The idea guy’s time has finally come.
OpenAI CEO Sam Altman, who previously led the famed startup incubator Y Combinator, said that before AI, people used to joke about those who had the next great idea for an amazing startup but lacked the technical expertise to translate their vision into something real.
“All of a sudden it’s like the revenge of the idea guys,” Altman told Stripe CEO Patrick Collison during an onstage appearance at Stripe Sessions.
When Collison asked what has changed about startup culture, Altman said technical talent isn’t as critical as it once was.
“For a long time, I think the most important ingredient that I looked for — YC looked for, that kind of this part of our industry looked for on a founding team — was technical talent,” Altman said. “And that’s still very important, but now people who just really deeply understand their users and can’t code at all. I want to fund those people.”
Altman said “it’s a big turnaround” from where even he used to be, which is when Silicon Valley used to laugh the “idea guys” out of the room.
“There were these people that wanted to start a company and they’d say like, ‘I have the best idea. I’m not going to tell you what it is. I have the best idea. I just need a coder to build it for me and then I’m going to be in great shape,'” Altman said. “And we would make fun of these people.”
While ChatGPT has made Altman a household name, his early fortune is thanks to his well-timed investments in companies like Reddit, Stripe, and Airbnb. Altman has continued to be a prolific investor in startups since leaving Y Combinator, even as he runs OpenAI.
AI hasn’t changed everything
It’s tempting for would-be investors to want to sit on the sidelines to monitor AI advancements. Altman said it’s the wrong move.
“I think to do anything at this point on a 10-year time horizon requires a real suspension of disbelief, and yet that’s probably the right way to live your life,” he said. ” I don’t think it works to say there’s this singularity in three years or five years, whatever, we can’t see past it.”
AI also hasn’t changed one of Altman’s long-held views that the best startups have founders who truly know each other.
“The teams that came together seven days before applying to YC on a cofounder matching side or whatever, that didn’t work too often,” he said. “It was not impossible. I think there were one or two cases where it did work, but it was rare.”
Altman, who cofounded OpenAI in 2015 alongside Greg Brockman, Ilya Sutskever, Elon Musk, and others, talked about how knowing Brockman has been a major asset. Left unsaid was the fact that Musk had a famously acrimonious split and is now suing the company and Altman.
“I think we had this deep mutual respect and complimentary skillset that has just worked really well,” Altman said of Brockman. “I’m extremely grateful. I think having to go through any startup experience, but particularly an intense one without a cofounder, you have a deep connection trust to is really hard.”
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