Sam Altman is kinda wrong

Awhile ago I came across Sam Altman’s personal blog.

It struck me how easily and effortlessly his ideas seemed to present themselves on the page. His post on ‘How to Be Successful’ beautifully encapsulates 13 keys to becoming an outlier, in short, profound sentences.

If you are thinking of starting a company, or pursuing something creative, or simply want to be the best at whatever you’re doing, read his blog.

Another piece of his work floated across my timeline recently on ‘How to start a startup’. It summarizes the most important parts of entrepreneurship in a single page, in order of priority:

Starting a business is about 4 important things:

1. A great idea

2. A great product

3. A great team

4. Great execution

But the truth is that you really don’t need all 4. Having all four will certainly maximize your odds of success, but you can still make a lot of money without them all.

I’d argue above all else that the most important pieces are actually 1) great execution, and 2) great team

Which may sound like taking for granted the idea and product but it isn’t.

The reason is that most startups don’t succeed on their first idea or product.

Sam Altman knows this first-hand.

He’s launched a half dozen startups, most of them failed.

Even within his OpenAI (arguably the biggest startup in human history), they didn’t get it right right away. Their first 5 years in business they were just doing API licensing.

It wasn’t until 2021 they released ChatGPT as an afterthought with their GPT-3 model. It wasn’t originally part of the plan to have a user-interface with a chat experience.

That’s what ultimately took OpenAI from good to great, and in hindsight changed the world. Then they doubled down and have kept doing so.

That whole sequence doesn’t happen without a great team and great execution.

The original idea can be a flop.

The original product can be crap.

As long as the team can execute and iterate it’s way to something viable before running out of runway.

Matt Paulson told me in an email once that “Most startups need to fail 2 or 3 times before getting it right”

When you’re first starting out, you don’t want to hear that. You want to get it right right away, you want your original idea to be vindicated, so you will put all your eggs in that basket.

But if it doesn’t work out — and odds are better that it won’t — then what you do next is what separates the good from the great.

Great startups are ALL about great teams doing great work. The rest is important, but secondary.

Mark Zuckerberg sums this up beautifully:

Anyways, that’s it for today. Hope you have a great weekend and ride a bike or something cool.

Peace,

Ramsey