Sam Altman is Chairman of Y Combinator, a Silicon Valley venture capital firm known for funding Airbnb, Dropbox, Stripe, Reddit and DoorDash. Y Combinator's portfolio has an estimated value in excess of $80B. Maybe he knows some things of value. He happens to be a racer, so we naturally were even more interested in his thoughts.
We recently heard Altman hold forth on a variety of subjects as part of the excellent podcast series Conversations With Tyler hosted by Tyler Cowen, professor of economics at George Mason University. During the Sam Altman edition of the podcast, it became obvious that a central part of Y Combinator's approach is understanding how to assess human capital, particularly that of company founders. But it is also obvious that Sam Altman has thought deeply about human performance. Here's what he says about racing specifically:
COWEN: I’m from the Northeast. When I watch racing cars, I see a bunch of little things on TV go around and around the track, and I’m totally bored. What am I missing?
ALTMAN: It’s not that fun to watch, but it’s very fun to drive.
COWEN: Fun to drive.
ALTMAN: There are very few activities that are high enough adrenaline to totally stop thinking about work, and racing cars is certainly one of them. But watching it is not that fun.
ALTMAN: A surprising number of YC’s best founders are also into some sort of extreme physical something.
COWEN: Why do you see that correlation? What do you think?
ALTMAN: Something about focus and determination and drive to win and perform at your highest level. I think one thing that is a really important thing to strive for is being internally driven, being driven to compete with yourself, not with other people. If you compete with other people, you end up in this mimetic trap, and you sort of play this tournament, and if you win, you lose. But if you’re competing with yourself, and all you’re trying to do is — for the own self-satisfaction and for also the impact you have on the world and the duty you feel to do that — be the best possible version you can, there is no limit to how far that can drive someone to perform. And I think that is something you see — even though it looks like athletes are competing with each other — when you talk to a really great, absolute top-of-the-field athlete, it’s their own time they’re going against.
The rest of the interview covers an array of interesting subjects including how long it takes to evaluate people, nuclear fusion, universal basic income, Napoleon, Peter Parker, Luke Skywalker, Open AI and more. Check it out here.
Historically, we at Winding Road have hosted Ross Bentley’s Speed Secrets on our site. Ross’s wisdom and expertise stacked alongside his ability to communicate to…
There are ways of leveraging the industrialized world within which we live to draw goodness out of everyone who encounters that which is produced. Struck…
By the start of the 20th Century, the development of consumer automobiles was in full swing, and, seemingly, everyone was throwing their hat in the…
Setting the blueprint for all Bugatti cars that followed, the Type 35 was designed and engineered like no other, and featured world-firsts to ensure unmatched…
Supervisory Boards of Volkswagen AG and AUDI AG vote for complete takeover of Sauber Group Oliver Hoffmann takes over responsibility for Audi’s Formula 1 commitment…