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OpenAI CEO Sam Altman, formerly the head of startup incubator Y Combinator, said startup culture has shifted as artificial intelligence has expanded the industry’s possibilities. Speaking to Stripe CEO Patrick Collison during an onstage appearance at Stripe Sessions, Altman said the emphasis on technical talent has changed, with more room now for founders who deeply understand users even if they cannot code.
Altman described how, before AI, people often joked about would-be entrepreneurs who had a great idea but lacked the technical expertise to build it. He said that dynamic has reversed.
“For a long time, I think the most important ingredient that I looked for — YC looked for, that kind of this part of our industry looked for on a founding team — was technical talent,” Altman said. “And that's still very important, but now people who just really deeply understand their users and can't code at all. I want to fund those people.”
Altman called it “a big turnaround” from earlier Silicon Valley attitudes, when “idea guys” were often mocked for wanting to keep their ideas private and rely on a coder to execute them.
Altman also cautioned against investors waiting on the sidelines to observe AI progress. He said that planning over a decade requires accepting uncertainty rather than expecting a single, predictable breakthrough timeline.
“I think to do anything at this point on a 10-year time horizon requires a real suspension of disbelief,” Altman said. “I don't think it works to say there's this singularity in three years or five years, whatever, we can't see past it.”
Altman said AI has not changed another long-standing view: the best startups tend to have founders who truly know each other. He referenced Y Combinator’s cofounder matching process, saying teams that came together only shortly before applying were less likely to succeed.
“The teams that came together seven days before applying to YC on a cofounder matching side or whatever, that didn't work too often,” he said. “It was not impossible. I think there were one or two cases where it did work, but it was rare.”
Altman, who cofounded OpenAI in 2015 alongside Greg Brockman, Ilya Sutskever, Elon Musk, and others, discussed the value of his relationship with Brockman. He said their collaboration has been strengthened by mutual respect and complementary skills.
“I think we had this deep mutual respect and complimentary skillset that has just worked really well,” Altman said. “I'm extremely grateful. I think having to go through any startup experience, but particularly an intense one without a cofounder, you have a deep connection trust to is really hard.”
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