Ask HN: Why Is Sam Altman a Big Deal in Silicon Valley | Hacker News Reader

Ask HN: Why Is Sam Altman a Big Deal in Silicon Valley

14 pointsquietthrow7 comments

I Understand he runs ycombinator and is barely 30. What makes him so influential? Is it his knowledge of startups? Is it his ability to see trends on or past the horizon ? Or is he just Henry knowledgeable when it comes to entrepreneurship? Just trying to understand the person who is at the center or a lot of money and opportunities that make or break young entrepreneurs.

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I was wondering the same thing myself, and came across this article:

http://recode.net/2014/03/18/y-combinators-new-head-startup-...

Basically, the same formula for most successful paths in life: Luck, smarts, and survivorship bias.

You make a very good point about luck. Most people attribute "success" to smarts, intelligence , skills etc but grossly overlook luck or whatever you want to call it - chance , other things needed to fall into place. Typically bystanders to successful people never acknowledge luck and humble successful people always do themselves. Not taking away their talent by anymeans but external forces - random or not - play a huge factor.

Genetics as well play into the luck factor heavily

He knows startups extremely well. He's a very curious person and genuinely interested in startups and has gotten to know many startup founders. He started a successful (but not wildly successful) startup back when Y Combinator was new. I installed Loopt back then. It was pretty impressive for a while. A lot of startup people like him. Paul Graham does in particular but he rose to the top of Y Combinator over a period of time and I don't think it would have happened if he hadn't proven himself to most of the others at Y Combinator.

The fact that he runs an influential company that pumped out AirBNB, Reddit, Stripe, and some other multi-Million dollar companies

im not in the valley, but i like the quality of his thought process and that he cares about making a difference and is working incredibly hard and smart towards it .

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