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0 | What I Wish Someone Had Told Me | 2023-12-21 22:44:25 | Optimism, obsession, self-belief, raw horsepower and personal connections are how things get started.
Cohesive teams, the right combination of calmness and urgency, and unreasonable commitment are how things get finished. Long-term orientation is in short supply; try not to worry about what people think in the short t... |
1 | Helion Needs You | 2022-07-13 15:47:32 | Helion has been progressing even faster than I expected and is on pace in 2024 to 1) demonstrate Q > 1 fusion and 2) resolve all questions needed to design a mass-producible fusion generator.
The goals of the company are quite ambitious—clean, continuous energy for 1 cent per kilowatt-hour, and the ability to manufact... |
2 | DALL•E 2 | 2022-04-06 18:15:13 | Today we did a research launch of DALL•E 2, a new AI tool that can create and edit images from natural language instructions.
Most importantly, we hope people love the tool and find it useful. For me, it’s the most delightful thing to play with we’ve created so far. I find it to be creativity-enhancing, helpful for ma... |
3 | Helion | 2021-11-05 13:39:16 | I’m delighted to be investing more in Helion. Helion is by far the most promising approach to fusion I’ve seen.
David and Chris are two of the most impressive founders and builders (in the sense of building fusion machines, in addition to building companies!) I have ever met, and they have done something remarkable. W... |
4 | The Strength of Being Misunderstood | 2020-12-01 18:56:39 | A founder recently asked me how to stop caring what other people think. I didn’t have an answer, and after reflecting on it more, I think it's the wrong question.
Almost everyone cares what someone thinks (though caring what everyone thinks is definitely a mistake), and it's probably important. Caring too much makes y... |
5 | PG and Jessica | 2020-09-25 14:45:50 | A lot of people want to replicate YC in some other industry or some other place or with some other strategy. In general, people seem to assume that: 1) although there was some degree of mystery or luck about how YC got going, it can’t be that hard, and 2) if you can get it off the ground, the network effects are self-s... |
6 | Researchers and Founders | 2020-06-19 17:39:12 | I spent many years working with founders and now I work with researchers.
Although there are always individual exceptions, on average it’s surprising to me how different the best people in these groups are (including in some qualities that I had assumed were present in great people everywhere, like very high levels of... |
7 | Project Covalence | 2020-06-16 17:08:44 | Almost every company and non-profit working on COVID-19 that I offered to help asked for support with clinical trials—for companies focusing on developing novel drugs, vaccines, and diagnostics, rapidly spinning up trials is one of their biggest bottlenecks.
Science remains the only way out of the COVID-19 crisis. Dra... |
8 | Idea Generation | 2020-05-28 19:12:40 | The most common question prospective startup founders ask is how to get ideas for startups. The second most common question is if you have any ideas for their startup.
But giving founders an idea almost always doesn’t work. Having ideas is among the most important qualities for a startup founder to have—you will need ... |
9 | Please Fund More Science | 2020-03-30 17:46:36 | Experts on the COVID-19 pandemic seem to think there are three ways out—that is, for life, health, and the economy to return roughly to normal.
Either we get a vaccine good enough that R0 for the world goes below 1, a good enough treatment that people no longer need to be afraid, or we develop a great culture of testi... |
20 | Funding for COVID-19 Projects | 2020-03-15 16:31:23 | I’m trying to fund startups/projects helping with COVID-19, because it’s basically the one thing I know how to do that can help. I think we will soon have enough testing capacity, so now I’d like to start funding more startups working on:
Producing a lot of ventilators or masks/gowns very quickly. This will require a ... |
21 | The Virus | 2020-03-07 18:58:55 | Although I still hope things will go differently, the experts I’ve spoken to think we are likely to face a global tragedy—hundreds of thousands of deaths from Covid-19.
I hope that society views this as a warning for the future. Covid-19 is bad, but only a warm-up. I think it’s unlikely that this is the worst new pand... |
22 | Hard Startups | 2020-02-26 18:28:47 | The most counterintuitive secret about startups is that it’s often easier to succeed with a hard startup than an easy one. A hard startup requires a lot more money, time, coordination, or technological development than most startups. A good hard startup is one that will be valuable if it works (not all hard problems ar... |
23 | How To Invest In Startups | 2020-01-13 16:41:14 | There is a lot of advice about how to be a good startup founder. But there isn’t very much about how to be a good startup investor.
Before going any further, I should point out that this is a particularly hard time to invest in startups—it’s easier right now to be a capital-taker than a capital-giver. It seems that mo... |
24 | How To Be Successful | 2019-01-24 21:01:07 | I’ve observed thousands of founders and thought a lot about what it takes to make a huge amount of money or to create something important. Usually, people start off wanting the former and end up wanting the latter.
Here are 13 thoughts about how to achieve such outlier success. Everything here is easier to do once you... |
25 | Reinforcement Learning Progress | 2018-06-25 16:10:37 | Today, OpenAI released a new result. We used PPO (Proximal Policy Optimization), a general reinforcement learning algorithm invented by OpenAI, to train a team of 5 agents to play Dota and beat semi-pros.
This is the game that to me feels closest to the real world and complex decision making (combining strategy, tacti... |
26 | US Digital Currency | 2018-05-10 17:07:07 | I am pretty sure cryptocurrency is here to stay in some form (at least as a store of value, which is the only use case we have seen work at scale so far). There was possibly a time when governments could have totally stopped it, but it feels like that’s in the rearview mirror.
However, I think it’s very possible that ... |
27 | Productivity | 2018-04-10 16:18:00 | I think I am at least somewhat more productive than average, and people sometimes ask me for productivity tips. So I decided to just write them all down in one place.
Compound growth gets discussed as a financial concept, but it works in careers as well, and it is magic. A small productivity gain, compounded over 50 y... |
28 | A Clarification | 2017-12-16 19:00:42 | I made a point in this post inelegantly in a way that was easy to misunderstand, so I’d like to clarify it.
I didn’t mean that we need to tolerate brilliant homophobic jerks in the lab so that we can have scientific progress. Although there are famous counterexamples, most of the best scientists I’ve met are unusually... |
29 | E Pur Si Muove | 2017-12-14 17:12:38 | Earlier this year, I noticed something in China that really surprised me. I realized I felt more comfortable discussing controversial ideas in Beijing than in San Francisco. I didn’t feel completely comfortable—this was China, after all—just more comfortable than at home.
That showed me just how bad things have become... |
30 | The Merge | 2017-12-07 16:56:28 | A popular topic in Silicon Valley is talking about what year humans and machines will merge (or, if not, what year humans will get surpassed by rapidly improving AI or a genetically enhanced species). Most guesses seem to be between 2025 and 2075.
People used to call this the singularity; now it feels uncomfortable an... |
31 | American Equity | 2017-11-27 17:24:42 | I’d like feedback on the following idea.
I think that every adult US citizen should get an annual share of the US GDP.
I believe that owning something like a share in America would align all of us in making the country as successful as possible—the better the country does, the better everyone does—and give more peopl... |
32 | The United Slate | 2017-07-12 14:33:41 | I would like to find and support a slate of candidates for the 2018 California elections, and also to find someone to run a ballot initiative focused on affordable housing in the state. A team of aligned people has a chance to make a real change.
I believe in creating prosperity through technology, economic fairness, ... |
33 | Join the YC Software Team | 2017-05-19 00:25:07 | If you want to get funded by YC as a founder in the future, but you don't have a startup that's ready for that yet, joining the YC software team is a great hack to get there.
The YC software team is a small group of hackers in SF that write the software that makes all the parts of YC work.
As a member of the software... |
34 | Quora | 2017-04-21 13:42:36 | I'm a strong believer in the importance of the internet in helping people to share knowledge and learn from each other. So I’m delighted to share, on behalf of YC Continuity, that we’re investing alongside Collaborative Fund in Quora.
Quora is doing extremely well. They now have more than 190 million monthly unique vi... |
35 | Tech Workers' Values | 2017-03-31 17:46:28 | For good and bad, technology has become a central force in all our lives.
As members of the community, we're interested in ways in which tech companies can use their collective power to protect privacy, rule of law, freedom of expression, and other fundamental American rights.
We’d also like to discuss how tech compa... |
36 | Keep the Internet Open | 2017-03-14 18:36:03 | The FCC has announced plans to roll back policies on net neutrality, and its new head has indicated he has no plan to stop soon.
The internet is a public good, and I believe access should be a basic right. We've seen such great innovation in software because the internet has been a level playing field. People have bee... |
37 | Greg | 2017-03-07 16:01:27 | A lot of people ask me what the ideal cofounder looks like. I now have an answer: Greg Brockman.
Every successful startup I know has at least one person who provides the force of will to make the startup happen. I’d thought a lot about this in the abstract while advising YC startups, but until OpenAI I hadn’t observed... |
38 | What I Heard From Trump Supporters | 2017-02-21 18:03:17 | After the election, I decided to talk to 100 Trump voters from around the country. I went to the middle of the country, the middle of the state, and talked to many online.
This was a surprisingly interesting and helpful experience—I highly recommend it. With three exceptions, I found something to like about everyone I... |
39 | 2017 YC Annual Letter | 2017-02-16 17:37:01 | Dear YC Community:
In response to a comment on Hacker News, I’m going to try writing an annual letter to the YC community with an update on our progress.
Our mission is to enable the most innovation of any company in the world in order to make the future great for everyone. We believe new technology, economic growth,... |
40 | Time to Take a Stand | 2017-01-28 18:48:17 | It is time for tech companies to start speaking up about some of the actions taken by President Trump’s administration.
There are many actions from his first week that are objectionable. In repeatedly invoking unsubstantiated conspiracy theories (like the 3 million illegal votes), he's delegitimizing his opponents and... |
41 | Affordable Care | 2017-01-13 17:27:57 | The Affordable Care Act is far from perfect–for one thing, I think health insurance should be entirely separate from employment–but I hate the thought of losing it without a replacement for people who will lose insurance. If Congress ends up repealing it, I hope they earnestly try to preserve the best parts, and put in... |
42 | The 2016 Election | 2016-10-17 19:09:02 | I am endorsing Hillary Clinton for president. I've never endorsed a presidential candidate before, but I'm making an exception this year, because this election is exceptional. Donald Trump represents an unprecedented threat to America, and voting for Hillary is the best way to defend our country against it.
A Trump pr... |
43 | $1 Million VotePlz Sweepstakes | 2016-09-26 17:07:56 | The 2016 US Presidential election feels like the most important one so far in my lifetime. No one able to vote in the US should be sitting this one out—we have a major choice to make.
With some friends, I helped start VotePlz to make it easier for young people to participate—technology has moved forward but registrati... |
44 | Don't Read The Comments | 2016-08-23 20:55:16 | I sent this email to the current YC batch this morning:
I've talked to some of you who are really bummed about negative press coverage or online comments about your company. Often this takes the general form of "ugh, all these new startups suck, everything good has already been started."
It sucks to have haters, but ... |
45 | Trump | 2016-06-20 19:36:08 | I'm going to say something very unpopular in my world: Trump is right about some big things.
He's right that many Americans are getting screwed by the system. He’s right that the economy is not growing nearly fast enough. He's right that we're drowning in political correctness, and that broken campaign finance laws ha... |
46 | 'We're in a Bubble' | 2016-06-15 01:19:58 | A lot of people have been saying we’re in a tech bubble for quite some time. Someday they’ll be right, but in the meantime, I thought it'd be fun to look back at some articles from the last 10 years:
2007, Coding Horror -- Welcome to Dot-Com Bubble 2.0. “You might argue that the new bubble has been in effect since mid... |
47 | Housing in the Bay Area | 2016-05-26 00:42:18 | Jerry Brown has proposed legislation that would allow a lot more housing to be built in the Bay Area, and hopefully significantly reduce the cost of housing here. More supply should lead to lower prices.
I believe that lowering the cost of housing is one of the most important things we can do to help people increase t... |
48 | Cruise | 2016-04-13 17:21:10 | There is a long and sordid history of people coming out of the woodwork with bogus claims when huge amounts of money are on the line. This has just happened to Cruise, which is run by my friend Kyle Vogt. Cruise is a YC company, and I also personally invested in the company last year.
As detailed in a complaint filed ... |
49 | Asana | 2016-03-30 15:08:42 | I’m delighted to finally be investing in Asana, which I’ve wanted to do for a long time.
One of the things I’ve learned about companies is that 1) clear tasks and goals, 2) clearly communicated, and 3) with clear and frequent measurement are very important to success. Most companies fail at all 3 of these, and they be... |
50 | Hard Tech is Back | 2016-03-11 16:19:09 | First of all, congrats to Kyle, Dan, and the rest of the Cruise team. You all have made amazing progress and we look forward to seeing more in the future.
A popular criticism of Silicon Valley, usually levied by people not building anything at all themselves, is that no one is working on or funding “hard technology”. ... |
51 | Before Growth | 2016-01-15 18:23:06 | We tell startups all the time that they have to grow quickly. That’s true, and very good advice, but I think the current fashion of Silicon Valley startups has taken this to an unhealthy extreme—startups have a weekly growth goal before they really have any strong idea about what they want to build.
In the first few w... |
52 | The Tech Bust of 2015 | 2015-11-02 21:26:17 | Maybe instead of a tech bubble, we’re in a tech bust. No one seems to fervently believe tech valuations are cheap, so it’d be somewhat surprising if we were in a bubble. In many parts of the market, valuations seem too cheap. In the part where they seem too high, maybe they aren’t really valuations at all, because the ... |
53 | Airbnb and San Francisco | 2015-09-28 17:22:39 | Airbnb has recently been attacked by San Francisco politicians for driving up the price of housing in the city. San Francisco has tried, and will continue to try, to ban Airbnb in various ways. Last week, this excellent post was published on Prop F—“the Airbnb law”.
I recently reached out to Brian Chesky, the CEO of A... |
54 | Unit Economics | 2015-09-21 18:22:13 | Commentators are looking hard for what’s wrong with startups in Silicon Valley. First they talked about valuations being too high. Then they talked about valuations not really meaning anything. Then they talked about companies staying private too long. Then they talked about burn rates.
But something does feel off, th... |
55 | Financial Misstatements | 2015-08-21 16:25:44 | First-time startup CEOs make a lot of mistakes, mostly due to ignorance.
One particularly bad one is misunderstanding or misusing basic financial terms. I started noticing this in Y Combinator applicants a couple of years ago, but see it now in startups at all stages (including some YC companies).
It is very importan... |
56 | The Post-YC Slump | 2015-08-20 16:47:06 | At the end of a YC batch, the general consensus among the partners is that about 25% of the companies are on a trajectory that could lead to a multi-billion dollar company. Of course, only a handful of them do. Most go on to be decent or bad.
These companies have a beautifully exponential growth curve during YC, and t... |
End of preview. Expand in Data Studio
Dataset Card for Sam Altman Essay Collection Dataset
Dataset Description
This dataset contains a complete collection of essays written by Sam Altman, an entrepreneur, investor, and former president of Y Combinator. The essays cover a wide range of topics including startups, technology, artificial intelligence, leadership, and personal growth. Each essay has been cleaned and processed to extract the title, date of publication, and the full text content.
Dataset Structure
The dataset is provided in a tabular format with the following columns:
title: The title of the essay.date: The date when the essay was originally published, in the ISO format YYYY-mm-dd HH:MM:SS.text: The full text content of the essay.
Data Sources
The essays in this dataset have been sourced from Sam Altman's personal blog at https://blog.samaltman.com/.
Data Preprocessing
The essays have undergone the following preprocessing steps:
- Extraction of title and publication date from the essay's metadata.
- Removal of promotional material and navigation elements unrelated to the essay's content.
- Conversion of the essay text to plain text format.
- Cleaning of the text to remove any extraneous whitespace or special characters.
Intended Use and Limitations
This dataset is intended for various natural language processing tasks such as question-answering, summarization, text generation, and text-to-text generation. The essays provide valuable insights and perspectives on a range of topics and can be used for training models or conducting analyses related to startups, technology, artificial intelligence, and leadership.
However, it's important to note that the essays reflect the personal views and opinions of Sam Altman and may not be representative of a broader population. The content should be used with appropriate context and understanding of its subjective nature.
License and Attribution
This dataset is released under the MIT License. When using this dataset, please attribute it to Sam Altman and provide links to his personal website at https://blog.samaltman.com/.
Contact Information
For any questions or inquiries about this dataset, please contact sgoel9@berkeley.edu.
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