Sam Altman reveals the lesson Peter Thiel, Paul Graham taught him: 'Best investment opportunities are almost never...'
OpenAI Chief Executive Officer Sam Altman has said one of the most valuable lessons he learned from Silicon Valley's leading entrepreneurs and investors is to
OpenAI Chief Executive Officer Sam Altman has said one of the most valuable lessons he learned from Silicon Valley's leading entrepreneurs and investors is to become comfortable with standing apart from the crowd when making investment decisions. "The thing I really learned from Peter Thiel and Paul Graham, both in two different ways, which is that the very best companies, the very best investment opportunities are almost never the ones that look really popular," Altman said during a recent episode of the "Invest Like The Best" podcast. According to Altman, following popular opinion may work up to a certain point, but the biggest opportunities often emerge when investors are willing to support companies that appear unfashionable or overlooked at the time. Such contrarian bets, he said, can ultimately prove to be transformative. Also Read | Cognizant brings OpenAI Codex Hackathon to 10,000 employees "You can do okay just following the trend and being a little early, but to do spectacularly well, you kind of almost always have to do things that are not what everybody else is doing," he said.
"You cannot be sort of following the new wave." The OpenAI chief has recently reflected on his years leading Y Combinator, the influential startup accelerator co-founded by Paul Graham in 2005, and the experiences that shaped his approach to investing and mentoring entrepreneurs in Silicon Valley. Altman recalled that Graham likened the role of a startup investor to that of a flight instructor. Rather than simply teaching or delivering lectures, investors should guide founders, helping them navigate challenges while allowing them to build the confidence and judgment needed to succeed on their own. The comparison, Altman suggested, highlights that effective startup investing extends beyond providing capital. It also involves mentoring founders, asking the right questions and offering practical support instead of prescribing every decision, enabling entrepreneurs to develop independently while steering their businesses through uncertainty. "The person who sits next to you saying like, 'Do this, don't do this,' that worked, you missed that thing, or, you're making these mistakes, and I'm just going to talk you about this one," Altman said, adding he appreciated "that very hands-on kind of, here's where to direct this sort of like Brownian motion energy." OpenAI says AI agent tried to breach four more companies ChatGPT creator OpenAI has disclosed that the autonomous artificial intelligence agent involved in hacking the popular developer platform Hugging Face also attempted to gain unauthorized access to four additional companies during the same incident.
The BriefWire