Sam Altman Quotes

Companies face a handful of different risks, whether it is competitors or different market environments. But I think that people focus way too much on competitors and not enough on their own execution.

Maybe there are too many restaurants. Maybe some of mine need to close. So be it. I'll live with the market place.

I always love that phrase, 'Oh, this is a good idea, but it's execution dependent.' As if anything in life is not execution dependent. Breathing is execution-dependent.

For a startup, you need to stay small so the others don't attack, or you aim to be one of the big guys. If you don't do it right, you might lose everything.

You have to be willing to risk things; otherwise, somebody else will put you out of business.

Business [compared to government] has an advantage in that we know that if we don’t take risks, it’s about survival … Business has to also stand behind government leaders who take risk.,, That’s what leadership is about.

When a market isn't in transition, gaining market share is hard - you're fighting to take one or two points of share from competitors.

There's always competitors out there, one way or another.

We respect all of our competitors, and when I talk about our competitors, all of our competitors for entertainment time and leisure time.

Make a list of competitors who will be disrupted by you. You do have competitors, right? You are better, right? If not, why are you going to Disrupt? Post a blog post about them and what makes you different.

In strategic decisions, I'd be really concerned about overconfidence.

You never quite know in business if what you are doing is the right or the wrong thing. Unfortunately, by the time you know the answer, someone has beaten you to it and you are out of business.

Our economic competitors ... are eating us for lunch, and we can get in the game or not. We can be at the table, or we can be on the table.

The thing I preach constantly is do your research; build your knowledge base. Don't just go into business on a whim or a prayer - and don't think 'I'm an entrepreneur so I have to take risks'. Entrepreneurs don't take risks. They take calculated risks; only the good ones.

Risk is a function of how poorly a strategy will perform if the 'wrong' scenario occurs.

I'm a risk manager, but I'm also a risk taker.

The purpose of a business is to get and keep a customer. Without customers, no amount of engineering wizardry, clever financing, or operations expertise can keep a company going.

We're not competitor obsessed, we're customer obsessed. We start with the customer and we work backwards.

I don't think you're going to have one bank. Big companies aren't going to give us all their business. So they can pick and choose - by product, by country, whatever. We have major competition across every product in every place we operate.

Here's a good rule of thumb: don't worry about a competitor at all, until they're actually beating you with a real shipped product.

Even when I ran my bar I followed the same policy. A lot of customers came to the bar. If one in ten enjoyed the place and said he'd come again, that was enough. If one out of ten was a repeat customer, then the business would survive. To put it another way, it didn't matter if nine out of ten didn't like my bar. This realization lifted a weight off my shoulders. Still, I had to make sure that the one person who did like the place.

There is the risk you cannot afford to take, and there is the risk you cannot afford not to take.

If you truly don't have competition, then zoom out until you can define some. Competition can be as simple as the reliance on the status quo, Microsoft (since at some point Microsoft will compete with everyone for everything), or researchers in universities. Pick something, because saying you have no competition at all is a nonstarter.

In the future, it will become increasingly obvious that your competitors are just as clueless as you are.

Android has been managed essentially to make it a profitless prosperity. Right now, if Google is not careful, Android will be Samsung or Samsung will be Android.