SAM ALTMAN

For most of the early hires you make in a startup, experience doesn't matter very much, and you should go for aptitude.

I don't think people spend nearly enough time thinking about what they like and what they're good at.

I think you can say a lot of evil behavior by companies is short-term optimization.

Generally, you want to raise capital either when you have to or when it's really easy. If the company desperately needs money, and they can't figure out any other way, then they need to raise money. Or if someone's offering you easy money on good terms, you should take it because you can use it for good things.

People are incredible creatures of habit.

The hard part of running a business is that there are a hundred things that you could be doing, and only five of those actually matter, and only one of them matters more than all of the rest of them combined. So figuring out there is a critical path thing to focus on and ignoring everything else is really important.

I suppose if I didn't have Loopt, I'd have to, I don't know, pick up the phone and just start calling people, a lot more texting and certainly more Googling.

The reduction in compassion that happens when we're all behind computer screens is not good for the world.

The biggest part of Loopt is about discovering the world around you, never replacing a social experience - only adding to it.

The point of an accelerator is to teach you about companies and business, not about technology.

The crowd's a really powerful force on the Internet, and people finally understand how to harness that.

I have plenty of investments that I wish I'd never made. But the model is to lose money on a lot of investments and then make 1,000X or 10,000X on an investment.

If a company is profitable, the founder is in control. If it's not, investors are in control.

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.'

If you go to a paintball subreddit, paintball companies can advertise to you.

Very ambitious startups often take a long time to work - or sometimes they take a very long time to look ambitious.

All companies that grow really big do so in only one way: people recommend the product or service to other people.

I believe whatever smart, ambitious people are working on will be the trend of the future. I do think that it's worth thinking critically about what the future will be.

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.

If you compromise and hire someone mediocre, you will always regret it.

The whole concept of rewarding customers is a big trend.

The only way to generate sustained exponential growth is to make whatever you're making sufficiently good.

Background updating is absolutely the future.

The correlation of quality of life and cost of energy is huge.

Seed investing is the status symbol of Silicon Valley. Most people don't want Ferraris, they want a winning seed investment.