How to Be Successful - Sam Altman  ## Metadata - Author: **Sam Altman** - Full Title: How to Be Successful - Category: #articles - URL: https://blog.samaltman.com/how-to-be-successful ## Highlights - I’ve observed thousands of founders and thought a lot about what it takes to make a huge amount of money or to create something important. Usually, people start off wanting the former and end up wanting the latter. ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01hgsq01p0tqg2xhtnf2vfxt9a)) - You also want to be an exponential curve yourself—you should aim for your life to follow an ever-increasing up-and-to-the-right trajectory. It’s important to move towards a career that has a compounding effect—most careers progress fairly linearly. ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01hgsq3sw3nfg1cmxk9qc91qd1)) - There are many ways to get this leverage, such as capital, technology, brand, network effects, and managing people. ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01hgsq4scg03g5ch0xggtkscgc)) - I am willing to take as much time as needed between projects to find my next thing. But I always want it to be a project that, if successful, will make the rest of my career look like a footnote. ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01hgsq69b0vp9sthe1z9ejskzh)) - I think the biggest competitive advantage in business—either for a company or for an individual’s career—is long-term thinking with a broad view of how different systems in the world are going to come together. ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01hgsq7djqnanak25t797qy0pb)) - In a world where almost no one takes a truly long-term view, the market richly rewards those who do. ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01hgsq847z6cc9dnyn1tmy41yr)) - Have almost too much self-belief ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01hgsq8fq7xb1979fvr1ev3za9)) - Self-belief is immensely powerful. The most successful people I know believe in themselves almost to the point of delusion. ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01hgsqbjh9wzggxp48v7yh07h9)) - I remember when Elon Musk took me on a tour of the SpaceX factory many years ago. He talked in detail about manufacturing every part of the rocket, but the thing that sticks in memory was the look of absolute certainty on his face when he talked about sending large rockets to Mars. I left thinking “huh, so that’s the benchmark for what conviction looks like.” ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01hgsqdxwxx3wvdnadsxqzpx38)) - the more ambitious you are, the more the world will try to tear you down. ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01hgsqg7hgmw5hzxw71m2e3f1f)) - Truth-seeking is hard and often painful, but it is what separates self-belief from self-delusion. ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01hgsqjjg1prn50emrpqp94ehd)) - The best way to be good at sales is to genuinely believe in what you’re selling. Selling what you truly believe in feels great, and trying to sell snake oil feels awful. ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01hz5ed5x0phke9pegv75t1ffm)) - Entrepreneurship is very difficult to teach because original thinking is very difficult to teach. School is not set up to teach this—in fact, it generally rewards the opposite. So you have to cultivate it on your own. ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01hgsqkktnmz6qz9d9wv5k244k)) - “I will fail many times, and I will be really right once” is the entrepreneurs’ way. You have to give yourself a lot of chances to get lucky. ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01hgsqmzts3w7gg81d7r40zhdj)) - Most people overestimate risk and underestimate reward. ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01hz5egfw5k8mphsy4nhr8cd20)) - Self-belief alone is not sufficient—you also have to be able to convince other people of what you believe. ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01hgsqqvg763e409h71wx20em4)) - All great careers, to some degree, become sales jobs. You have to evangelize your plans to customers, prospective employees, the press, investors, etc. This requires an inspiring vision, strong communication skills, some degree of charisma, and evidence of execution ability. ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01hgsqsk8e6g6t4xw893yh7v2f)) - My other big sales tip is to show up in person whenever it’s important. When I was first starting out, I was always willing to get on a plane. It was frequently unnecessary, but three times it led to career-making turning points for me that otherwise would have gone the other way. ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01hgsqwhyq762f4rnw57htrhaa)) - Almost everyone I’ve ever met would be well-served by spending more time thinking about what to focus on ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01hgsrh0rs7j0n224tf93a3wv4)) - Look for small bets you can make where you lose 1x if you’re wrong but make 100x if it works. Then make a bigger bet in that direction. ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01hgsr1s8vnkf763y9a8sav8e5)) - Extreme people get extreme results ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01hgsrm84c5he4djmey77d5880)) - Don’t save up for too long, though. At YC, we’ve often noticed a problem with founders that have spent a lot of time working at Google or Facebook. When people get used to a comfortable life, a predictable job, and a reputation of succeeding at whatever they do, it gets very hard to leave that behind (and people have an incredible ability to always match their lifestyle to next year’s salary). Even if they do leave, the temptation to return is great. It’s easy—and human nature—to prioritize short-term gain and convenience over long-term fulfillment. ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01hgsr3ty6gkj5ggbay5t4g4sy)) - You have to figure out how to work hard without burning out. People find their own strategies for this, but one that almost always works is to find work you like doing with people you enjoy spending a lot of time with. ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01hr1q2mddh4z42rtxs40hspvj)) - I believe that it’s easier to do a hard startup than an easy startup. People want to be part of something exciting and feel that their work matters ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01hgsrw6mk5nzyjf0024wheqz9)) - A big secret is that you can bend the world to your will a surprising percentage of the time—most people don’t even try, and just accept that things are the way that they are ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01hgsrxj0ysad7zwgkv9gn8ba6)) - To be willful, you have to be optimistic—hopefully this is a personality trait that can be improved with practice. I have never met a very successful pessimistic person. ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01hgss0pcj2fbzhs5w9zyp6ddn)) - Most people do whatever most people they hang out with do. This mimetic behavior is usually a mistake—if you’re doing the same thing everyone else is doing, you will not be hard to compete with. ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01hgss2t7kp12v876ysx8g2p4m)) - An effective way to build a network is to help people as much as you can. Doing this, over a long period of time, is what lead to most of my best career opportunities and three of my four best investments. I’m continually surprised how often something good happens to me because of something I did to help a founder ten years ago ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01hgss4wdghnpmr8vx0exgrede)) - One of the best ways to build a network is to develop a reputation for really taking care of the people who work with you ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01hgss5c2q98jydww53c5kn726)) - learn how to evaluate what people are great at, and put them in those roles. (This is the most important thing I have learned about management, and I haven’t read much about it ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01hr1r5dc5wth9cset9kkvz1td)) - You want to have a reputation for pushing people hard enough that they accomplish more than they thought they could, but not so hard they burn out. ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01hr1r5xznd76fyfeeks7qrx5n)) - Everyone is better at some things than others. Define yourself by your strengths, not your weaknesses ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01hgss76bjshmyy500cr2mt552)) - I try to always ask myself when I meet someone new “is this person a force of nature?” It’s a pretty good heuristic for finding people who are likely to accomplish great things ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01hgssaqy7rc6dtdenbv517mch)) - **Be internally driven** Most people are primarily externally driven; they do what they do because they want to impress other people. This is bad for many reasons, but here are two important ones. First, you will work on consensus ideas and on consensus career tracks. You will care a lot—much more than you realize—if other people think you’re doing the right thing. This will probably prevent you from doing truly interesting work, and even if you do, someone else would have done it anyway. ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01hz5fhgdpjn4b29tnpsbd3d8w)) - The most successful people I know are primarily internally driven ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01hgssbm7bewndrta6f81qq946)) - It is hard to be wildly successful at anything you aren’t obsessed with. ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01hz5fnbaaq2emcsnbgm8xy3a9))