ChatGPT 之父阿尔特曼自述：我为何成功？
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ChatGPT 之父阿尔特曼自述：我为何成功？
The best way to rapidly increase wealth is to produce large quantities of things people want. Entrepreneurship is one such path.
Navigating Web3 tides with focused insightsEditor's Note: After Elon Musk, who will be the next global tech leader?
If you conducted a survey in the U.S., 90% of people would pick Sam Altman, founder and CEO of OpenAI. Bill Gates said the company’s latest product, ChatGPT, is “on par with the invention of the internet.”
At 38, Altman has had an extraordinary career. He dropped out of Stanford University’s computer science program at 19 to start a company; sold it for $43 million with his co-founders at 26, achieving financial freedom; invested in and led Y Combinator, America’s largest startup accelerator, expanding its scale tenfold over five years by age 29; and at 30, co-founded OpenAI with Musk and others, joining the ranks of the world’s top entrepreneurs.
To Paul Graham, founder of YC and Silicon Valley’s godfather of startups, Sam is a remarkably bold leader and pioneer. “If you dropped Sam Altman on a cannibal island, in five years he’d be king of the cannibals.”
This article is a blog post written by Altman in 2019 as he was about to become CEO of OpenAI. Drawing from years of conversations with founders and technical talent during his time at YC, Altman distilled what he sees as the secrets to success. The title is unassuming—"How to Be Successful"—but every word carries weight. To this day, it remains a guiding scripture within Silicon Valley’s venture capital and startup community.
Below is Entrepreneur邦’s adaptation of the original piece.
Compound Growth
Sam says compound growth has magical power—the exponential curve is key to building wealth. A mid-sized company growing in value by 50% annually will become a giant in just a few years.
In the world, there are few industries that truly have network effects and high scalability. But technological progress makes this possible—you can spend time discovering or creating such opportunities.
The same applies to your personal career. Most career trajectories are linear, but success requires choosing careers with compounding effects. There are multiple paths to achieve this, including leveraging capital, technology, brand, network effects, and management roles.
Absolute Confidence
Sam says the most successful people he knows are absurdly confident.
Why? Because success means surpassing mediocrity, which requires contrarian thinking to create maximum value. People lacking self-confidence rarely possess contrarian thinking.
For a startup CEO, one challenge is motivating both themselves and their team. Without confidence, this task is nearly impossible. The more ambitious a person’s goals, the more setbacks they’ll face. At those moments, only confidence can carry them through.
Confidence easily leads to arrogance. How to overcome this?
Sam’s approach: force himself to assume criticisms are correct, then adjust plans accordingly. Entrepreneurs must learn to balance confidence with self-awareness, avoiding overconfidence that disconnects them from others.
Independent Thinking
Entrepreneurship demands original thought—something schools rarely teach and can only be learned independently.
Sam greatly admires Musk’s “first principles” thinking. Musk suggests starting every problem from first principles—going back to fundamentals, generating new ideas, and through dialogue, discovering simpler, faster ways to solve problems.
Beyond that, Sam shares two insights. First, failure is routine for entrepreneurs. Quantity leads to quality—after enough failures, success eventually emerges.
Second, when pushed to the brink, inspiration often arrives. This can be inverted: lack of inspiration may simply mean the challenge isn’t hard enough. Sam says inspiration often comes from pressure—a principle he’s tested repeatedly and believes in deeply. (See Entrepreneur邦: "Creativity Explodes in Death Row Miners, Only When Pushed to the Brink")
Value Sales
Confidence alone isn’t enough—entrepreneurs must also have the ability to persuade others.
Sam says all work is essentially sales—selling yourself. As a founder, you need to sell yourself to investors, media, and partners. As an employee, you sell yourself to your boss and your product to customers.
A good salesperson needs four things: a strong idea, powerful communication skills, a bit of personal charisma, and execution ability. But the prerequisite for great sales is absolute belief in the product you’re selling.
Sam has several specific insights:
* Written communication: Think clearly, then write concisely.
* Sales, like most skills, can be practiced. The longer you do it, the better you get.
* Startup CEOs must participate in closing deals. This is extremely important.
Stay Focused
Focus multiplies productivity.
Sam says the people he knows spend significant time figuring out what to focus on—and they tend to achieve excellent results. This shows doing the right thing matters more than working long hours. Most people waste time on trivial matters.
Once you know what to do, act quickly and concentrate your energy on a few critical tasks. Successful people are fast movers.
Work Hard
If you’re either smart or hardworking, you’ll outperform 90% of people. But to surpass 99%, you need both—because your competitors are likely to have both.
Sam has two points: First, extreme effort is required for extraordinary achievements.
Second, startups don’t allow work-life balance. But hard work compounds—it often brings wave after wave of surprising returns, which in turn generate deep life satisfaction.
Sam believes compounding from hard work also requires starting early. The earlier you begin working hard, the longer the earning period and the greater the returns.
Of course, hard work shouldn’t come at the cost of health. How to balance it? Sam says everyone has their own tricks, but one thing is certain: work with people you enjoy being around on things you love doing.
Be a Little Unreasonable
If you’re persistent and stubborn enough, the world might bend to your will.
Most people either don’t try, aren’t committed enough, or give up too early—leaving their potential unrealized.
Sam sees Airbnb as a great example. No matter the difficulty, CEO Brian Chesky persisted until luck finally turned in their favor.
How to stay unreasonable and determined? Sam recommends staying optimistic. Optimism is a trait that can be strengthened through practice. After all, almost no successful businesspeople are pessimists.
Build Your Network
The ceiling of one’s career often depends on how many exceptional people they can gather around them.
How to build a strong network? Sam offers three tips:
* Help others as much as possible
Most of Sam’s professional and investment successes came from help by mentors—often people he had helped incidentally in the past.
* Maintain a good reputation
This includes: never shortchanging anyone you work with; generously sharing resources; having the eye to spot talent and place people in roles where they can fully shine.
* Connect with positive, like-minded people
Talent spotting is key to network-building—achieved through active socializing. Also, don’t limit evaluation to someone’s past experience or current achievements. Focus instead on whether they have potential, and whether that potential can be unlocked quickly.
Whenever meeting someone new, Sam asks himself: “Does this person have an unusual ability?” For those seeking talent, this question is well worth pondering.
To Get Rich, You Must ‘Own Things’
Sam says Forbes tells us that, aside from some entertainers, few people get rich solely from salaries. Earning wages means trading time, and time-for-money wealth grows slowly and linearly—it cannot explode.
Sam believes real wealth comes from owning things that rapidly appreciate—such as companies, real estate, natural resources, or intellectual property.
The best way to achieve rapid appreciation is to mass-produce things people want. Starting a company is one such path.
Have Internal Drive
When hiring, Sam first looks for internal drive.
He believes most people are driven externally—doing things mainly to impress others.
This mindset is harmful. First, it causes excessive concern for others’ opinions, leading to conformity and stagnation. Second, it distorts judgment—for example, focusing too much on competitors rather than customers.
Sam believes most successful people are self-driven. They act to satisfy themselves, feeling it’s their responsibility to change the world. Once someone achieves money and status, the appeal of these fades—only internal drive can push a person to climb higher.
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