Zitat des Tages von Sam Altman:
The way to build billion dollar companies is to first build something people love. There isn't really a shortcut there.
The point of an accelerator is to teach you about companies and business, not about technology.
It's easy to say, 'I'm going to build something that already exists,' but it's difficult to clearly and succinctly describe something new.
If you compromise and hire someone mediocre, you will always regret it.
With Loopt Star, consumers get to tap interactive rewards wherever they may be.
Anonymity breeds meanness.
All throughout my life I have been deeply immersed in startups, either because I was running one or investing in them or helping them.
If a company is profitable, the founder is in control. If it's not, investors are in control.
There is a lot of stuff I like. I love backpacking. I love going to an island where I can just sit on the beach and read or scuba dive and sail. I do a lot of that. I still go backpacking around Europe in the summers and staying in hostels. I love that.
All the reasons that have made software so successful are beginning to happen with hardware. So much can be done so quickly, prototyped so rapidly, and the costs are so low.
If you have a startup that's keeping it up at night because you think it's so great, then you should do that.
I don't think people spend nearly enough time thinking about what they like and what they're good at.
One of the things we urge Y-Combinator companies to do is to have profitability in grasp. If you need to get profitable before your A round of money, you ought to be able to do that.
You shouldn't try to manufacture progress.
I don't often get involved with campaigns at all.
Many founders hire just because it seems like a cool thing to do, and people always ask how many employees you have.
Technology magnifies differences, and it's been replacing or obviating jobs for a long time. But what happens as that case accelerates? I'm not one of these doomsayers who says, 'There will be no jobs.'
Loopt wouldn't have happened without Y Combinator.
The thing about Y Combinator that's cool is that most companies won't happen if we don't fund them.
Tech companies tend to do tech best.
I believe that sexism in tech is a real problem.
I think you can say a lot of evil behavior by companies is short-term optimization.
Don't let yourself make excuses for not doing the things you want to do.
There is a long history of founders returning to companies and doing great things. Founders are able to set the vision for their companies with an authority no one else can.
The biggest part of Loopt is about discovering the world around you, never replacing a social experience - only adding to it.
Very ambitious startups often take a long time to work - or sometimes they take a very long time to look ambitious.
The reduction in compassion that happens when we're all behind computer screens is not good for the world.
Don't hire for the sake of hiring. Hire because there is no other way to do what you want to do.
What is OK is to spend money for productivity. What is not OK is just to light money on fire.
Being a public company is really terrible for most companies. I'd say Facebook and Google have done a pretty good job of standing up to the incredible quarterly pressure to hit numbers, but most companies - and I've observed a lot now - don't do a very good job of that.
Check-ins are cool, but kind of a pain.
AI will probably most likely lead to the end of the world, but in the meantime, there'll be great companies.
Asking what I'd do without Loopt is almost like asking what I would do if I didn't have a smartphone because the feature set has become the norm for me.
Communication services need interoperability to succeed - and Loopt is the first such service since SMS that is available across all major U.S. wireless carriers.
One thing that founders always underestimate is how hard it is to recruit.
The market for local advertising is in the billions.