Friday Finds 15

Ian Greer - 01 Apr 2022

No man's a prophet in his own land.

I read all of entrepreneur and investor Sam Altman's blogs this week. These are the best ones.

How To Be Successful

I’ve observed thousands of founders and thought a lot about what it takes to make a huge amount of money or to create something important. Usually, people start off wanting the former and end up...

Researchers and Founders

I spent many years working with founders and now I work with researchers. Although there are always individual exceptions, on average it’s surprising to me how different the best people in these...

Idea Generation

The most common question prospective startup founders ask is how to get ideas for startups. The second most common question is if you have any ideas for their startup. But giving founders an idea...

In honor of the new YC batch starting tomorrow, here is some of the best startup advice I’ve heard or given (mostly heard): 1. Make something people want. 2. A great team and a great...

Sam Altman— niket dattani

Startup advice, briefly

This is a very short summary with lots left out—here is the long version: http://startupclass.samaltman.com You should start with an idea, not a company. When it’s just an idea or project,...

Electrons and Atoms

A friend recently asked me for my list of current breakout companies. I made it, and noticed that all of them had only one thing in common. I then went back through the last three YC batches and...

Sam Altman— Joe DiLeo

Advice for ambitious 19 year olds

“I’m an ambitious 19 year old, what should I do?” I get asked this question fairly often, and I now have a lot of data on what works, so I thought I’d share my response. Usually, people are...

Sam Altman— Cameron

The days are long but the decades are short

I turned 30 last week and a friend asked me if I’d figured out any life advice in the past decade worth passing on. I’m somewhat hesitant to publish this because I think these lists usually seem...

This fantastic video from Marques Brownlee explains why I'm skeptical of electric vehicle manufacturers besides Tesla.

This clip from Alex Hormozi and Bryan Elliott is great. No need to watch the video, this is the key takeaway:

The biggest mistake you can make is to try to become a millionaire in 90 days. You can virtually guarantee that you could become a millionaire in a decade. But you have to be willing to NOT be a millionaire for 9 years and you have to be willing to work more hours than anyone else. Almost nobody is willing to delay gratification, so they end up chasing shiny objects and get rich quick schemes for their entire life and never become successful.

This Grant Cardone supercut is great.

This lecture from Richard Hamming is great. It covers his broad principles for success.