Sam Altman: Why Most People Fail at Building a Startup

Hinzugefügt: 2026-05-27

[00:00:00]The mistake that most people make is they try something that does not immediately work. You see this particularly in young entrepreneurs. It does not immediately [music] work. After 7 weeks they say, "You know what? I tried this thing. It's just not meant to be and I have too many other projects."

[00:00:11]So they immediately give up. And you kind of, you know, the [music] satirical version of this is people that are 23 and have started 14 startups because they give up on everyone before it ever [music] possibly successful.

[00:00:20]These things are really hard. They take a very long time. There are a lot of critics. There are a lot of people who say this thing sucks. It's going to fail. It's really stupid. [music] And then also there's like what at YC we call the trough of sorrow where no one even bothers to say it sucks because [music] no one cares at all.

[00:00:33]And that is at least disincentivating.

[00:00:37]Most of the [music] founders that I have spent a lot of time with that have gone on to be super successful spent a very long time on their idea when a lot of other people would have given up. And either people said it sucks or people said nothing at all.

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