Sam Altman interviewed on CNN Money [video]

The possibility of failure based extraneous conditions already makes failure OK.

My internet marketing business failed because Google changed their SEO guidelines and it shut me down. I did everything perfectly, or so I thought, and then it just happened. That's alright.

I think failure should be taken in context. Recently in a big project at a bank (absolute disaster of a project, most of us quit), I am seen as a failure because I do not spend my time after hours (unpaid) working, while the rest of my team does. Is this in my control? Yeah sure it is, but at the same time it isn't.

> On the flip side, if you failed - that failure acts as a noose going forward.

A personal fail is a form of personal victory, seen as failure by everyone else who isn't you.

There is definitely an inverse power log sort of thing where the number of people who have gone right from college into startup success is really small, and the number of people who have gone from school to startup success in 10 years is pretty large.

A typical trajectory seems to be move here working for some current 'big' tech company. Build a network of the cool people there and figure out where you eventually want to live, then show your stuff at BigCorp while people who have been there longer start peeling off. Most people know who are the 'good' people and who are the not so good people at their previous employment, if they have you in the 'good' category and they've gone off to do a startup you find interesting, you can often follow them there. Then get your feet wet in a startup early employee to exit (death, buyout, what haveyou). During that time you get known by the VCs in the company and your peers there, perhaps you recruit people. You prove you can be effective in a small environment. Then using your connections with investors or other people you've met you go in as a really early group of already more seasoned people, which ideally has a solid outcome, and at that point 10 - 12 years have your graduation from school you are ready to start your own thing. The graphs in this chart [1] match my experience. People doing a lot of the founding are in their 30's.

Up until you're the founder though, success or failure is rarely on you, its on the founders. And even then depending on how it failed well that can actually be a positive if it was shooting for the stars and only making it to the outskirts of the solar system.

(This is a serious question.)

Here's my 2c. The average person in SV is on their 4-5th startup (whether started or early employee), as compared to the 1st-3rd elsewhere (YMMV). Think of it this way - instead of BigCo wasting away money on a new product launch (good example - Microsoft Kin), there's loads of money being poured into 100's of Kin-like products, and only very few emerge victorious. This is only possible because of the massive amount of recycled money in tech startups.

The rationalization of failure in SV has less to do with commercial progress and more about sociological factors. In other words, there is a huge support network of people who have experienced failures, so it eases the pain of it happening to you. Think about going to an AA meeting where there are 100 recovering alcoholics vs one that has 5. The one with the 100 makes it much easier to recover. You get a large pool of like-minded people and can create allegiances/relationships with much more variety. Want to find someone who also failed a Fitness Tech wearable company in Chicago? Good luck. In SV? There's probably one living down the street from you.

Lastly, there is a fair share of fakers here. Number wise, more than anywhere else, but relative to the successes, it's no different than anywhere else. People can hustle their way into the industry with little effort. People rarely check backgrounds here, and there is a winner take all attitude (integrated with a passive, pay-it-forward mentality).

> What is worse is that breaking into the funding market is rather difficult unless you have a success story under your belt.

This is slightly a myth. One thing that is preached here and does bode well, is that traction matters. If you can build something (that people want), get traction (prove they want it), then there is more than enough money floating around to get funding. Is it easier to get funding once you've proven yourself in the Valley? Absolutely. But you'd be surprised to find that funding isn't everything here.

From the short conversations and limited interactions I've had with each of them plus Sam's actions since becoming president (eg http://blog.samaltman.com/what-ive-learned-from-female-found... and his recent RFS for breakthrough technologies) it seems to me that their leadership styles are very, very different.

Paul has a great deal of repect for Sam and Sam for Paul.

Not to mention that people are probably going to be more likely to support people that are like them in one way or another. I know when I get a phone call I tend to like people who talk fast, don't mess around with niceties (to me "how are you doing" is a complete waste of time) and get right to the point. Others of course don't. [1]

That said I don't know if your point is correct or not but it wouldn't surprise me if it was.

Starting a sentence with "so" is a crutch that I started to notice people using several years ago. That's clearly something that they pick up when surrounded in a community of others doing the same.

[1] A bit of selling is always like modem negotiation. Usually it's a good idea to parrot the behavior of the person you are trying to sell to. If they talk slow you talk slow. If they talk fast you talk fast. In general of course always exceptions.

most great founders want to both do something great and to make a lot of money.

My first thought was that you meant disingenuous. And that makes sense in the context of your sentence.

But then I checked if ingenuous is even a word... and it is: "showing innocent or childlike simplicity and candidness" or " lacking craft or subtlety". And those sort of work in the context of the sentence too.

So either it was a typo, a misunderstanding of english word formation, a brain fart, or an intentional use of an uncommon word by someone far more articulate than I.