The five things Sam Altman looks for in a founder

Another question is that we get all the time and that I have spent the last 10 years of my life trying to figure out is what makes really great founders special. There are two phrases that kind of come to mind. If I were trying to like pick what our top 10 most successful founders would have said about themselves when we were interviewing them at yc, I always figure it out and I never give up. Would have been high on the list. And everyone thinks the thing that really matters is how smart they are or their domain expertise or their network or their connections. It really is this kind of a personality trait. People have different phrases for that. Determination, relentlessly resourceful is one that Paul Graham uses. But that spirit is the most important factor. I think in successful founders. You need to have everything else, but a lot of people have everything else. This I think is the kind of the rare and the limiting trait. The good news about this is I think people can kind of learn it. People don't try too often, but I think this is possible where if you apply yourself to getting better in this way and the way you do for anything else, I think people make huge strides. This is not something that if you're not born with it, there's no chance. Three things that we have observed about how successful founders get things done. Focus, self belief and personal connections. And in fact, if I were looking for a co founder, I would look for a lot of that. Like is this, does someone have a relentless focus? Are they just going to get this one thing done and keep their blinders on, not get distracted by shiny objects along the way? Do they actually believe that this is possible because momentum is this crazily self filling prophecy? And can they form the personal connections that it takes to be successful? Will they be able to recruit and retain a world class team? Will they be able to sell their product? Will they be able to raise money? Will they be able to talk to the press? The ability to form these personal connections is super important. Another thing that I did not used to believe was this important and now I do is clear communication. Vision and thought as part of that, but really clear communication. Almost all of the best startups that we have ever been involved with, from the very first time we met those founders, they were able to very concisely and clearly communicate what they were doing in like 25 words. And I don't know why this is so important and maybe that you need this to spread the message, but I can certainly say that founders who aren't good at this don't really go on to be Successful founders that don't get good at clear, concise communication really struggle. And you can, you can prove this to yourself quickly by just looking at the founders of really successful companies. They're all good at this. So I think this is an area to invest in and get better in. If you have those things, then one thing you can do is attract great people to work on the company with you, which is hard and important. It's really, really hard to recruit the 20th employee for a startup. One thing that I always tell people is, is it is easier to start a hard startup than it is to start an easy startup. And the reason is you need a startup that is going to be inspiring. You need a startup that people are going to want to help you with. And if you are another startup that kind of fades into the noise and no one really cares that much about maybe a fine business, but it's just not exciting. It doesn't. No one wants to contribute their energy to it. It's really hard. Recruiting that 20th employee is really hard. You need an exciting vision and you need to be good at communication and personal relationships. And then also founders just get a huge amount of work done themselves. So in the early days especially, you kind of got to do everything and there's a lot to do. And so people that have this sort of, like, focus and maniacal productivity is really important.