OpenAI CEO Sam Altman has reflected on the unconventional wisdom he picked from Silicon Valley icons Paul Graham and Peter Thiel. According to a report by Business Insider, speaking on the Invest Like The Best podcast, Altman said that the most valuable investment opportunities are rarely the ones that look popular at the time. “The very best companies, the very best investment opportunities are almost never the ones that look really popular,” he explained. Altman further noted that following trends can yield decent returns, but spectacular success requires backing companies that may seem ‘unpopular’ or contrarian in the moment. “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.
OpenAI CEO Sam Altman reveals lessons learned from Y Combinator
Altman also credited Paul Graham, cofounder of Y Combinator, with teaching him that startup investing is like being a flight instructor — hands-on guidance matters more than lectures. Founders, he said, need someone beside them pointing out mistakes and helping direct their energy.Altman recalled how OpenAI scrambled after realizing the exponential improvement of GPT-4. The company urgently sought compute resources, calling cloud providers, chip fabs, and energy firms. Most said no, but a few said yes — a process Altman likened to early-stage fundraising. “Most people tell you no, but all you need is one or two yeses,” he said.
Sam Altman shares a ‘ChatGPT-inspired’ parenting tip
Recently, OpenAI CEO Sam Altman shared a parenting tip in which he suggested the parents to use ChatGPT Work to generate daily personalized podcasts for their children’s morning drive to school. In a post detailing what he termed a “cool use case,” Altman proposed linking family calendars and children’s personal interests to the app, allowing the artificial intelligence to produce audio summaries covering upcoming soccer games, birthdays, and current events. In a post on X, formerly Twitter, Sam Altman wrote, “cool use case of chatgpt work i heard last night: connect your family calendars and explain your kids’ interests. every morning for the drive to school, make a podcast that talks about one kid’s soccer game that afternoon, one kid’s upcoming birthday, some news, etc.”Altman’s idea was met with widespread skepticism online, headlined by a viral reply from Alex Hirsch, creator of the animated series Gravity Falls. Hirsch offered a simple, low-tech rebuttal in his post: “What if you just talked to your children?” Hirsch’s single-sentence question quickly overshadowed Altman’s original post. While Altman’s comment gathered some 4,000 reposts and 12,600 likes, Hirsch’s reply exploded online. Hirsch’s response to Sam Altman has so far received over 18,000 reposts and 197,000 likes.