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How to Be Successful

blog.samaltman.com

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Re: How to Be Successful

#21

Post by throwaway000021 »

I'm not successful, but my strategy for getting there is specific....

-- never put yourself in the position to go bankrupt

-- stay in the game - keep your overheads down to the minimum practical for you

-- learn to program so you can implement your own ideas without need for a cofounder or need to pay for anything more than hosting and a domain

-- just keep banging out your ideas into products until one catches on.

-- try to bootstrap and if possible avoid raising capital - it's too distracting and costly and dilutes your time massively

-- do your very best to avoid employing anyone until you really can't avoid it

-- don't get a cofounder if you can possibly avoid it - it can lead to arguments and business failure... if you really need help, bootstrap till you can employ someone

-- repeat until success or giving up, not because you're forced to stop

Re: How to Be Successful

#23

Post by lrajlich »

bluedino wrote: post #9

>> It’s not entirely clear to me why working hard has become a Bad Thing in certain parts of the US What does he mean by this?

I assume he means something like the Moritz's article about China's "996" work hours expectation and its negative reception in silicon valley press.

Re: How to Be Successful

#25

Post by davebryand »

A more accurate title for this is "How to Be Financially Successful".

I'd love for Sam to write a post called "How to Be a Successful Human" or "How to Live a Successful Life". This more important topic has little-to-nothing to do with financial success.

Re: How to Be Successful

#26

Post by rguzman »

aphextron wrote: post #11

1. Be born to a wealthy middle class family and go to an elite school.

not disputing that privilege is a thing, but don't you think that if this were true, all people who are born into a middle-class wealthy family and go to a nice school would achieve outlier success?

it could be that the privilege is a pre-req to outlier success, but there are counter-examples.

and then, if you observe that both groups (the counter-examples and the people who satisfy the pre-req and achieve outlier success) share a bunch of commonality, wouldn't you want to share that commonality with other people?

Re: How to Be Successful

#28

Post by apsec112 »

drugme wrote: post #15
aphextron wrote: post #11

1. Be born to a wealthy middle class family and go to an elite school.

A far from incidental detail. But is there sourced information available about his parents' actual income level? We do have this quote from the Esquire interview in 2014, which is rather telling: For my eighth birthday, my parents got me a Mac LC2. And, you know, it was like… It was, like, $2,200 in 1993 dollars. It was, like, this horrifically expensive thing, that was not that good. 40 MB hard drive. And then we pu…

The New Yorker interview said his mother was a dermatologist, so I would tentatively assume his background is upper-middle-class. That's obviously an advantage, but then, most children of such families don't become rich and famous either.

Re: How to Be Successful

#29

Post by rloomba »

aphextron wrote: post #11

1. Be born to a wealthy middle class family and go to an elite school.

Agree with this point, it really makes things so much easier. Imagine having student debt, struggling to get a job out of college, and then

>Once you’ve gotten yourself to a point where you have your basic obligations covered you should try to make it easy to take risks

that could easily take 10+ years?

Re: How to Be Successful

#30

Post by agumonkey »

throwaway000021 wrote: post #21

I'm not successful, but my strategy for getting there is specific.... -- never put yourself in the position to go bankrupt -- stay in the game - keep your overheads down to the minimum practical for you -- learn to program so you can implement your own ideas without need for a cofounder or need to pay for anything more than hosting and a domain -- just keep banging out your ideas into products until one catches on. -…

Forgot where I read this but the article said that you'd better pick the options that have the most probability of high returns. A way to save energy. I'm naturally drawn to hard and long and get stuck and exhausted.
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