A Quote by Sam Altman
We pretty much won't fund a company now where the founders don't have vested equity because it's just that hard to do.
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Founding a company is hard. Most of it isn't smooth. You'll have to make very hard decisions. You have to fire a few people. Therefore, if you don't believe in your mission, giving up is easy. The majority of founders give up. But the best founders don't give up.
It's not hard for a city like New York to create a $1.25 million fund. It's not hard for foundations to create funds that invest in diverse founders.
Founders are usually very stingy with equity to employees and very generous with equity to investors. I think this is totally backwards.
This great oracle of the East India Company himself admits that, if there is no power vested in the Court of Directors but that of the patronage, there is really no government vested in them at all.
I much more enjoy the company of freedom fighters and justice campaigners than I do the company of hedge fund managers.
Now, suppose that a homeowner puts down only 3% of their own money or 3.5% for the FHA. That means if prices go down by only 3%, the house will be in negative equity and it would pay the homeowner just to walk away and say, "The house now is worth less than the mortgage I owe. I think I'm just going to move out and buy a cheaper house." So it's very risky when you have only a 3% or 3.5% equity for the loan. The bank really isn't left with much cushion as collateral.
I'm lucky right now because I'm not that famous, people will look at the work just as the work, and people respond to it pretty well. It's just hard to know exactly what group I need to meet and where I need to be. I think fame helps, but I want it to be separate as much as it can. Fame is just so weird, people just love famous people.
There are two companies that the AI Fund has invested in - Woebot and Landing AI - and the AI Fund has a number of internal teams working on new projects. We usually bring in people as employees, work with them to turn ideas into startups, then have the entrepreneurs go into the startup as founders.
It's quite astonishing how much money people make in the hedge fund business and in the private equity field, and how well-off affluent families really are.
Each company is different because they get their DNA from the founders.
Try not to cry too much because it can be pretty heart-breaking and pretty hard.
Microsoft is a much bigger company than Qualcomm - a much bigger company - and there were a few days where I thought, 'I don't know if I can do this. It's huge.' My job was to come into the company and grow new businesses, and I thought, 'I'm not sure,' but it's all worked out pretty well.
The reality is the only place a company's culture is going to start and end is at the beginning of that company. And it always starts with the founders. So if you can't create an environment of founders and founding employees who are going to represent the company you want, then you are never going to get there. You have to look at your own network and find what you are missing. So if you don't have a female or someone who has an international perspective or a person with a bio degree, but those perspectives matter to the firm or product you want to create, then it's never going to work out.
With the premise that we look for technical co-founders to run a company, I view myself as being a coach to that technical co-founder. I can help them with their business issues, with the growth issues of taking a company from a very early stage to something much larger.
I got to know the cast pretty well. Not so much Leonard Nimoy, I got to know William Shatner pretty well. They are a pretty good gang. The production company that made 'Star Trek' is the kind of production company that likes to have fun.
Equity is the cushion that protects financial institutions from unexpected changes in the value of their assets. The greater the leverage, the smaller the losses required to wipe out a company's equity, leaving it without enough money to repay the people who hold its debt.
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