Sam Altman wrote How to Be Successful.
Think in exponentials. How much better is 20 years of compounding than 2? If your work is linear, walk away. Leverage comes from capital, technology, brand, and network effects.
Almost-delusional self-belief. When Elon showed Altman around SpaceX and talked about sending rockets to Mars, his face carried absolute certainty. Contrarian ideas are never popular at first — without that conviction you won’t survive. But treat criticism as if it might be true: that’s the line between confidence and self-deception.
Independent thinking. Schools reward recitation. Original thinking you have to train yourself.
“I will fail many times, and I will be really right once.”
Every career is sales. You sell product to users, direction to teams, vision to investors. The core is genuinely believing what you’re selling. Show up in person for what matters.
Lower the cost of betting. Early on, keep fixed costs low and obligations light — failure is cheap, so you can bet often, and hit rate rises. Many aren’t lacking ambition; they can no longer afford to lose.
Focus. Working on the right thing matters far more than logging hours. Smarts or hard work gets you to the 90th percentile; to reach the 99th you need both.
Be bold. Breakthroughs come from rethinking from first principles, not optimizing a proven path. > “Follow your curiosity. Things that seem exciting to you will often seem exciting to other people too.”
Persistence. Airbnb maxed out credit cards and lived on cheap cereal, grinding through one crisis after another. > “I am going to keep going until this works.” I’ve never met a wildly successful pessimist.
Build a moat. If anyone can do what you do, you will eventually be replaced. Doing what everyone else does makes you easy to outcompete.
Help others. The most effective way to build a network is to help people as much as you can. Figure out what each person does best and put them in the right place.
Own things. > Almost no one in the history of the Forbes list has gotten there with a salary. Wealth comes from ownership: equity, IP, brand, assets.
Be internally driven. Externally driven people chase consensus and avoid risk. YC was widely mocked in its early years — Jessica and PG did it because they thought it was valuable to the world. > It is hard to be wildly successful at anything you aren’t obsessed with.