
How to Be Successful - sama
http://blog.samaltman.com/how-to-be-successful
======
telesilla
It's also very successful, if you have built a stable business and a way of
supporting yourself and a few others around you. Being successful doesn't
always mean having a 1BN valuation. But sure, it's nice to think that one day,
it could happen. I'm just grateful every day that what I've got now -
stability and plenty of resources - was a result of pretty much what Sam said.
Believing in ourselves and not giving up, and building something meaningful to
others that isn't easily duplicated. Sometimes I feel that's not enough, here
on this site, but it is. The business I have right now: it just can't get that
big, the wider market doesn't need what I make. But I love what I do and I
have insane amounts of freedom and to my friends, I'm wildly successful. I'm
reminded by that each time I know I'm doing well enough to live the life I
wanted, and can support my family. That's success, too.

~~~
avip
It's also very successful if you were a stay home parent and your kids were
able to succeed thanks to your efforts.

~~~
core-questions
Absolutely. There are a range of definitions for successful, but I think in
many ways it's best left as "in the eye of the beholder", in the sense that
it's about achieving your own personal threshold. If you build a way of life
that is sustainable for yourself and provides you with personal and
psychological stability for you and your dependents, and if you feel at least
reasonably fulfilled in this, you can call yourself successful.

If you don't think you're doing what you should be, or think you could be
doing So Much More, or that you have wasted potential, then maybe you're not
successful yet, even if you're doing better on paper than some people who do
view themselves as such.

~~~
swagasaurus-rex
I have a great many friends that do not have the kind of money and
opportunities I have simply due to my choice in a software career path.

Even a boring thankless job for me is where many of my peers dream they could
be.

------
CPLX
I clicked on this expecting to hate-read it and then post something snarky,
but it's actually pretty reasonable, assuming you read the title as "How To Be
Sucessful In Business"

With that said I think it's missing a hugely important area -- which is mental
and emotional health.

One of the things I've noticed in friends who have incredible business
success, and have noticed in myself during periods of greatest productivity,
is that successful people are able to keep their emotional state in check.

They don't get rolled easily by criticism or praise, they don't get dragged
into short term thinking or fake crisis, and they don't let an emotional state
push them into saying or doing something that they'll regret, or will blow up
a relationship, or give away info in a negotiation.

I think it's up in the top 3-4 attributes of those who are able to fit the
description described in the article.

~~~
kochikame
I think you're right.

The first big step in Emotional Intelligence is being able to understand and
regulate your own emotions, and it's the first step for a reason.

Kids who passed the famous marshmallow test (were able to resist the impulse
to eat the marshmallow when unsupervised) were far more successful in later
life

I have two brothers who occasionally get very angry, cut off relationships on
whims and sabotage themselves through acts of defiance and misplaced protest,
and neither of them is very 'successful' (however you define it). There is
definitely a link.

~~~
bhntr3
[https://www.theguardian.com/education/2018/jun/01/famed-
impu...](https://www.theguardian.com/education/2018/jun/01/famed-impulse-
control-marshmallow-test-fails-in-new-research)

Unfortunately the marshmallow test as a predictor of later success is
debunked. It's part of the replication crisis in psychology. Half of the
psychology we learned may be wrong. People just aren't that straightforward.

[https://www.theatlantic.com/amp/article/576223](https://www.theatlantic.com/amp/article/576223)

~~~
haihaibye
The 'replicators' here are assuming humans are blank slates even though the
best evidence is concienciousness is 40-60% heritable.

We also know people with high time preference/ delayed gratification are
wealthier.

So now - what is controlling for parental wealth doing? It's removing this
genetic component.

Social science is confounded by genetics all the time, once you start to look
for it.

------
throwaway000021
I'm not successful, but my strategy for getting there is specific....

\-- never put yourself in the position to go bankrupt

\-- stay in the game - keep your overheads down to the minimum practical for
you

\-- learn to program so you can implement your own ideas without need for a
cofounder or need to pay for anything more than hosting and a domain

\-- just keep banging out your ideas into products until one catches on.

\-- try to bootstrap and if possible avoid raising capital - it's too
distracting and costly and dilutes your time massively

\-- do your very best to avoid employing anyone until you really can't avoid
it

\-- don't get a cofounder if you can possibly avoid it - it can lead to
arguments and business failure... if you really need help, bootstrap till you
can employ someone

\-- repeat until success or giving up, not because you're forced to stop

~~~
mindcrime
By and large, this is the same algorithm I use. I've really only deviated on
one point.

That said, I'd add to this the idea of thinking in terms of "Return on Capital
Invested" where your time and effort are a from of Capital. IOW, it's
important (IMO) to figure out how to direct your attention towards the efforts
that are most likely to yield the outcomes (whether financial or otherwise)
that you seek. The problem, of course, is that you don't know in advance how
things will play out. So you have to experiment, but once you begin an
experiment the big question becomes "do I keep going on this, or redirect my
effort to something else which has a higher probability of success?" (for
however you define "success").

~~~
fyfy18
One thing worth bearing in mind when bootstrapping a company is that to be
successful you just need to earn enough to cover costs and pay yourself
something at the end of the day. Which is completely different to 95% of the
companies you read about on here.

If you are building it on the side even just making a few hundred dollars per
month is going to completely change things for you, and give you the freedom
to explore more risky ideas. We may not have a universal income, but with hard
work and dedication ("showing up is half the battle"), I believe anybody here
could build a side business to supplement their income in a meaningful way.

------
davebryand
A more accurate title for this is "How to Be Financially Successful".

I'd love for Sam to write a post called "How to Be a Successful Human" or "How
to Live a Successful Life". This more important topic has little-to-nothing to
do with financial success.

~~~
sama
I also wrote this, which I think counting reprints is my most-read blog post
ever:

[https://blog.samaltman.com/the-days-are-long-but-the-
decades...](https://blog.samaltman.com/the-days-are-long-but-the-decades-are-
short)

~~~
Dave_TRS
Re-reading this made me notice the overlap between the two posts. Most of the
suggestions across both posts fall into a few common themes. I find having a
shorter list of "keys to success" helps me keep them top of mind day to day. I
see four main themes here across both posts:

1\. Be internally driven. Gain energy by working on things you are excited
about. Think independently. Don't get pushed around. Don't default to doing
the same thing everyone else is doing. Don't chase status. Have almost too
much self belief. You can only motivate yourself to work hard and sell your
ideas to others if you genuinely believe in them and your motivation is
internally driven.

2\. Have clear goals. Have bold goals. Make them achievable by breaking them
down by day, by week, by decade. Take advantage of compounding to make small
daily accomplishments snowball to reach bold long term ambitions. Compounding
works not just for financial wealth, but also for building knowledge,
developing skills, relationship, and health. Taking new risks constantly will
help you learn new things faster and speed up compounding in all domains. Try
to create enough buffer to be able to take risks and experiment in all areas
of your life.

3\. Be focused and don't waste time on things that don't matter. Minimize
cognitive load. Minimize personal burn rate. Being focused does not mean
sacrificing exercise, eating well, and sleeping. Most people would gain by
spending more time thinking about which critical priorities to focus on. Start
by killing the most obvious bad uses of time like TV and twitter.

3\. Work hard. Whether your goals are in business, family, fitness, or
altruism, working hard at something that naturally excites you is not only
easier than working half-heartedly on things you hate, but is also the only
way to achieve your goals. Working hard goes beyond putting in hours - it also
means being willful, pushing through rejection, being persistent to bend the
world to your will. Being a doer not a talker is just the first step.

4\. Surround yourself with smart ambitious people who may join your team,
teach you something, energize you and give you ideas. Invest in relationships
by putting others first: be quick to do favors, don't judge too quickly, be
forgiving, do not burn bridges, pause to think before acting especially if
you're angry, be nice to everyone including strangers.

~~~
saberience
These lists are always the same and never say anything new. Work hard, have
goals, be focused, etc etc. No fucking shit. Everyone has heard this stuff
X1000. The problem is, you can read the same shit again and again, but if
you're not that way from the beginning, reading the same crap isn't suddenly
going to change you.

Most people who are mega driven are that way because of their birth parents
and childhood. If you were born into a crap family who didn't encourage you,
by the time you're 18, it's radically harder to change, no matter how many
billionaires come along and say "hard luck chum, just work harder and set some
goals."

~~~
cosmie
> The problem is, you can read the same shit again and again, but if you're
> not that way from the beginning, reading the same crap isn't suddenly going
> to change you.

> Most people who are mega driven are that way because of their birth parents
> and childhood. If you were born into a crap family who didn't encourage you,
> by the time you're 18, it's radically harder to change

I both wholeheartedly agree with the above statements, but not necessarily the
intent they seem to have.

I came from an incredibly disadvantaged background - single parent household,
below the federal poverty line my entire childhood, unstable household (moved
20+ times before I turned 18, and spent several years of my childhood
technically homeless and couchsurfing). I was fully self-supportive by the
time I turned 17.

While I've had a lot of missteps and baggage due to my childhood, I also owe
my current success and drive to it. The same coping mechanisms I developed
them have served me well in my professional career:

\- My brother and sister used our circumstances to give up, whereas I used
them as motivation to try harder to get the hell out.

\- I developed a very pragmatic and flexible mental framework. Growing up with
zero power in any situation and zero support to fall back on, I learned to
pragmatically accept what is while simultaneously evaluating any potential
leverage points to change what is. I became incredibly effective at
identifying those leverage points, and mutually-beneficial ways to exploit[1]
them.

\- I didn't make waves, but I learned how to ride the ones around me in ways
that didn't rock others' boats. Having no resources of my own, and in some
cases being wholly reliant on the benevolence of others, I intimately learned
the value of introducing as little friction as possible into situations.

\- I became very aware of implicit assumptions around me, and the friction and
potential hardships[2][3] created by them. I make a conscious effort to
address assumptions explicitly, because of that.

\- Being under chronic stress for my entire childhood, I have an incredibly
high tolerance for high-stress situations and how to cope with them.

Not everything that came out of my childhood was positive, but I've been able
to translate much of it directly into incredibly valuable and fairly unique
capabilities in a professional context, and I've made a successful career
using those as a foundation. It could be argued that I may have been more
successful at this point in my life if I had started on better footing, but it
could have also gone the other way if I had never had the impetus to develop
the internal motivation and skills/abilities I have today.

[1] I don't mean exploit with any negative/malicious intent, but exploit as in
"don't waste an opportunity".

[2] I was able to get accepted to Columbia, and qualified for a free ride due
to both academic and financial reasons. I passed on it because even though the
school and room/board was free, I wasn't sure how I'd handle the logistics
costs of moving there, summers/holidays, incidentals, etc. Turns out there are
resources for these types of needs, but I didn't know that at the time and
their acceptance literature didn't address it at all.

[3] To this day, I have an intense aversion to birthdays. It's incredibly
common to have kid's birthdays at places which have incidental expenses for
participation or admittance, such as game centers or theme/water parks. And
rarely do people make it explicit on the invite what those are and if those
incidentals are covered as part of their event fee or expected to be paid by
the person invited. For my daughter's birthday, I always ensure and state that
all activities are covered, and also explicitly state that gifts are optional,
won't be opened during the party, and that they please be anonymous if anyone
chooses to provide one. For most people, neither one of those parts of the
invite will be very meaningful. But for some people, simply stating that can
be the difference between them declining the invite outright, accepting it and
it being a hardship and causing undue stress/friction for them, or accepting
it and enjoying themselves. The same sorts of scenarios exist both
professionally and personally, and being cognizant of them can bring a lot of
success in life.

~~~
johntran
You are a wonderful person. Keep doing you :).

------
avip
This post embodies everything I dislike about success fluff. I look up to
people I admire - Tesla, Nick Drake, Mingus, My highschool Chemistry teacher -
they meet maybe 0-3 of the list. Creation of value is such a delicate thing,
we should not flatten it that way.

As a side effect, if we widen our view of success, there will be more place up
in the 99.9%...

~~~
sgarman
I think one of the problems with trying to understand how to achieve success
is that by referencing the successful we often are dealing with outliers and
not rules. I think this is why a lot of people here like seeing startup
failure blogs instead of startup success blogs. So much survivorship bias.

~~~
seizethecheese
I hear this a lot, but I’m not convinced there aren’t enough successful people
to learn from. There are probably tens of thousands of “self made”
multimillionaires. Surely there are patterns.

------
MetalGuru
_You don 't want to be in a career where people who have been doing it for two
years can be as effective as people who have been doing it for twenty—your
rate of learning should always be high._

I'm having trouble reconciling this point. How can you continuously increase
your effectiveness exponentially in a particular role? Take being a developer
for example. Seems like the progression of skill is usually linear (with some
variability). Is Sam saying that investing in becoming a great engineer ins't
effective if your ultimate goal is to be extremely successful? I feel like
this is overly reductionist. Maybe being an engineer for your entire career
isn't going to lead to that massive success, but spending part of your career
cultivating that skill does provide indirect benefits that can help you become
super successful. For example, being able to rapidly prototype an MVP when you
are testing product ideas. Building a business is the high-leverage action
that could lead to massive success, but the years you spent cultivating your
technical ability could be what enabled you to be able to build the MVP in the
first place. Or maybe it allowed you to recognize good technical talent if
your first engineering hires. I think exclusively focusing on tasks that
provide orders of magnitude improvement is too direct and superficial of an
answer. I'd be interested in hearing people's thoughts.

~~~
robfitz
I think the "career" you're talking about is entrepreneur, built upon the
"skill" of programmer. On the other hand, if your "career" is programmer,
you're limited by salary, and competing (largely) on skill, which a talented
recent graduate could beat you at. If your "career" is entrepreneur, then you
get a bunch of multipliers (as Sam calls them) which make your core skills
more valuable.

For example, 10 years into your career as an entrepreneur, you'll have a
network (and possibly financial assets, and possibly an existing successful
business, plus vague intangibles like 'wisdom' and industry insight) which all
lets you be vastly more effective than someone who is equally skilled but
still in their first couple years.

I don't think Sam is telling you not to build any particular skill, but rather
to put yourself on a path where, 10 years down the line, you'll be able to use
those skills in a way that other folks can't compete with, thanks to the other
assets/resources/multipliers you've built up for yourself, and the fact that
you're playing in an area where there is a) the potential for scale and b) you
own the upside if it works.

Caveat: I have no idea, just my interpretation of the article.

------
distant_hat
All such articles should be preceded by huge blink tags with 'Warning:
survivorship bias ahead'.

~~~
ngngngng
I think 99% of the time bringing up survivorship bias adds nothing to the
conversation. If I tell you how I ran a marathon, you could shout
"survivorship bias!" But that fact still stands that I hadn't successfully run
a marathon before I did those things.

~~~
thisisweirdok
It's not meant to add to the conversation, it's meant to get people to shut up
about giving advice on becoming successful.

There's no trick to it, you need to work and get lucky. Emphasis on the
getting lucky. We don't need 1,000 thinkpieces from people who are already
successful.

Give me an article from a person who can reflect on why they're not
successful. That will be more interesting any day of the week.

~~~
ngngngng
> That will be more interesting any day of the week.

I doubt it. I'm not successful because I haven't even put in the work these
articles lay out. And I definitely haven't gotten lucky. I assume millions of
dollars definitely won't come my way until I at least do the part of the
equation in my control.

Doesn't sound like a very interesting article to me.

------
csnewb
#2: Have almost too much self-belief. Self-confidence has been something I've
struggled with my entire life, to the point where its crippled my career
growth as a developer. I've been told that I'm a good developer, but if I only
believed in myself I could go a lot further and become truly great. However,
it's hard for me to believe in myself when I don't have a lot of data points
to prove that I AM competent and capable. Over the past 3 years of working
full-time yes I've accomplished some things, but none of them were truly
difficult or ground breaking. I'm always pushing myself harder to learn more
and get better, but it never feels like its having enough impact on me
actually growing. So if all I have are at best average/mediocre
accomplishments, how do I convince myself that no, I AM great, that I CAN do
this? I feel like if I start having a lot of self-belief it'll just become a
lie that will blind me from my weaknesses and cause me to stop growing.

~~~
bonestamp2
> Over the past 3 years of working full-time yes I've accomplished some
> things, but none of them were truly difficult or ground breaking.

3 years? Fuck. It sounds like you're on track for a long and successful
career. Not everyone peaks early. Give yourself a break, spend a little more
time networking and a little less time on your hard skills and you'll probably
find greater opportunities for ground breaking things through relationships
than through your skills.

------
lesingerouge
I am sorry, but this list does the exact same thing that a thousand Vogue or
similar magazines do for whatever topic is trending. Substitute "successful"
with "sexy" or "slim" or whatever and you get the same packaging.

It does feel like shoehorning people into fitting some particular "pattern"
that the author believes to be the "secret" to obtain said goal.

I always find it surprising that such short (relatively) articles, choke full
of relatively difficult to apply advice gain a mass following and plenty of
readers.

It does remind me of the rather stupid advice that depressed people get every
day: "pull yourself up!" Amazing how we do seem to forget the complexity that
riddles our minds.

------
beatpanda
> It’s not entirely clear to me why working hard has become a Bad Thing in
> certain parts of the US

Most people don't have any real access to capital, and most people's labor is
totally alienated from its actual value. For most people, advice to "Work
Hard" amounts to "Sacrifice More So Your Boss Can Get Richer".

Also, as far as "working hard", Americans are an extreme outlier:
[https://20somethingfinance.com/american-hours-worked-
product...](https://20somethingfinance.com/american-hours-worked-productivity-
vacation/). Maybe if Sam is hearing pushback against "Work Hard" as good
advice, it's because Americans already work harder than other people in
advanced economies for a lower quality of life (meaning less access to
healthcare, less paid vacation, less self-reported happiness, etc).

Sam's a smart guy and knows all of this already, so it's baffling why he would
include such a stupid throwaway line in this essay.

~~~
lordCarbonFiber
Because he'd love for more fools to work hard and make him richer.

~~~
fastbmk
Yes, it's true.

1\. Write articles about huge success. 2\. Inspire people to loose their lives
trying to get rich. 3\. If some of them start getting lucky by pure chance,
convince them to share a large part of their business for small amount of
money. ... 5\. PROFIT!

------
apsec112
IMO, this would be an order of magnitude more impactful if each point were
illustrated with vivid examples, although I understand that would take more
time to write. There's a vast gulf between saying, eg., "take more risks" in
the abstract, and doing some specific thing that seems dangerous right now.
Past risks that worked out always seem justified in retrospect, so it would be
super cool to go into detail on eg. just how crazy SpaceX seemed back in 2002.

------
johan_larson
I have to wonder who the target audience for this article is. The advice just
doesn't seem particularly actionable. A statement like, "I think the biggest
competitive advantage in business—either for a company or for an individual’s
career—is long-term thinking with a broad view of how different systems in the
world are going to come together," sounds great in a TED talk, but what the
heck is anyone supposed to do about it? It's shallow.

I think the article could be improved by considering more carefully who the
advice is intended for, and tailoring the advice to them. The advice for a
bright young college graduate should be different from the advice for a five-
time failed entrepreneur or someone who has plateaued in middle management at
50.

------
NicoJuicy
Points I learned:

\- Work hard

\- Have your sales point ( why should they do business with you and not with
someone else, who does the same. The sales point doesn't have to be related to
the thing you are selling / consulting on. They have to improve your overall
image. Nothing else). I seem to be able to sell better in person, than anyone
i ever saw ( but the work takes time...).

\- Grow your network or know people who have the network

\- Filter your network. Don't spend time on people who will never be in your
niche. I filter it to simple: business. ( doing computers in the past, they
were the most understanding clients) and no websites ( personally, i only
create them for friends)

\- Take risks

\- Spend money when you can outsource, because your time is expensive.

\- Have a long term plan, which niche are you growing into. If you have been
"doing everything and nothing", than what has been the most profitable with
the least amount of time spend.

\- Prioritize, because your time is expensive

\- A plan can take time to come together. Sometimes links ( helping someone
out 2 years before, pay out later in the future). Don't be afraid to help them
remember, when you helped them in the past.

\- Don't be scared to drop clients. Especially if they are extremely rich/have
no good business, they will consume all of your time and question every
invoice you send.

\- Don't partner up for doing a cloud application for "free"/"low-fee" in
return of being a partner. Most cloud applications fail.

\- If you are a developer, your "online-business" will probably fail in online
marketing ( the chance is big). Get a plan how you would grow the business,
before you have clients. Don't count on online marketing for it.

\- Solve problems or iterate on solutions for existing problems

\- Money earns money, if you use it

------
bb101
Having read the title of the post, and browsed its contents, I went and
ordered an autobiography of Gandhi with the hope of reminding myself what real
success is.

------
neilk
90% of the advice here is solid, and if you are certain that high-risk high-
reward businesses are what you are built for, and you have a safety net, then
by all means join sama and the crew.

But there are other good ways to be an outlier success than just being a
businessperson. I was reminded of Hamming's "You and Your Research" which
offered similar advice for academics. (Ironically, a copy is also hosted by
paulg.
[http://www.paulgraham.com/hamming.html](http://www.paulgraham.com/hamming.html))

There are many points of similarity, so many that I start to wonder if sama
was intentionally recasting its advice for businesspeople.

\- be an independent thinker

\- be courageous

\- work is like compound interest, you need both hard work and talent

\- work on small things that could grow to be big things and where you have
some angle of attack

\- have a network of people.

\- be connected to what your colleagues do, but not a trend-seeker

\- be emotionally committed

\- be a good salesperson

\- know your strengths and weaknesses

====

But there are some points of difference, like

\- you'll do better work in spartan surroundings

\- tolerate ambiguity. Believe in your idea enough to go forward, doubt it
enough to consider alternatives

\- make your work something that can lift others up to do more than you did

\- Use the resources of the organization, don't fight it

\- Don't be too rebellious or outwardly nonconformist

------
rwz
I find it hard to read those kind of posts because they all boil down to "have
a bunch of variables you have very little control over in the correct state
and you're pretty much set"

If you're lucky enough to be born with a good wetware and an advantageous set
of mental characteristics, you can tweak something here and there, build on
top of it and become "successful". If you're nowhere near, there's very little
you can do to change it.

Take "be internally driven" for example. This shit is almost impossible to
intentionally cultivate unless you're just lucky enough to be born this way.

You can call it "loser mentality", but even that is ultimately defined by your
genes.

------
staunch
It's very common to over-analyze and generalize the specific behaviors of
successful people, rather than acknowledge the stark reality of what truly
separates them from others. There's a tendency to focus on the "symptoms" of
their success rather than the root cause.

An accurate description of reality is both less flattering and seemingly less
useful to others. But it does at least have the virtue of being real.

IMHO there are three major factors in changing the world:

#1 High general intelligence and ambition (genetics)

#2 Highly educated well-off parents (environment)

#3 Support of powerful people (opportunity)

You probably can't do much without at least one of these factors. Most people
that do big things have all three working in their favor.

------
voiceclonr
This is a well written piece. However IMHO, one cannot lay down a path for
success. Moderate success, yes - but huge success no (which is what this
alludes to). Success doesn't refer to a rule book before manifesting. There
are lot of great nuggets one could take from the article and apply - but I see
them as little breadcrumbs that _might_ lead to success. Even if it did, we
have no way to prove or disprove success factors.

Best thing is to take the learnings, enjoy the journey towards potential
success and try not to become emotionally invested into the end goal. It's
super hard I know.

------
aphextron
1\. Be born to a wealthy middle class family and go to an elite school.

~~~
sama
The biggest reason I'm excited about basic income is the amount of human
potential it will unleash by freeing more people to take risks.

Until then, if you aren't born lucky, you have to claw your way up for awhile
before you can take big swings. If you are born in extreme poverty, then this
is super difficult :(

It is obviously an incredible shame and waste that opportunity is so unevenly
distributed. But I've witnessed enough people be born with the deck stacked
badly against them and go on to incredible success to know it's possible.

I am deeply aware of the fact that I personally would not be where I am if I
weren't born incredibly lucky.

~~~
eanzenberg
What basic income will most likely do is send vast swaths of average people to
entertainment and drugs. It's already happening, as social nets get bigger and
wider.

~~~
core-questions
This is a huge concern. I have known several people who, when they lose their
seasonal jobs, coast on unemployment insurance until the very last minute,
sometimes even going as far as welfare and couch surfing before a new job
finds them (they won't go looking for it themselves).

All they want is beer, weed, porn, and video games. They don't seem to want
relationships, work, friendships beyond smoking buddies... it's saddening,
honestly.

I worry that UBI will enable large swathes of these people, permanently
stunted in their personal growth, incapable of acting as real adults.
Meanwhile, UBI itself may not be a sustainable system; if it results in
taxation that cannot be borne by those who keep working, the result will be
that it will eventually be cancelled. What happens to all those who subsist on
UBI if that happens? Nothing is guaranteed...

~~~
SketchySeaBeast
Like you say, these stunted people already exist. They already do everything
in their power to minimize their work time, including trying for disability or
welfare. UBI won't create more of them, and it won't end the ones we have, but
it may add stability to the working poor.

~~~
rabidrat
How do you know that UBI won't create more of them? It's a common refrain,
like with legalization ("anyone who wants to smoke weed is already doing it"),
and I know several people who didn't smoke before it became legal, and are now
smoking regularly. It seems reasonable to think that UBI would enable some
class of people who would otherwise exert themselves, to no longer bother.

~~~
SketchySeaBeast
Because there's already social safety nets those people can use. And yes,
absolutely, there are probably going to be groups of people who are barely
working now that will stop, but given there's already means to not work, I
can't see this being a huge group, and really, this is an optimist / pessimist
face-off, which is sad, because that's how we probably see the possible
outcomes too. The only way we can know if it'll work or not is for someone to
try it - which, thankfully, YC is.

~~~
rabidrat
Not sure if you've ever used those social safety nets, but they are not easy
to qualify for and/or sign up for, so only the stubborn and/or desperate
actually take advantage of them. There are also disincentives, like
misinformation, run-arounds, and social shaming. From what I've heard, these
reasons are exactly why UBI is a better strategy than those social safety nets
--and why we can expect more people to take advantage of them.

------
mythrwy
Good article. A lot of this stuff seems to come down to will (or maybe
desire).

The power of sheer will is underrated imo. A long time ago, before technology
(beyond sticks and stones) people did some incredible things to survive. They
must have because we are here. I mean, chasing down deer for days, surviving
in extremely harsh conditions, undergoing hunger and pain and injury and
coming out the other side alive. We still have that capacity to some extent
but most people don't believe this and stop at first discomfort.

Will seems almost magic sometimes, at least in my limited life experience. We
do have incredible capacity to bend the world to our vision but it usually
goes unfulfilled.

I wish I could will great success for myself but alas, although I think I'd
enjoy being FU wealthy, it really seems like more trouble than it's worth. I
don't want to deal with managing a bunch of resources and people. Don't want
that sucking down my life. Don't want the responsibility, it seems a bit like
a prison. So I do what interest me in places I feel good about until it
doesn't anymore and usually skate by in relative comfort. I'd like to change
this and reprogram my approach, but not sure how to go about it. I don't know
if it's nature or nurture or what the situation is but I've noticed some
people have incredible drive to materially succeed and best everyone else
around them. However I like smelling the roses and casually enjoying my time
on the planet. Maybe there's a pill I can get for this?

------
ca98am79
> "You also want to be an exponential curve yourself—you should aim for your
> life to follow an ever-increasing up-and-to-the-right trajectory"

ugh.. I guess this comes down to what you define as "successful" but another
option is to be content in the present, and not anxious and desperately
wanting the future, when you imagine everything will be better than it is now.
When you treat life this way, it becomes just a means to an end, instead of an
end in itself.

------
throwaway5752
I can't speak for the author, but in my opinion if you treat this as a
checklist to follow instead of a set of observations, you will probably be
intolerable to most people and will probably fail at your goal of being
successful.

~~~
sidcool
I think this is like a checklist for people to follow on their on volition.
There cannot be a single recipe for success that applies to everyone. Hence
the "Independent Thought" point in the post.

------
liminal_wizard
Sam, how does "consistency" play a role?

I'm all over the place in my work over the past 10 years. I've worked on
projects in several different disciplines (biotech, accelerators, consulting,
environment). I tend to make forceful starts, but then drive myself off course
either running out of money and getting a job or lack of a long term vision.

How do I resolve this?

------
harshulpandav
1\. Be Healthy

Regularly get your vitamin levels checked and make sure to get adequate
Vitamin D3

Regularly get your hormone levels checked for any imbalance.

Exercise, breathe, sleep well, and eat healthy.

------
cataractum
What sort of careers can be considered "compounding" in the way Altman
describes it?

Economist? Engineer? Lawyer? Doctor? Dentist?

I'm an economist, and i've always wondered if people with 2 years of
experience can be better than those with 20+ years - if they're smart enough.

~~~
sedeki
I might be wrong (too lazy to check; on mobile), but I don’t think he is
talking about compounding careers per se, but rather advices to look for
opportunities that compound.

------
benohear
The bit I struggle with is the contradiction between "try ideas out cheaply
and fail many times until you hit on the right one" and "believe in what you
do and keep going come what may". How do you pick between the two?

~~~
jjn2009
Measuable growth. If something is working it will be self evident if youre
looking in the right places. The airbnb way is probably nonoptimal.

------
bluedino
>> It’s not entirely clear to me why working hard has become a Bad Thing in
certain parts of the US

What does he mean by this?

~~~
lrajlich
I assume he means something like the Moritz's article about China's "996" work
hours expectation and its negative reception in silicon valley press.

------
mbrock
Make sure to also check out Michael Cera’s video “Impossible is the Opposite
of Possible”:

[https://youtu.be/nAV0sxwx9rY](https://youtu.be/nAV0sxwx9rY)

------
turc1656
This is the most important point in the whole post: _As your career
progresses, each unit of work you do should generate more and more results.
There are many ways to get this leverage, such as capital, technology, brand,
network effects, and managing people_

That goes straight to the concept of scalability. Usually we talk about it in
terms of businesses scaling or benefiting from economies of scale, but this is
talking about scalability on a personal level. Not to be understated.

------
ah765
I think most of these are true. Here are two of my own that I generally don't
see emphasized as much.

1\. Do something wrong

Remember that you have to be exceptional to reach outlier success. You won't
be unusual if you do what everyone thinks is the correct path. When you feel
strongly about something, be unwilling to change or compromise. If you're not
doing anything that's considered "wrong", you won't be exceptional, and you
probably won't succeed.

2\. Have many advantages

Have a high IQ. Have the ability to easily work hard. Have at least reasonably
favorable social conditions (no debt, some money from family). To be
exceptional, you need every advantage you can get. If you don't have many
advantages, then you should really consider whether you can compete with
people that have them.

I don't think it's right to encourage _everyone_ to try for outlier success.
By definition, you need to be an outlier to reach it. On the other hand, if
you have reason to believe you are an outlier, then the odds are better than
you might think.

------
DoreenMichele
Lists like this implicitly assume some baseline good health, an assumption
that really is baseless. My health issues are a huge factor in my lack of
financial success and public recognition. I'm very good at some things, but my
health issues take a lot of my time. It's a huge barrier to accomplishing
things, compounded by the poverty it fosters and other factors.

------
sangd
These are very uninteresting to read. The first 3 points don't really explain
how to successfully achieve them. They all come to 1 single point, you must be
very skillful at multiple things to achieve them. And I think you're defining
money/finance success, and not other kinds of successes.

------
twakefield
“Also, learn how to evaluate what people are great at, and put them in those
roles. (This is the most important thing I have learned about management, and
I haven’t read much about it.)”

Finding and accentuating strengths was a big focus of my previous employer,
Rackspace. They used a program based on Strengths Finder [1] to determine your
“strengths” and even had them displayed on your corporate ID badge. Their
management philosophy was based on putting people in positions based on their
strengths.

It seemed a bit hokey at first and it had its problems but it was pretty
refreshing compared to the typical corporate environment that espouses working
harder to overcome your weaknesses.

[1]
[https://www.gallupstrengthscenter.com/](https://www.gallupstrengthscenter.com/)

------
yingw787
Great post Sam! My two cents is to try and compete against yourself: quantify
your actions with some set of metrics and loop your measurements of those
metrics into a feedback loop of improvement. That way, you never feel left
behind and have your improvement cycles interrupted or lost, and you gain a
good deal of self-introspection, which is invaluable in a world where people
nudge/push you around. Your understanding of yourself has to be the ground
truth where all other personality traits, habits, and higher-level tasks
evolve from, and these combine to generate high-quality work and personal
roadmaps.

~~~
J253
> My two cents is to try and compete against yourself

This. With social media so ubiquitous it's hard _not_ to compare yourself to
others. I, personally, find internal motivation so much more of a driving
force than external motivation. As long as I do better than I did last time,
I'll be happy.

For example, if I can improve my 1600 meter run time by 5 seconds, that's a
great success for me. And if I'm able to consistently see improvement over
time, I'm successful. On the other hand, If I compare my 7m5s 1600m time to my
neighbor's 5m30s time I feel terrible. And depending on personality type,
seeing such a stark difference between where you currently are and where
someone else is, it might deter them from even trying to get better. "I'll
never get down to 5m30s, so why should I bother running at all?"

I'm not saying _all_ external comparisons are bad but I think it's important
to know when to compare yourself to yourself (to ensure daily incremental
progress is being achieved) and when to look up and see where you are relative
to others (to see how your incremental progress is summing up in the big
picture).

------
xiphias2
Own things: I agree with this.

The best way to own things is to leave Google/Facebook: What??? I know this is
an entrepreneur blog, but what happened to the sentence ,,If you want to be
rich don't start a startup''?

Most of my friends who are rich are working (or worked) at Google/Facebook and
just accumulated assets over time (until they had enough money to stop
working).

All you need is start accumulating assets as early as possible and get to
15-20x of your salary (at most 10 years if you're really frugal, more if not
that frugal). Don't be afraid of not having much cash left if you have a
stable job.

------
plainOldText
I have no idea what it takes to be successful – whatever success even means,
although a reasonable definition would run along the lines of good finances +
family/friends + health + sense of purpose + luck – but I'm willing to wager
you could significantly increase your chances of being successful by:

0\. Being curious

1\. Thinking for yourself

2\. Thinking about your thinking

3\. Tweaking your thinking in the light of new discoveries

4\. Associating yourself, as much as you can, with people who they themselves
follow 0,1,2,3

The world is very complex. No one truly knows what they're doing. Our models
of the world are just local approximations

------
ThomPete
Lucky beats smart :)

------
adetrest
I agree with you.

All these books and essays ultimately boil down to "what worked for me, plus a
million other things I'm not mentioning because they're not as glamorous, and
a ton of luck: it could happen to you too!"

Yes there is hard work in becoming successful but a _ton_ of it is luck: being
in the right place, at the right time, doing the right thing, with the right
people... This talk, peddling luck, expresses what I mean:
[https://vimeo.com/53494258](https://vimeo.com/53494258)

------
maxwin
An incredibly great post. Thank you for sharing. I have always wanted to take
risk to found a startup, but since I am in Myanmar, I will need to claw my way
up for a while to build up safety nets before I can take big risks. It is a
great reminder that I cannot lose myself in a comfortable & stable
career/lifestyle. Focusing too much on short term gains will blind me for long
term achievement. But the risk is real especially for people in developing
country so I will need to proceed carefully.

~~~
sidcool
Wish you luck.

I totally understand that not all places on the Earth are conducive to
entrepreneurial ambitions. Some places are downright hostile. I wish we had
some mechanism to help those from such places.

------
abalone
_> It’s not entirely clear to me why working hard has become a Bad Thing in
certain parts of the US_

What is this a reference to? What parts of the US? It's not backed up by a
citation.

This is not the first time Altman has dropped a not so subtle
cultural/political jab without any data to back it up.[1]

[1] "It seems easier to accidentally speak heresies in San Francisco every
year." [http://blog.samaltman.com/e-pur-si-
muove](http://blog.samaltman.com/e-pur-si-muove)

------
sidcool
My biggest takeaway from the article:

"Most people are primarily externally driven; they do what they do because
they want to impress other people. This is bad for many reasons, but here are
two important ones.

First, you will work on consensus ideas and on consensus career tracks. You
will care a lot—much more than you realize—if other people think you’re doing
the right thing. This will probably prevent you from doing truly interesting
work, and even if you do, someone else would have done it anyway."

~~~
dmh2000
I'd phrase this a little differently.

I'd say "they do what they do because they are motivated by other peoples
expectations".

------
jshowa3
Is it odd that every time I see "How to be successful" posts, all of them are
subjective opinion that's repeated from several hundred other "How to be
successful" posts?

It's almost like there's no road map to success.

Here's my list, and its only one item.

"Be able to sustain yourself. To do that, find any profession where the income
> expenses."

I learned that's the single, most important thing to being successful. If you
can keep that up, everything else is just icing on the cake.

------
rw2
Great article! I think sales is one of the most important tools to life, and
it's one as a computer science major that was the hardest to cultivate.

Those are all positives directions but I also think about what attributes are
really important. I think working longer in a single industry is more
important than working hard for a brief amount of time inside. Most of the
opportunities comes later as you are deeper inside and just staying till that
point is important.

------
bytemut
It's reading like a recipe for success when really it's simply observation on
factors that helped the author have a successful career.

~~~
okl
Or factors of which the author thinks that they have helped him.

------
nijynot
One thing that came to mind is that some of these "13 thoughts" are kind of
dependent on each other.

For example, you might not want to be bold and have too much self-belief
without being able to work hard, think independently or making it easy for
yourself to take risks. If anything, try to do all of them, or be wary of how
you pick and choose from the list.

------
code_coyote
Advice in this article seems to only marginally apply to someone whose measure
of success is in an artistic field. You can't get the same marginal returns as
the article talks about. Also you're both competing with others for reader's
attention, but not competing with anyone, as your stories can only be made by
you.

------
thorn
Oh really. This article has click baity title. All these motivational posts
get repetitive. They have very little actionable content in them. Rather than
reading advices from the privileged ivory tower of survivors, I better go and
read "The dispossessed" by Ursula Le Guin.

------
codingdave
> almost no one in the history of the Forbes list has gotten there with a
> salary.

Being "rich" and being on "the Forbes list" are two very different standards
to aim for. (Neither of which has much to do with being a good/happy person or
living a good/happy life.)

------
locklock
I oftentimes find it difficult to balance actually attempting to be successful
with finding time for the backlog of Medium posts and other blog articles
about "How To Be Successful" that I assume I have to read in order to be
successful in the first place

------
xiaodai
Successful is a subjective term. Define successful your way is the best way to
be successful.

------
fastbmk
1\. Write articles about huge success. 2. Inspire people to loose their lives
trying to get rich. 3. If some of them start getting lucky by pure chance,
convince them to share a large part of their business for small amount of
money. ... 5. PROFIT!

------
okl
0\. To compare is to despair(?)

------
coldtea
This is so trite as to be insulting.

------
rawoke083600
Success for most people (yes there are outliers but you probably are not one
of them) is like a "good marriage" \- you have to work at it every day!!
*disclaimer: neither married nor really that successful

------
RickJWagner
I like legendary basketball coach John Wooden's definition of success better:

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0MM-
psvqiG8](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0MM-psvqiG8)

------
dennis_jeeves
Sam,

Philosophical question, why did you write such an article? What do you hope to
accomplish?

Now the criticism:

Surely it must have occurred to you that at least some people out there are
trying hard doing most things that you listed, and still not making it? What
are you doing about it? The last I looked at YC funding, I saw that the figure
is simply too low ( under $3000 a month) an incentive for a person with a
stable salary to get into any venture.

Most of what you have written is indeed good - but statements like: "Be hard
to compete with" \- are laughable. Stop making an ass of yourself with such
articles, you can do better ( I mean it). Have it proof read by someone smart,
before you put it out.

To others:

Users throwaway000021, saberience, neilk, voiceclonr, distant_hat, ah765,
mcilai, beatpanda and johan_larson have all made astute observations.

------
jaredtn
Really well-written. I especially agree with two points - "focus" and "learn
to work hard without burning out". Those two skills will take you far, no
matter your field.

------
polony
"You don't want to be in a career where people who have been doing it for two
years can be as effective as people who have been doing it for twenty"

Do you think programming is like this?

~~~
zeroname
Doesn't matter, once you're past a certain age, almost nobody will hire you as
a programmer. Don't build your entire career on it.

------
ruang
A negative article "How Not to Be Successful" would be interesting, with
unobvious observations. It could also include the top reasons why people get
rejected from YC.

------
haaen
Most surprising thing about this article: Diane von Furstenberg, fashion
designer and wife of billionaire media entrepreneur Barry Diller, was a
proofreader.

------
lucas_membrane
Three ways to be successful:

1\. by capitalizing on your strengths, and 2\. by capitalizing on the
weaknesses of others, and 3\. by knowing which way is easier.

------
ruang
Why don't more employees from Google and Facebook start successful companies?
They seem to exhibit all of these traits.

~~~
cypherpunks01
Did you read the full article, including the para "At YC, we’ve often noticed
a problem with founders that have spent a lot of time working at Google or
Facebook."?

~~~
throwawayjava
The prognosis from the article is:

 _When people get used to a comfortable life, a predictable job, and a
reputation of succeeding at whatever they do, it gets very hard to leave that
behind_

I think that there's a sampling bias here; in fact, that bias is even pointed
out in the paragraph: _> At YC, we’ve often noticed a problem with
founders..._. I.e., this is an observation about FAANG employees who become YC
founders.

But the fact is, very few of those drive/motivated Google/Facebook employees
leave and become YC founders. So this observation is an observation about a
very small subset of the people who choose to stay at GoogleFacebook.

I know a lot of people at the FAANGs who are there because they are primarily
motivated by technical and scientific problems. The FAANGs -- and esp their
research divisions -- are exceptionally good places to work for people who get
meaning and fulfillment from technical excellence.

------
kempbellt
1\. Stop caring what other people think

2\. Do what interests you

------
bookofjoe
"The secret of success is knowing something no one else knows."—Aristotle
Onassis. AKA insider trading.

------
sdinsn
Everyone has a different definition of what success is- and I sure have a
different one than the OP.

------
companyhen
"You get truly rich by owning things that increase rapidly in value."

 _buys more Bitcoin_

------
mbrodersen
The idea that there is only one way to be successful, and that we are all in
some grand competition to make as much money as possible, is beyond stupid.
Financial success does not in any way shape or form have anything to do with
achieving happiness.

------
SandersAK
How you measure success is how many people you bless - rick ross

------
simonsaidit
Reminds me of earl nightingale the strangest secret

------
henning
1\. Let me have >= 5-10% of your billion dollar company for a song.

2\. Be born into a successful family so that you will actually have the
ability and inclination to take risks the way I say you need to.

------
sidcool
0\. Take care of your physical and mental health.

...

14\. Take care of your family.

------
WannaB
Hello...article had good advice. How does one build a network from scratch and
become well connected? Thanks!

------
perfmode
“Things to consider if you’re trying to avoid being financially unsuccessful”

------
WannaB
Dumb question...How does one build a network and become connected?

------
ckluis
12\. You get rich by owning things.

~~~
Latteland
so i should just own a lot of things and then I'll be rich. Works for rich
people.

~~~
thomk
Well, what do you currently own? Or do rent/credit card/pay-as-you-go from a
rich person?

------
wpmoradi
this is a great article

------
hema_n
nice one.!

------
syn0byte
Randall put it pretty well [https://xkcd.com/1827/](https://xkcd.com/1827/)

------
thisisweirdok
I'm successful and I'm lazy as shit. These lists are always coming from
survivor bias.

------
porpoisely
I find these types of articles/blogs to be relatively pointless because the
market/economy/country/etc has room for a select few successes.

Imagine if Obama wrote "How to Be a Successful Presidential Candidate" and
every 2016 candidate read it and adopted it to a tee. We'd still have dozens
of failures and only 1 success.

If success were really a formula, then we'd all be successful. We can't all
get into harvard, we can't all be wealthy, we can't all be movies stars. We
can't all win the game of musical chairs.

It's like the "how to become a millionaire" books. If we all followed their
advice, nothing would change because the market has only room for X number of
millionaires. And if it worked and we all became millionaires, being a
millionaire would become meaningless.

At the end of the day, hard work, contacts and luck leads to success. The
older I get, the more I realize that the latter two is far more important than
the first criteria.

~~~
apsec112
A presidential election is zero-sum, since there can only be one winner. There
is no fixed number of millionaires; every middle-class American is very rich
compared to what Romans or Persians or Carolingians expected.

~~~
porpoisely
There definitely is a limited number of millionaires that an
economy/population can support. Also, comparing across time is rather
deceptive. The north korean military is much more powerfully compared to khan
or alexander's armies. The comparison is pointless considering the north
korean military isn't traveling back in time to fight the mongols or the
greeks. Saying middle class americans are rich compared to romans, persians or
carolingians is just as meaningless. You could argue that a homeless man with
a smartphone is "richer" than napoleon since the homeless man has access to
more computing power, better medicine, better everything. But that's
meaningless and no solace to the homeless man since he isn't traveling back to
the early 1800s with current technology in his pocket. If we follow your
logic, a north korean starving in a political camp is wealthier than Caesar. I
guess that could be true, but meaningless and empty.

It's also a deceptive tactic people use to compare apples to oranges. We have
to compare today with today and even more importantly, we have to frame money
within the zero-sum context of power. Money and power are interchangeable and
viewed in this context, wealth is a zero sum game.

~~~
folli
I don't agree, because there certainly are some objective measures of well
being, such as access to nutrition, clean drinking water, life expectancy,
exposure to violence etc. that hold true across any age in time. Most of these
measures have in general increased in the course of humankind. So a homeless
man im 2018 is most likely still better off than a homeless man during the
Roman empire.

~~~
porpoisely
I understand that human society has progressed over time. That's not what I'm
disputing. What I'm pointing out is that it's meaningless to compare current
situation to the past. A homeless man in 2019 is better off than everyone in
the roman empire - including the emperor and the homeless. So what? How does
that help the homeless man in 2019. A slave in the 1800s was wealthier than
the anyone in the roman empire. So what? People in 2019 or people in the 1800s
weren't living in the roman empire. The north koreans in political camps are
wealthier than the emperor of roman empire. So I guess that means everything
is great? It's such a deceptive and insincere comparison. People live within
their time and their "wealth" should be compared within it. And more
importantly, wealth should always be viewed within the context of power
because ultimately, that's what wealth is.

------
crisstringfello
I embody all of these traits. I don't have a prototype or traction, I'm by
myself, working the same idea for many years. I've applied to YC 8 times.
never got any feedback.

I'm sure this is to my benefit. If suffering comes, I chose to use it to make
myself stronger, more determined and focused. i close to learn. and instead of
rushing to optimize for their objectives, I get to really create my vision.

Everytime they reject me, I like to think about how I will make a point of how
much of a broken system I think it is, when I eventually get successful.

------
sonnyblarney
If 'everyone' is out there 'bending the universe' to their will, well, will
the universe be bent? Or just scrambled?

I can't help but feel this advice runs contrary to communitarian ideals, to
the point that were we all to follow it, not much would get done.

The best Engineers I have encountered surely have 'always been learning' but
it had little to do with careerism, or 'trying to shape the world', rather
just plain curiosity. Outside of that they'll have had 'normal' careers, more
or less satisfied with the work to be done ahead of them. Why? Because it
makes them happy to be contributors, doing their jobs well, getting a decent
income, possibly raising their families etc.. There is a _lot_ of mundane work
be done even in the most creative of environments.

When Steve Jobs said 'you should try to nudge the Universe forward' my first
thought was 'which way is forward?' \- meaning that lack of at least some kind
of moral impetus (of course a very difficult, grey thing) it's hard to know.

It's a very self oriented treatise, specific to the accumulation of power and
influence of the individual, while effectively externalizing the 'other', and
of course, all those aspects of life which are not very well described in
terms of 'career' , 'money' , 'power' etc..

I'm trying to find an example of someone doing something 'purposeful' but who
also had such 'compounding' effects: Ingvar Kamprad. Founder of IKEA.

He wanted to make reasonable design, available to the masses for a reasonable
price, and his 'small compound rate' spread over a life seems to have built
something that I think will outlast most of the FAANGs. And maybe there's some
'good' in there as well.

Thanks Sam, fine words for young entrepreneurs maybe, but let's try to keep
this in context.

The world is very big, diverse, full of all types - if the Valley wants to
'win' in the next phase of evolution, it's going to have to figure out how to
promote ideals that aren't just suited to the 1%, but everyone else as well.

Trying to do this while maintaining that creative/exceptionalism will be hard,
but there's no way around it.

You can't be 'irreverent feisty antagonists upstarts' and 'managing major
parts of the economy and influencing global affairs' at the same time.

------
kowdermeister
TLDR: Be good at sales, build a network and work hard.

~~~
gautamnarula
I'd also add "And keep learning/avoid stagnating"

------
uncheckederror
373 KB and a 2.66 second page load for what is literally text on a page with
no images.

Better yet the content of the post is 20,000 chars on a single line inside of
a 558 line HTML doc. :/

