Sam Altman

There's this famous observation that I totally believe: Great startup ideas are the ones that lie in the intersection of the Venn diagram of 'is a good idea' and 'looks like a bad idea.' So you want most people to think it's a bad idea and thus not compete with you until you get giant. But for it to secretly be good.

If a company is profitable, the founder is in control. If it's not, investors are in control.

If you have a startup that's keeping it up at night because you think it's so great, then you should do that.

If you have the opportunity to go be an early employee at a company that's just going crazy, and you believe it's the next Facebook or Google, you should go join that company.

If you go to a paintball subreddit, paintball companies can advertise to you.

Startups on the inside are always badly broken.

I think you can say a lot of evil behavior by companies is short-term optimization.

The way to really scale a venture firm is with software.

That culture of frugality and discipline is really important for the Y Combinator mindset.

You really want a company full of missionaries, not mercenaries.

Sometimes people think Y Combinator has big ideas about themes. But really, we just fund the best startups.

I don't invest in companies where my mental model is that they need to get themselves acquired in the next few years - or ever.