If a company is profitable, the founder is in control. If it's not, investors are in control.
Sam AltmanRead
Starting a business is like riding a wave between life and death. If you can hang on long enough, you're bound to succeed
Interpretation
Starting a business is a risky endeavor that requires perseverance, but success will come to those who persist.
This quote emphasizes the precarious nature of entrepreneurship, likening it to riding a wave that can lead to either failure or success. The metaphor suggests that while the journey is fraught with potential dangers, those who are able to endure and maintain their grip amid the challenges are likely to achieve their goals.
In practice
In a motivational speech about entrepreneurship.
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.
People always make the mistake of calling an idea small or stupid because they don't understand how it's going to evolve.
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.'
Brilliance is one part talent, two parts wisdom and three parts passion.
That man is a success who has lived well, laughed often and loved much.
To make the future demands courage. It demands work. But it also demands faith.
Winning or losing, it's always something special and something you'll remember, even more so when the match was as dramatic as it was today. It's even more memorable when I see my kids there with my wife and everything. That's what touched me the most, to be quite honest. The disappointment of the match itself went pretty quickly.
When people ask me, ‘how do you make it in show business,’ or whatever, what I always tell them — and nobody ever takes note of it ‘cuz it’s not the answer they wanted to hear…but I always say, ‘Be so good they can’t ignore you.’
Winning a Nobel Prize is no big deal, but winning it with an IQ of 124 is really something.
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