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Sam Altman for President

blog.ycombinator.com

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Re: Sam Altman for President

#91

Post by adamzerner »

pg wrote: post #23
natural219 wrote: post #5

Wow, awesome news! I've noticed a lot more Sam Altman posts on HN recently, and I have to say I'm a fan, at least of his writing. What does this mean for your role at YCombinator, PG? Will you still be spending most of your time helping out with companies there, or are you going to work on other projects?

I'm going to continue doing office hours with startups in future batches. And since office hours are the main way founders interact with me, YC should feel the same to companies we fund. It will feel a lot different to me though. Not so much because I'll have more time as more attention to spare. For years now YC has been the thing in the top of my mind. That has made it hard to write essays. Now I'll be able to focu…

So is that the main motivation - so you have attention to spare for essays? Any other plans?

EDIT: I know how you say that writing => other ideas. So I guess the question is whether

1) You have something else in mind currently

2) You're writing with the intent to come up with other ideas

3) You're writing, and if another idea happens to come up that you like, you'll pursue it, or

4) You want to write and not pursue other ideas

Re: Sam Altman for President

#92

Post by mhartl »

sama wrote: post #2

I’m very excited about this. YC is the smartest group of people I’ve ever worked with, and I believe that startups are going to be the major driver for innovation and economic growth going forward. I was thinking this morning about what it was like to start a startup in early 2005 and how much it’s changed now. PG has done a remarkable amount to improve the startup ecosystem for founders—in fact, it’s hard to think o…

PG once said something to the effect that some day you would be president. How right he was! Looking forward to seeing where you take things.

Re: Sam Altman for President

#93

Post by elleferrer »

sama wrote: post #2

I’m very excited about this. YC is the smartest group of people I’ve ever worked with, and I believe that startups are going to be the major driver for innovation and economic growth going forward. I was thinking this morning about what it was like to start a startup in early 2005 and how much it’s changed now. PG has done a remarkable amount to improve the startup ecosystem for founders—in fact, it’s hard to think o…

Congrats Sam! Looking forward to the big things to come at YC.

Re: Sam Altman for President

#94

Post by dmmalam »

sama wrote: post #2

I’m very excited about this. YC is the smartest group of people I’ve ever worked with, and I believe that startups are going to be the major driver for innovation and economic growth going forward. I was thinking this morning about what it was like to start a startup in early 2005 and how much it’s changed now. PG has done a remarkable amount to improve the startup ecosystem for founders—in fact, it’s hard to think o…

Congrats sama, you gave us help even before we were in YC. Definitely one of the most benevolent in the valley.

Re: Sam Altman for President

#95

Post by dshankar »

sama wrote: post #2

I’m very excited about this. YC is the smartest group of people I’ve ever worked with, and I believe that startups are going to be the major driver for innovation and economic growth going forward. I was thinking this morning about what it was like to start a startup in early 2005 and how much it’s changed now. PG has done a remarkable amount to improve the startup ecosystem for founders—in fact, it’s hard to think o…

Congrats Sam! Your advice was incredibly useful when I went through YC.

Re: Sam Altman for President

#96

Post by pg »

slewis wrote: post #74
pg wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm going to continue doing office hours with startups in future batches. And since office hours are the main way founders interact with me, YC should feel the same to companies we fund. It will feel a lot different to me though. Not so much because I'll have more time as more attention to spare. For years now YC has been the thing in the top of my mind. That has made it hard to write essays. Now I'll be able to focu…

Will you still review all the preview/demo day pitches? For those who haven't witnessed this: pg stands there for an entire day (maybe longer now), watching every pitch, slicing and dicing like a samurai. It's super rapid-fire, and with one or two pieces of advice each presentation doubles in effectiveness.

Probably not. But though it's an impressive feat of standing, the stuff that comes up then is so basic (slow down, look at the audience, etc) that any YC partner could make those sorts of comments.

I'll still talk about pitches individually with startups at office hours.

Re: Sam Altman for President

#97

Post by pg »

adamzerner wrote: post #91
pg wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm going to continue doing office hours with startups in future batches. And since office hours are the main way founders interact with me, YC should feel the same to companies we fund. It will feel a lot different to me though. Not so much because I'll have more time as more attention to spare. For years now YC has been the thing in the top of my mind. That has made it hard to write essays. Now I'll be able to focu…

So is that the main motivation - so you have attention to spare for essays? Any other plans? EDIT: I know how you say that writing => other ideas. So I guess the question is whether 1) You have something else in mind currently 2) You're writing with the intent to come up with other ideas 3) You're writing, and if another idea happens to come up that you like, you'll pursue it, or 4) You want to write and not pursue o…

It's not the only motivation. It really will be better for YC to have someone running it who is actually interested in running an organization.

I have a whole bunch of ideas for essays I'd like to write, but I almost never pick a topic. The way I decide which one to write is that one starts to write itself in my head.

Re: Sam Altman for President

#98

Post by the_watcher »

kgermino wrote: post #75
the_watcher wrote: post #43

For a second I got irrationally excited that Sam was announcing a Presidential run, then read the post. Beyond my initial excitement at a potential USPOTUS candidate I actually believe in, I'm much happier that Sam is taking over YC, where he can add much more value, and hopefully free up PG to do more thinking (writing, giving advice, etc).

OT: USPOTUS threw me for a loop there. :) I'm not sure how I even noticed as I was just skimming the thread but I hit that line and lost all train of thought. Must be one of those things... POTUS is "President Of The United States" so USPOTUS is redundant, but no more so than "ATM Machine" which my brain parses no problem. Sometimes its interesting to think about why we notice what we do :).

Yea, don't know why I did that. I've never used that acronym before, must have been my brain processing POTUS as President rather than the actual acronym.

Re: Sam Altman for President

#99

Post by samstave »

the_watcher wrote: post #43

For a second I got irrationally excited that Sam was announcing a Presidential run, then read the post. Beyond my initial excitement at a potential USPOTUS candidate I actually believe in, I'm much happier that Sam is taking over YC, where he can add much more value, and hopefully free up PG to do more thinking (writing, giving advice, etc).

Yeah, but as POTUS, he would be able to tie in his location-based experience at Loopt with drone strikes and Jihadist check-in sniping!

Re: Sam Altman for President

#100

Post by randall »

sama wrote: post #2

I’m very excited about this. YC is the smartest group of people I’ve ever worked with, and I believe that startups are going to be the major driver for innovation and economic growth going forward. I was thinking this morning about what it was like to start a startup in early 2005 and how much it’s changed now. PG has done a remarkable amount to improve the startup ecosystem for founders—in fact, it’s hard to think o…

Yay! Very excited for you and YC. Congrats!
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