I wonder why he lists him here: http://www.paulgraham.com/5founders.html.<p>I have never met Sam Altman and never seen him speak in public, but if I didn't know about YC, I surely wouldn't have known about Loopt or Sam Altman. I live in Europe and Loopt is pretty much non-existent here (all 4sq/gowalla). So why is Altman such a great entrepeneur (in terms of strategy/amibition, as stated by PG)? What is extraordinary about the things he does or has done? Why isn't someone like for instance Jack Dorsey on the list?
I just saw Sam Altman speak at YCNYC and I was impressed. I have never actually met him or heard him speak before Monday, but one of his stories really stuck out and went something like this:<p>"We were trying to get a big client for weeks, and they said no and went with a competitor. The competitor already had a terms sheet from the company were we trying to sign up. It was real serious.<p>We were devastated, but we decided to fly down and sit in their lobby until they would meet with us. So they finally let us talk to them after most of the day.<p>We then had a few more meetings, and the company wanted to come visit our offices so they could make sure we were a 'real' company. At that time, we were only 5 guys. So we hired a bunch of our college friends to 'work' for us for the day so we could look larger than we actually were. It worked, and we got the contract."<p>I think the reason why PG respects Sam so much is he is charismatic, resourceful, and just overall seems like a genuine person.
Loopt is more successful than HN users would realize. Some of what it does isn't consumer facing, and its users are (like e.g. Stumbleupon's) mostly not HN users.<p>In any case, you can't measure someone by one company. The formula for the success of a startup includes a random multiplier of roughly zero to a thousand. You can see this from how common it is for successful founders' second startups to fail.<p>I'm actually more impressed with Sam than when I wrote that. Since then I've talked to him a lot more because he is one of the alumni working part time as YC partners. He has extraordinary energy combined with the judgment of someone twice his age.
It's true Loopt has been something of a failure in the market. That doesn't mean Sam Altman won't become the world-changing entrepreneur PG sees in him.<p>It's quite possible he's working on the "wrong" project. Many people have had this experience: Traf-O-Data (Bill Gates), Atari games (Steve Jobs), Tribe.net (Mark Pincus), and the list goes on endlessly.<p>If you had seen Bill Gates working on Traf-O-Data you might have said "that guy is going places" even though Traf-O-Data was ultimately not an important part of where he was going.
You can approach this in one of two ways. One is to ask why and the other is to gather the data yourself and then just draw your own conclusions. From what I've seen and know about Sam Altman the praise he gets is justified but you might disagree. What you'll get from asking is interpreted responses from the data but if you find out for yourself then you can judge pg's response appropriately. This seems like a weird way to get background on someone when there's google.com available.
I think PG's opinion is based on Sam's personality. I don't know the guy, neither do I know PG, but I'm assuming he likes what he sees in Sam, not just what Sam has done so far.<p>Loopt isn't ever on my mind, neither anyone I know uses it - that sounds bad for a 6 or 7 year old, mass market YC company/product from one of YC's most prized and highest regarded/praised CEOs. So I think Sam might have picked the wrong battle. However, Sam's property that pg likes him for (relentless and tenacious) might be exactly what's preventing him from ditching the loop (no pun intended) and keeping him ditching the idea or jumping ship altogether. Even Sam’s tenacity can’t save a product people don’t care deeply for.<p>Or maybe I just give pg’s judgment of “people” too much credit by default, as an extension of his judgment of companies/products. Maybe pg sucks at picking winning people, but is great at strategy/tactics/products/ideas (just a hypothesis).<p>Either way, the takeaway for me here is be a bull dog - but don’t bark at walls, i.e. be tenacious, but find something worth being tenacious for.
<a href="http://www.paulgraham.com/notnot.html" rel="nofollow">http://www.paulgraham.com/notnot.html</a><p>"But the most successful founder we've funded so far, Sam Altman, was 19 at the time."<p>"I realized these tests existed after meeting Sam Altman, actually. I noticed that I felt like I was talking to someone much older."