#107 - Vinod Khosla and Sam Altman - Y Combinator  ## Metadata - Author: **Y Combinator** - Full Title: #107 - Vinod Khosla and Sam Altman - Category: #podcasts - URL: https://share.snipd.com/episode/cead6747-b14e-4c55-936a-84bfbf6fdf65 ## Highlights - The Importance of Flexibility in Tactics Key takeaways: • The biggest difference between a zero million dollar and a zero billion dollar company is the initial people you hire. • It is important to have a clear vision and to be flexible about tactics in order to stay with the vision. Transcript: Speaker 2 And is the biggest difference between the zero million and the zero billion dollar company, the initial people you hire in your experience? Speaker 1 It is the initial people you hire, but also how you approach the initial tactics. My other great analogy, if you have a large vision, your climbing Mount Everest, it's never a straight line. Nobody's climbed Everest in a straight line. You get to base camp, you get to camp one, camp two, camp three, camp four. If you get the right approach, you keep your obstinate about your vision, which is Mount Everest, but you're flexible about tactics as things change. As you zig and zag, when you pivot, these are all things on the way to staying with the vision. ([Time 0:02:24](https://share.snipd.com/snip/66d4aca7-bd9f-4a43-93f4-db0130a0abb0)) - How to Tell if an Investor is Good for Your Company Key takeaways: • Investors can help a company reach its vision, or help it reach a certain goal, but they should be made aware of the short and longterm trade-offs that they are making. • Investors in Silicon Valley are usually good longterm company builders, but there are a minority of them who add negative value. Transcript: Speaker 1 Now you can also do the same tactics without worrying about the vision. And my big beef with a lot of investors is they want revenue, they want to meet plan, as opposed to collect assets for this larger ascent to Mount Everest. You can clearly set up base camp where you get revenue, stability, cash flow break even, the ability to raise more money in the wrong place. If your goal is to get to Everest, but you still get the revenue, you might have 20 million, 50 million, 100 million of revenue, but it doesn't help you get to Everest. Or you can take a little longer, a little harder, get to the base camp that lets you get the resources to keep the journey to your vision. There's a huge difference, and the team is the biggest difference, but there's also strategy differences. By the way, investors in my view matter a lot in this, because you make short-term versus long-term trade-offs. Speaker 2 What percent of investors in Silicon Valley do you think are good long-term company builders? Speaker 1 I get in a lot of trouble for saying this. 90% of investors add no value. My assessment, 70% of investors add negative value to a company. ([Time 0:03:14](https://share.snipd.com/snip/f6fdd208-df05-4eef-91ea-2b27cfa895d0))