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Sam Altman’s Manifest Destiny

newyorker.com

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Re: Sam Altman’s Manifest Destiny

#81

Post by smoyer »

n72 wrote: post #26

I do admire all the ambition. But does it really have to be mixed in with views such as "Democracy only works in a growing economy. Without a return to economic growth, the democratic experiment will fail. And I have to think that YC is hugely important to that growth." I'm sure Sam (and other SV types) is well aware of the complexity of reality and that YC, as one company, cannot be hugely important to that growth.…

And if you think about it, most of these disruptive companies are not offering real growth. Both Über and Air BNB, for instance are diverting dollars from the legacy provider. And they're doing this by offering better service and/or lower prices. There is no value creation to see here.

Re: Sam Altman’s Manifest Destiny

#82

Post by crdb »

johnwheeler wrote: post #11

The brilliance of YCombinator, IMO, is HackerNews. It's turned YC into a self-perpetuating machine by getting smart people to congregate and talk about news YC itself partially generates. I heard about YC, PG, and sama all through this outlet.

If you mean the fund(s), I disagree.

The strength of YC is the relatively large value they provide in exchange for your equity. Their "price" is still excellent and continues to clear the market. This becomes rapidly obvious if you attempt to raise early stage funding and start comparing options.

Aside from the actual cash and the famous network, YC and its partners have earned a reputation for sticking with their investments through tough times instead of writing them off. This seems relatively rare amongst early stage investors, especially outside the US. In my relatively few years of experience in business, I've learnt to value people in the "cooperate cooperate" quadrant of the Prisoner's Dilemma very highly, and it's not a reputation you can "buy" quickly.

HN is a place to have civilised discussions thanks to both a seed of core tech personalities for historical reasons drawing a network of quality, and thorough and active moderation. I think "self-perpetuating machine" is harsh and not quite representative of most of the value derived by those of us who are not part of the YC ecosystem and unlikely ever to be (and yes, I haven't read the original article).

PS: nice site! Light, fast and with just one tracker (but "old geeks" would crunch web logs, surely?)

Re: Sam Altman’s Manifest Destiny

#83

Post by yummyfajitas »

Denzel wrote: post #58

I've been trying to put my finger on what bothers me about Sam Altman ever since he was named President of YC in 2014. Now I know. It's less to do with him; more to do with this narrative of Sam Altman as some visionary, world-saving, future-builder. The story just doesn't fit the character. There's no comparison between him and true visionaries like Elon Musk, Steve Jobs, Jeff Bezos, etc. Unlike Sam, these guys can…

Sam Altman is an excellent politician/influencer, which is probably what YC needed. PG gave the impression of not enjoying that role.

I think the best way to understand it is to compare their two respective "request for startups". Paul Graham had 6 concrete tradeable opinions about the world. Sam Altman has 21 non-specific opinions which cover more or less everything ("healthcare", "robots", "hollywood" with no specific opinions within the field), and several of them (11, 19, 14, 21) are not even startup sectors so much as talking points to show the Cathedral that he's one of them.

Re: Sam Altman’s Manifest Destiny

#84

Post by ealexhudson »

n72 wrote: post #20
loeber wrote: post #10

This was a pretty good article -- certainly one of the better portraits I've read of SA. However, I usually see better writing in the New Yorker. Take "as a result, the once nerdy Y Combinator is now aggressively geeky." What the hell does that mean? (Nothing.) OTOH, a few memorable quotes: > Growth masks all problems. (Steve Huffman) > Despite having raised a robust $1.6 million after Demo Day, the founders were rid…

and "upload"? "what intrigues him is their potential effect on the world. To determine that, he’ll upload all he needs to know about, say, urban planning or nuclear fusion."

I read it as somewhere between "skim" and "learn" - it's probably a term sama used himself in the interview. If you think of yourself as a machine it's probably a term than makes sense; it doesn't feel particularly aspirational to me :)

Re: Sam Altman’s Manifest Destiny

#85

Post by n72 »

dang wrote: post #62
superbag wrote: post #60

Not to mention it allows them to control negative comments/articles through implicit threats/incentives and direct (and hidden) moderation/manipulation. There's an annoying fakeness about YC/HN that gets old after a while. Lots of founders willing to tell YC folks whatever they want to hear and YC folks happily slurping it up like it's authentic. Genuinely gamed. And worse they treat anyone who isn't a sycophant (peo…

Although we banned this account for abuse elsewhere in the thread, I'm unkilling this comment because it's so patently untrue. It doesn't resemble the Hacker News I look at, and I look at HN a lot. It's also factually incorrect, both re idlewords (whose latest piece spent most of the day at #1 on HN) and everyone else who uses this site in the intended spirit. We detached this subthread from https://news.ycombinator.…

"It doesn't resemble the Hacker News I look at, and I look at HN a lot."

Given your position, do you think that you can look at HN objectively?

Re: Sam Altman’s Manifest Destiny

#86

Post by plan6 »

Congrats, Sam! That's a really nice article.

Now, please ignore it, and go about your business. The worst thing to happen to a person's acceleration would be belief in having success. The only person you race in life is yourself, and you always need to catch up.

Re: Sam Altman’s Manifest Destiny

#87

Post by feelix »

Denzel wrote: post #58

I've been trying to put my finger on what bothers me about Sam Altman ever since he was named President of YC in 2014. Now I know. It's less to do with him; more to do with this narrative of Sam Altman as some visionary, world-saving, future-builder. The story just doesn't fit the character. There's no comparison between him and true visionaries like Elon Musk, Steve Jobs, Jeff Bezos, etc. Unlike Sam, these guys can…

I find it odd that you'd criticize Sam Altman in this way then go on to call Steve Jobs a "true visionary". I see Jobs as being more a managerial type that managed to get a few things very right. He wasn't able to dive deep into technical things and grok them as you said. I have read comments on hacker news from people that worked directly under him, talking about how he forbid using object orientation in programming. So programmers had to hide it from them that they were actually using it, which was easy because he could not read the code.

Additionally, Sam Altman is now in a position to achieve greatness and he probably will do so whether or not he has already. Someone in that position would not even have to be particularly exceptional (once again, whether he is or not) to do so. So whether he has or not so far is a moot point. I'm just pleased he has ambition and apparently isn't focused on the lime light. Compare that to how most billionaires use their funds (ie, big yachts etc) and you should just be pleased that anything is happening.

Anyway, my main point is that I guess that an appreciation of "genius" is a highly subjective thing. And the instant someone would mention Jobs as such is the same moment I'd intensely disagree with them. It can probably just be left at that.

Re: Sam Altman’s Manifest Destiny

#89

Post by te_chris »

This is a strange profile of the sort of hero and status/wealth worship that only seems to have currency in the USA. The more I read the article the less I came away thinking of Altman as a genius and more of a babysitter and teacher.

I'm not really looking to attack Altman's character or competence, he seems to have both in spades, but the whole thing was just...creepy. And cultish.

Re: Sam Altman’s Manifest Destiny

#90

Post by grandalf »

te_chris wrote: post #89

This is a strange profile of the sort of hero and status/wealth worship that only seems to have currency in the USA. The more I read the article the less I came away thinking of Altman as a genius and more of a babysitter and teacher. I'm not really looking to attack Altman's character or competence, he seems to have both in spades, but the whole thing was just...creepy. And cultish.

Totally agree. I had to stop reading as the cult worship stuff started to get thicker and thicker.
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