Sam Altman

“There is a long history of founders returning to companies and doing great things. Founders are able to set the vision for their companies with an authority no one else can.”

“You really want a company full of missionaries, not mercenaries.”

“I always tell my partners that our job is to fund all the companies we can that can be worth $10 billion or more. That's such a difficult constraint, we can't have any other constraints.”

“I grew up with a computer, and many of my friends were people I met online.”

“AI will probably most likely lead to the end of the world, but in the meantime, there'll be great companies.”

“There's this famous observation that I totally believe: Great startup ideas are the ones that lie in the intersection of the Venn diagram of 'is a good idea' and 'looks like a bad idea.' So you want most people to think it's a bad idea and thus not compete with you until you get giant. But for it to secretly be good.”

“People are incredible creatures of habit.”

“I think you can say a lot of evil behavior by companies is short-term optimization.”

“If you compromise and hire someone mediocre, you will always regret it.”

“Anonymity breeds meanness.”

“I believe that sexism in tech is a real problem.”

“Everyone is looking for the hack, the secret to success without hard work.”

“Seed investing is the status symbol of Silicon Valley. Most people don't want Ferraris, they want a winning seed investment.”

“What is OK is to spend money for productivity. What is not OK is just to light money on fire.”

“I don't often get involved with campaigns at all.”

“The hard part of running a business is that there are a hundred things that you could be doing, and only five of those actually matter, and only one of them matters more than all of the rest of them combined. So figuring out there is a critical path thing to focus on and ignoring everything else is really important.”

“I think that inexpensive sources of planet-friendly energy are one of the most important things for us to pursue.”

“I think the mistake people make most often when they invest in other kinds of startups is they say, 'This is totally different.' And so the things that matter, like making a product that people desperately want, like talking to customers, they throw this out the window. That is a recipe for heartache and tears.”

“The crowd's a really powerful force on the Internet, and people finally understand how to harness that.”

“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.”