Billy
Sam Altman the prepper: gas masks, antibiotics, and a Big Sur escape plan
From a 2016 New Yorker profile, Sam Altman lists his hobbies as racing cars and flying rented planes, plus prepping for survival — a Big Sur plot he can fly to stocked with antibiotics, batteries, water, gas, and IDF-made gas masks, citing engineered bird flu risk.
“I like to prep for, prep for survival. Seeing their bewilderment, he explained my problem. Sorry, I'm butchering this. The problem is when my friends get drunk, they talk about ways the world will end after a Dutch lab modified H5N1 bird flu viruses 5 years ago. Making it super contagious, the chance of lethal virus being released in the next 20 years will become, well, non-zero. So I have a plot of land in Big Sur that I can fly to. I have antibiotics, batteries, water, gas masks made by Israel Defense Force, all ready to go.”
Take
Altman's startup success formula: idea x product x execution x team x luck
Sam quotes Altman's 2014 Stanford class formula for a startup's odds: idea times product times execution times team times luck, where luck is a random number between 0 and 10,000.
“the formula for estimating a startup's chance of success is something like idea times product times execution times team times luck, where luck is a random number between 0 and 10,000.”
Take
Altman's startup success formula: idea x product x execution x team x luck
Sam quotes Altman's 2014 Stanford class formula for a startup's odds: idea times product times execution times team times luck, where luck is a random number between 0 and 10,000.
“the formula for estimating a startup's chance of success is something like idea times product times execution times team times luck, where luck is a random number between 0 and 10,000.”
Take
Founder/company fit is as important as product/market fit
Altman argues that introspecting on what you're well-suited for matters as much as finding a market: he believes founder-company fit is as good a predictor as product-market fit.
“So like if you do some introspection or you ask your mentor to figure out what you're good at, he goes, I believe that founder company fit is as good as product market fit.”
Take
Founder/company fit is as important as product/market fit
Altman argues that introspecting on what you're well-suited for matters as much as finding a market: he believes founder-company fit is as good a predictor as product-market fit.
“So like if you do some introspection or you ask your mentor to figure out what you're good at, he goes, I believe that founder company fit is as good as product market fit.”
Take
Founder/company fit is as important as product/market fit
Altman argues that introspecting on what you're well-suited for matters as much as finding a market: he believes founder-company fit is as good a predictor as product-market fit.
“So like if you do some introspection or you ask your mentor to figure out what you're good at, he goes, I believe that founder company fit is as good as product market fit.”