If a company is profitable, the founder is in control. If it's not, investors are in control.
Sam AltmanRead
People always make the mistake of calling an idea small or stupid because they don't understand how it's going to evolve.
Interpretation
This quote highlights the importance of being open-minded about ideas, no matter how insignificant they may seem initially.
Sam Altman emphasizes that many people often dismiss ideas as small or foolish simply because they do not grasp their potential for future development. This reflects a common tendency to judge things superficially without recognizing the capacity for growth and innovation that can emerge from seemingly trivial concepts.
In practice
In a brainstorming session, to encourage team members to share all ideas without fear of judgment.
If a company is profitable, the founder is in control. If it's not, investors are in control.
It's so important for startups to get their culture right at the start. They need to feel unique and that they are on their own important mission in the world.
If you have the opportunity to go be an early employee at a company that's just going crazy, and you believe it's the next Facebook or Google, you should go join that company.
Seed investing is the status symbol of Silicon Valley. Most people don't want Ferraris, they want a winning seed investment.
Technology magnifies differences, and it's been replacing or obviating jobs for a long time. But what happens as that case accelerates? I'm not one of these doomsayers who says, 'There will be no jobs.'
All companies that grow really big do so in only one way: people recommend the product or service to other people.
These dreams reminded me that, since I wished some day to become a writer, it was high time to decide what sort of books I was going to write. But as soon as I asked myself the question, and tried to discover some subject to which I could impart a philosophical significance of infinite value, my mind would stop like a clock, my consciousness would be faced with a blank, I would feel either that I was wholly devoid of talent or perhaps that some malady of the brain was hindering its development.
It is a fool's prerogative to utter truths that no one else will speak.
One who imitates what is bad always goes beyond his model; while one who imitates what is good always comes up short of it.
Hope and reality lie in inverse proportions, inside the walls of a hospital... Doubt is like dye. Once is spreads into the fabric of excuses you've woven, you'll never get rid of the stain.
No man is so poor as to have nothing worth giving.
This wealth of experiences, personal and professional, have helped me appreciate the variety of perspectives that present themselves in every case that I hear.
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