# A failed startup can still compress years of learning Markdown copy of https://realalpha.app/s/a-failed-startup-can-still-compress-years-of-learning/ on Real Alpha, the best minutes from long interviews with the people building AI. Cite and link the page, not this copy. - Speaker: [Sam Altman](https://realalpha.app/builders/sam-altman/) · Sam Altman is CEO of OpenAI. · Co-founded OpenAI and has led it since 2019, overseeing ChatGPT's launch; formerly president of Y Combinator. - Host: [Garry Tan](https://realalpha.app/people/garry-tan/) · President & CEO, Y Combinator · Co-founded Posterous and Initialized Capital, an early Coinbase backer. - Show: Lightcone - Episode: [How To Build The Future: Sam Altman](https://realalpha.app/v/xXCBz_8hM9w/), Nov 8, 2024 - Moment: 31:10 to 34:09 of the episode (3 min), playing on https://realalpha.app/s/a-failed-startup-can-still-compress-years-of-learning/; the episode from there: https://realalpha.app/v/xXCBz_8hM9w/?t=1870 ## Quote > “There is nothing that I have ever heard of that has a **higher rate of generalized learning** than doing a startup.” > — [Sam Altman](https://realalpha.app/builders/sam-altman/) at [32:26](https://realalpha.app/v/xXCBz_8hM9w/?t=1946) · Lightcone ## Takeaways 1. Loopt never found product-market fit or escape velocity. 2. His first startup taught him about managing and selling. 3. He says startups offer a high rate of generalized learning. ## About this segment Sam Altman says Loopt never found product-market fit or escape velocity, but taught him through management, sales and a mobile platform shift. He sees startups as an unusually strong source of learning. From “How To Build The Future: Sam Altman”, Nov 8, 2024. [Watch the full episode](https://realalpha.app/v/xXCBz_8hM9w/) ## Transcript Transcribed by machine (Whisper) from the episode’s audio, so a word may be off here and there. [31:14](https://realalpha.app/v/xXCBz_8hM9w/?t=1874) It was a great experience for me to have been through because I kind of like understood what it is like to go through a platform shift and how messy the beginning is and how much like little things you do can shape the direction it all goes. I was definitely on the other side of it then. Like I was watching somebody else create the platform shift, but it was a super valuable experience to get to go through and sort of just see how it happens and how quickly things change and how you adapt through it. What was that experience like? You ended up selling that company. It was probably the first time you were managing people and, you know, doing enterprise sales. All of these things were useful lessons from that first experience. I mean, it obviously it was not a successful company. [31:59](https://realalpha.app/v/xXCBz_8hM9w/?t=1919) It was and so it's a very painful thing to go through but the rate of experience and education was incredible another thing that pg said or quoted somebody else saying but always stuck with me is your 20s are always an apprenticeship but you don't know for what and then you do your real work later and i did learn quite a lot and i'm very grateful for it it was like a difficult experience and we never found product market fit really and we also never like really found a way to get to escape velocity, which is just always hard to do. There is nothing that I have ever heard of that has a higher rate of generalized learning than doing a startup. So it was great in that sense. You know, when you're 19 and 20, like riding the wave of some other platform shift, this shift from, you know, dumb cell phones to smartphones and mobile. And, you know, here we are [32:50](https://realalpha.app/v/xXCBz_8hM9w/?t=1970) many years later and your next act was actually you know i mean i guess two acts later literally spawning one of the major platforms we all get old yeah but that's really what's happening you know uh 18 20 year olds are deciding that they could get their degree but they're gonna miss the wave like because all of this stuff that's great everything's happening right now i am proud what is do you have an intuitive sense like speaking to even a lot of the you know really great billion-dollar company founders, some of them are just not that aware of what's happening. [33:26](https://realalpha.app/v/xXCBz_8hM9w/?t=2006) They're CTOs. It is astonishing to me. It's wild, right? That's why I'm so excited for startups right now, is because the world is still sleeping on all of this to such an astonishing degree. And then you have the YC founders being like, no, no, I'm going to do this amazing thing and do it very quickly. Yeah. It reminds me of when Facebook almost missed mobile, because they were making web software and they were really good at it. [33:49](https://realalpha.app/v/xXCBz_8hM9w/?t=2029) Yeah. And like they, I mean, they had to buy Instagram. Like Snapchat. And WhatsApp. Yeah. And WhatsApp. So it's interesting. The platform shift is always built by the people who are young with no prior knowledge. I think it's great.