?
EDIT: I was wrong, he did sell a company. My mistake!
That does change things, but I'd like to hear more from people who have good things to say about him. Maybe he's given some amazing advice to really important companies that we're unaware of. It would be nice to hear more of how he got his reputation.
https://www.buzzfeednews.com/article/richardnieva/worldcoin-...
It's too easy to mix up cause and effect here. Was he already visible so good that pg put them there, or is pg infatuation so influential?
There's probably more than what meets the eye. Too bad for us that sama doesn't write as much as pg does.
> there are a few people with such force of will that they're going to get whatever they want.
We discussed nuclear power which was an industry I left but dreamed of building a successful startup in. Sam asked me why I wasn’t building a startup in nuclear power if I thought the technology was so powerful. What I realized in what he was conveying was that if he had the same conviction he would have no doubt about the ability to drive it to success. The more experienced I get the more I value that type of conviction and determination. The more I also see that behavior being rewarded with results.
The bigger question is why so many still believe in the myth of meritocracy [1]. Altman, if he failed upward, is not an isolated incident. It is not.
The common traits of "success" here are more closely aligned to sociopathy and narcissism [2]. Look no further than Elon Musk, the once richest man in the world.
[1]: https://www.theguardian.com/news/2018/oct/19/the-myth-of-mer...
[2]: https://www.forbes.com/sites/jackmccullough/2019/12/09/the-p...
I just saw Sam Altman speak at YCNYC and I was impressed. I have never actually met him or heard him speak before Monday, but one of his stories really stuck out and went something like this:
"We were trying to get a big client for weeks, and they said no and went with a competitor. The competitor already had a terms sheet from the company were we trying to sign up. It was real serious.
We were devastated, but we decided to fly down and sit in their lobby until they would meet with us. So they finally let us talk to them after most of the day.
We then had a few more meetings, and the company wanted to come visit our offices so they could make sure we were a 'real' company. At that time, we were only 5 guys. So we hired a bunch of our college friends to 'work' for us for the day so we could look larger than we actually were. It worked, and we got the contract."
I think the reason why PG respects Sam so much is he is charismatic, resourceful, and just overall seems like a genuine person.
Companies can “fail”, for all kinds of reasons, even with perfect execution by the founders. I don’t really know why Loopt failed, but based on sama’s track record since, he is definitely a person who makes a huge impact with whatever he does (even if you think OpenAI hype is overblown, as I do).
> Sam Altman, the co-founder of Loopt, had just finished his sophomore year when we funded them, and Loopt is probably the most promising of all the startups we've funded so far. But Sam Altman is a very unusual guy. Within about three minutes of meeting him, I remember thinking "Ah, so this is what Bill Gates must have been like when he was 19." http://www.paulgraham.com/mit.html
https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2016/10/10/sam-altmans-ma...
and most importantly, from http://www.paulgraham.com/fundraising.html
'At YC we spend a lot of time trying to predict how the startups we've funded will do, because we're trying to learn how to pick winners. We've now watched the trajectories of so many startups that we're getting better at predicting them. And when we're talking about startups we think are likely to succeed, what we find ourselves saying is things like "Oh, those guys can take care of themselves. They'll be fine." Not "those guys are really smart" or "those guys are working on a great idea." [6] When we predict good outcomes for startups, the qualities that come up in the supporting arguments are toughness, adaptability, determination. Which means to the extent we're correct, those are the qualities you need to win. 'Investors know this, at least unconsciously. The reason they like it when you don't need them is not simply that they like what they can't have, but because that quality is what makes founders succeed. 'Sam Altman has it. You could parachute him into an island full of cannibals and come back in 5 years and he'd be the king. If you're Sam Altman, you don't have to be profitable to convey to investors that you'll succeed with or without them. (He wasn't, and he did.) Not everyone has Sam's deal-making ability. I myself don't. But if you don't, you can let the numbers speak for you.'
He is also from early batch of YC who co-incidently were very intimately connected with PG.
someone above said zuck was pretty much "luck" which I dont think is true. Even though you might hate him for a lot of things, he is pretty darn smart.
edit add "luck"
and groups of people with non-white skin -- say, Asian Indian Americans -- being able to overcome racism is great, but it should not be required, and they had some advantages:
https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2021/01/the-mak...
The result was an intense form of social engineering, but one that went largely unacknowledged. Immigrants from India, armed with degrees, arrived after the height of the civil-rights movement, and benefited from a struggle that they had not participated in or even witnessed. They made their way not only to cities but to suburbs, and broadly speaking were accepted more easily than other nonwhite groups have been.