The Takeoff Podcast: Sam Altman on joining a startup early in your career, the importance on long-term thinking, and knowing which projects to pursue further.

The Takeoff Podcast

Sam Altman is the co-founder and CEO of OpenAI. Prior to joining OpenAI as CEO, Sam was the president of Y Combinator, the world’s leading startup accelerator, having helped launch companies such as Stripe, Airbnb, DoorDash, Twitch, Reddit, Brex, and Dropbox. Before joining Y Combinator, Sam founded Loopt (a location-based social networking app) while at Stanford in 2005. He later sold Loopt for $43.4M. (Sam’s blog)

In this episode, Sam joins The Takeoff’s Michael Spiro to discuss:

1. His experience founding Loopt while at Stanford
   
2. His experience running Y Combinator
   
3. What he is building with OpenAI
   
4. The benefits of founding / joining a high-growth startup early in your career
   
5. Why long-term thinking is critical
   
6. The importance of “getting good at sales”
   
7. How to know which projects to pursue further
   
8. His favorite food dish in St. Louis
   
9. Why poker is a great way to learn certain business / psychological skills

This is Michael’s first podcast episode for The Takeoff. You can find a written version of the conversation on our Substack (https://thetakeoff.substack.com/p/samaltman). We decided to put together this podcast after getting tons of great reactions to the written version of the conversation.

Be sure to find us on Twitter @_TheTakeoff and to subscribe to our newsletter (https://thetakeoff.substack.com/) to have all future interviews and other content sent directly to your inbox.

We’d love your feedback. This is only our fifth podcast episode, so we know there are lots of ways we can improve :)

Relevant past interviews:

- Henrique Dubugras (Founder & Co-CEO of Brex) (newsletter)

- Anu Hariharan (Partner at Y Combinator's Continuity Fund) (newsletter)

- Saam Motamedi (GP at Greylock) (newsletter)

- Russell Glass (CEO of Ginger) (podcast)

- Jeff Morris Jr. (Founder & Managing Partner at Chapter One) (newsletter)