

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

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

[http://recode.net/2014/03/18/y-combinators-new-head-
startup-...](http://recode.net/2014/03/18/y-combinators-new-head-startup-
whisperer-sam-altman-is-quite-a-talker/)

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

~~~
quietthrow
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.

~~~
dylanjermiah
Genetics as well play into the luck factor heavily

------
benatkin
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.

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

------
nphyte
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 .

