3 ms·
Sam Altman was, to paraphrase, "born on third base and thinks he hit a triple." His parents were upper middle class, he attended private school and Stanford. H
by kthejoker2 3y ago
Sam Altman was, to paraphrase, "born on third base and thinks he hit a triple."
His parents were upper middle class, he attended private school and Stanford. He then networked his way into the Silicon Valley priesthood and has been enchambered ever since.
I have no illusions about how Sam Altman succeeded. That makes one of us.
- voisin 3y ago> His parents were upper middle class, he attended private school and Stanford. He then networked his way into the Silicon Valley priesthood and has been enchambered ever since. The first sentence is true of many people who accomplish nothing compared to Altman. The second is an accomplishment that couldn’t be handed to him no matter how rich his parents were, indicating there is some significant level of skill involved.
- kthejoker2 3y agoEven if I grant you this, an article about how Sam Altman ingratiated himself into YC would be more much interesting than blathering about "work hard" and "be bold."
- neilv 3y agoMaybe the list could've included "14. Get discovered by Paul Graham at just the right time." Or maybe that's the luck Altman was talking about. But I don't understand some of the criticisms here. Of course we all know that much of the tech world is people who have their early ducks lined up for them until graduation, and then later have the money and connections to keep iterating. But AFAICT, Altman didn't just go through the motions a default way. And I like some of the ideas he's promoted (e.g., making startup equity more fair for early hires).