Ask PG/HN: Why does PG list Sam Altman among the 5 most interesting founders?

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3048899

by philipDS • 15 years ago

30 25 15 years ago

news.ycombinator.com

I wonder why he lists him here: http://www.paulgraham.com/5founders.html.

I have never met Sam Altman and never seen him speak in public, but if I didn't know about YC, I surely wouldn't have known about Loopt or Sam Altman. I live in Europe and Loopt is pretty much non-existent here (all 4sq/gowalla). So why is Altman such a great entrepeneur (in terms of strategy/amibition, as stated by PG)? What is extraordinary about the things he does or has done? Why isn't someone like for instance Jack Dorsey on the list?

AndrewGCook• 15 years ago

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.

secretasiandan• 15 years ago

I'm sure many people view bringing in a bunch of friends to seem busier than you really are positively. But I'm not so sure that I like it.

Is this not a deliberate and material misrepresentation of your company? If this were a financial contract being sold, wouldn't this be fraudulent?

richcollins• 15 years ago

The effectiveness of deception is not mitigated by your opinions of its likability.

dsplittgerber• 15 years ago

Geez, the point is that he is really fighting and going all-the-way for his company. A lot of guys would have stopped on the original "No". A lot of guys would have left after having sat in the lobby for a few hours. A lot of guys would have ceased pushing when being asked to show "respectable" company premises. See why he is so respected?

A comment from PG about him I will never ever forget even though I had never heard of Altman before goes like this: "You can leave Sam Altman on an island full of cannibals and when you come back a year later, he is the king of the cannibals."

This is one of the most awesome character traits to ever have. You WILL be successful by being like this, it's just a matter of time.

HeyLaughingBoy2• 15 years ago

He didn't misrepresent anything. They were actually working there, just only for one day.

FameofLight• 15 years ago

What you have written above doesn't interpreted as honest. Yeah I would he is shrewd and have the business mind approach , but genuine and honest will be wrong words to user here.

HeyLaughingBoy2• 15 years ago

Honesty is often overrated by geeks and it is very contextual.

The canonical question is "Honey, does this dress make my ass look fat?" The honest answer may be "yes." But that answer could be hurtful and result in a seriously pissed off girlfriend/wife for a while.

The easy answer is "no." Dishonest, but no hurt feelings. A better response is often to deflect the question entirely and say, "I think you look much better in that purple dress you used to like."

That's what Sam did here: he deflected the question before it even arose.

dabent• 15 years ago

Some people do things like that and either seem seem desperate or overbearing while doing it. It's the rare individual that can remain confident and drive forward under such circumstances.

jswinghammer• 15 years ago

You can approach this in one of two ways. One is to ask why and the other is to gather the data yourself and then just draw your own conclusions. From what I've seen and know about Sam Altman the praise he gets is justified but you might disagree. What you'll get from asking is interpreted responses from the data but if you find out for yourself then you can judge pg's response appropriately. This seems like a weird way to get background on someone when there's google.com available.

philipDS• 15 years ago

I wanted to hear some opinions. Checking out his talk at Startup School 08 now. Any other recommendations?

staunch3• 15 years ago

It's true Loopt has been something of a failure in the market. That doesn't mean Sam Altman won't become the world-changing entrepreneur PG sees in him.

It's quite possible he's working on the "wrong" project. Many people have had this experience: Traf-O-Data (Bill Gates), Atari games (Steve Jobs), Tribe.net (Mark Pincus), and the list goes on endlessly.

If you had seen Bill Gates working on Traf-O-Data you might have said "that guy is going places" even though Traf-O-Data was ultimately not an important part of where he was going.

Hisoka2• 15 years ago

Didn't Tribes.net get acquired from Cisco for like a lot of money?

staunch3• 15 years ago

Cisco bought some remnant "technology" for a pittance. It failed about as completely as possible.

mtgentry• 15 years ago

Love this "wrong project" concept. Have any blog posts or articles about this?

Most of us can see when other entrepreneurs are working on a project that doesn't reflect their core strengths. It's much more difficult to identify when we're the ones going down the wrong path.

staunch3• 15 years ago

I didn't consciously realize it, but I suppose this is a lot of what PG talks about in "Why Smart People Have Bad Ideas" http://www.paulgraham.com/bronze.html

glimcat2• 15 years ago

Steve Jobs was moderately disruptive at Atari, even if a lot of it was "I should get Woz to do this."

Some of Steve's pet projects at Apple were miserable bombs. It's less a quest to find the right place than it is the fact that it's impossible to do more than guess at the reception that a product will have. You can boost the probabilities, but it's still a random process.

michaeldwan• 15 years ago

Sam is one of the sharpest product guys I've ever met. YC office hours with him are always valuable.

wccrawford• 15 years ago

http://www.paulgraham.com/notnot.html

"But the most successful founder we've funded so far, Sam Altman, was 19 at the time."

"I realized these tests existed after meeting Sam Altman, actually. I noticed that I felt like I was talking to someone much older."

abbasmehdi2• 15 years ago

I think PG's opinion is based on Sam's personality. I don't know the guy, neither do I know PG, but I'm assuming he likes what he sees in Sam, not just what Sam has done so far.

Loopt isn't ever on my mind, neither anyone I know uses it - that sounds bad for a 6 or 7 year old, mass market YC company/product from one of YC's most prized and highest regarded/praised CEOs. So I think Sam might have picked the wrong battle. However, Sam's property that pg likes him for (relentless and tenacious) might be exactly what's preventing him from ditching the loop (no pun intended) and keeping him ditching the idea or jumping ship altogether. Even Sam’s tenacity can’t save a product people don’t care deeply for.

Or maybe I just give pg’s judgment of “people” too much credit by default, as an extension of his judgment of companies/products. Maybe pg sucks at picking winning people, but is great at strategy/tactics/products/ideas (just a hypothesis).

Either way, the takeaway for me here is be a bull dog - but don’t bark at walls, i.e. be tenacious, but find something worth being tenacious for.

abbasmehdi2• 15 years ago

Update: Just looked 'em up. They're trying to go from "fun" to "useful" by hooking up with Groupon, I guess that would make them the social Google Maps for Groupon. IMO that's using peer influence (teens) for group purchases (teens don't have CCs usually). Unless, unless they use social influence to bring new coupon purchasers for groupon (affiliate sales or reseller?) or are able to tip groupons that have been historically harder to tip by getting friends to get involved in activities together.

pg• 15 years ago

Loopt is more successful than HN users would realize. Some of what it does isn't consumer facing, and its users are (like e.g. Stumbleupon's) mostly not HN users.

In any case, you can't measure someone by one company. The formula for the success of a startup includes a random multiplier of roughly zero to a thousand. You can see this from how common it is for successful founders' second startups to fail.

I'm actually more impressed with Sam than when I wrote that. Since then I've talked to him a lot more because he is one of the alumni working part time as YC partners. He has extraordinary energy combined with the judgment of someone twice his age.

akkartik• 15 years ago

There's another reason second startups fail: they raise too much money too early.

Ask PG/HN: Why does PG list Sam Altman among the 5 most interesting founders?

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