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.
I am a buyer of blank books. Kids find it interesting that I would buy a blank book. They say, Twenty-Six dollars for a blank book! Why would you pay that? The reason I pay twenty-six dollars is to challenge myself to find something worth twenty-six dollars to put in there. All my journals are private, but if you ever got hold of one of them, you wouldn't have to look very far to discover it is worth more than twenty-six dollars
It hurts not the tongue to give fair words.
We can't cross that bridge until we come to it, but I always like to lay down a pontoon ahead of time.
I'm great at a deathbed. I've never given tranquillisers or psychiatric medicine. I've given love and fun and creativity and passion and hope, and these things ease suffering.
Beware of those who would use violence, too often it is violence they want and neither truth nor freedom.
God speaks in the silence of the heart.
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