Go get em' Ahab!
Sam Altman’s Manifest Destiny
161–170 of 312 posts
Re: Sam Altman’s Manifest Destiny
#162 Altman worked so incessantly that summer that he got scurvy.
I don't need to be rich that badly.
Re: Sam Altman’s Manifest Destiny
#163Earlier quoted context omitted.
> Before HN there was PG's blog. Before pg's blog, there was /., before /. there was Carmack's .plan file ~ https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12575501
How is /. now compared to YC?
I think you misinterpreted the comparison. It's not /. to YC, but /. to HN
Re: Sam Altman’s Manifest Destiny
#164I continue to be impressed by the quality of The New Yorker's reporting. This is so far above and beyond most media coverage about Altman and YC.
Agreed. This a very long and well written article. It does have some very heartbreaking, personal stories too: One of Altman’s co-founders at Loopt, Nick Sivo, was also his boyfriend; the two dated for nine years, but after the company sold they broke up. “I thought I was going to marry him—very in love with him,” Altman said
It was interesting to read of his ambivalence toward AI. I've seen this sentiment echoed by other tech-scene heavyweights. Why are so many in SV aggressively working to bring about a "super-awesome" world which they don't even seem to want?
Re: Sam Altman’s Manifest Destiny
#165Earlier quoted context omitted.
Yeah, if companies are homogenous then that's fair, but it's not a stretch to believe that certain types of companies require VC funds more than others... in which case losing VC as a funding option would mean up to 20% of new companies fail at the concept stage, or have a harder time. Based on that I think "awfully silly" is a bit unfair.
Sam's contention, as far as I can tell, is that YC is hugely important to economic growth. Startups are a small fraction of growth. Of that small fraction, a fraction (20%) require VC funds. Of that fraction, another fraction may not have made it but for YC. So, we're looking at a fraction of a fraction of a fraction that YC is involved with. I'd say that suggesting that YC is hugely, or even just important, to econo…
I read it as "...I have to think YC [can someday be] hugely important to that growth," not that it already was.
That said, although VC funding might be a small percentage of investment overall, it has a leveraged impact on the economy as a whole [0]:
"According to a study conducted at the Stanford Graduate School of Business, 43% of U.S. public companies founded since 1979 were funded by venture capital. These companies now comprise 38% of all employees, 57% of the total U.S. market capitalization, and account for 82% of all R&D spend — a proxy for further innovation growth — in the United States."
Re: Sam Altman’s Manifest Destiny
#166So, Sam's been at this for 2 years, inherited an extremely well oiled machine, and hasn't, as far as I know, accomplished anything extraordinary. Not sure why there's an entire New Yorker piece on him, instead of, say, I dunno, a few paragraphs in the Talk of the Town section. Has there been a New Yorker piece on PG? I googled and didn't find anything. He's the one that put all this together and seems far more deserv…
> So, Sam's been at this for 2 years, inherited an extremely well oiled machine, and hasn't, as far as I know, accomplished anything extraordinary.
What accomplishments did you expect in 2 years?
Working towards OpenAI, YC Research, the upcoming MOOC, basic income project, the private city project seem very impressive to say the least.
After he has taken over, YC is expanding into new areas, mentioned above, whereas earlier they were focussed on getting the startup program right and expanding to accomodate larger batches.
Re: Sam Altman’s Manifest Destiny
#167> two tech billionaires have gone so far as to secretly engage scientists to work on breaking us out of the simulation I'm very curious who these two billionaires are and what exactly are they planning to do regarding this likely hopeless project.
There's no way out. It's turtles all the way down.
Re: Sam Altman’s Manifest Destiny
#168Reid Hoffman makes clear like I suspected that SV power players are skeptical about Sam Altman. YC is becoming Jack of all trades master of none. Jury is still out on YC under Sam's leadership. By 2020 I think we'll start to see the wheels fall off.
It does seem there's a lot of flailing around. As someone mentioned, this http://www.ycombinator.com/rfs/ went from 6 under Graham to 21 under Altman. Altman mentions laser like focus at time when referring to how startups should function. The same doesn't go for YC? It's really easy to get fame and plaudits by associating yourself with a cornucopia of big ideas, it's a lot harder to actually follow through.
> Altman mentions laser like focus at time when referring to how startups should function. The same doesn't go for YC?
It does.
Sam mentioned in an interview (can't remember which one) he sees YC as a meta company, like Alphabet. So it makes sense to broaden the type of companies YC is interested in.
Note that YC itself is not directly working to solve the problems mentioned in the RFS. They are funding companies that solve them. So the laser like focus exists at the individual startup.
TL;DR It makes sense to expand focus, being a meta company.
Re: Sam Altman’s Manifest Destiny
#169So, Sam's been at this for 2 years, inherited an extremely well oiled machine, and hasn't, as far as I know, accomplished anything extraordinary. Not sure why there's an entire New Yorker piece on him, instead of, say, I dunno, a few paragraphs in the Talk of the Town section. Has there been a New Yorker piece on PG? I googled and didn't find anything. He's the one that put all this together and seems far more deserv…
> So, Sam's been at this for 2 years, inherited an extremely well oiled machine, and hasn't, as far as I know, accomplished anything extraordinary. What accomplishments did you expect in 2 years? Working towards OpenAI, YC Research, the upcoming MOOC, basic income project, the private city project seem very impressive to say the least. After he has taken over, YC is expanding into new areas, mentioned above, whereas…
The things you list are plans, not accomplishments. And I certainly didn't expect extraordinary accomplishments. I just don't understand what in Sam's history warrants a New Yorker article over, say, that of CEOs who have competently run their business for the last 2 years.
Re: Sam Altman’s Manifest Destiny
#170> Nothing came of Paul Graham’s plan for tech to stop Donald Trump, but Altman, after brooding about Trump for months, recently announced a nonpartisan project, called VotePlz, aimed at getting out the youth vote. Looking at the election as a tech problem—what’s the least code with the most payoff?—Altman and his three co-founders concentrated on helping young people in nine swing states to register, by providing the…
Get out the vote campaigns are always in favor of Democrats, because the young and poor tend to be the ones who don't vote and tend to vote Democrat. Back in the 90s MTV had "Rock the Vote" (actually it was a progressive non-profit who partnered with MTV) and their goal was the same.