<story><title>How to Succeed with a Startup [video]</title><url>https://blog.ycombinator.com/sam-altman-how-to-succeed-with-a-startup/</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>fermienrico</author><text>I find Sam Altman&amp;#x27;s advice on startup completely and utterly useless. They&amp;#x27;re akin to the &amp;quot;How to become a millionaire&amp;quot; books. I&amp;#x27;ve said this in the past [1] that providing generic advice doesn&amp;#x27;t work for startups. Every company is unique and they have unique challenges. Instead, Sam should be focusing on bringing stories of various startups in light, interview their founders and have a focused discourse on what worked and what didn&amp;#x27;t for that __particular__ startup.&lt;p&gt;[1] &lt;a href=&quot;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;news.ycombinator.com&amp;#x2F;item?id=17309725&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;news.ycombinator.com&amp;#x2F;item?id=17309725&lt;/a&gt;</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>rexreed</author><text>Amen. This barely (if at all) applies to enterprise startups (&amp;quot;make something people want to tell their friends about&amp;quot; doesn&amp;#x27;t run up against internal decision-making and budgets very well... and &amp;quot;something that&amp;#x27;s easy to explain&amp;quot; is something that&amp;#x27;s only relevant in the right industry) and doesn&amp;#x27;t apply at all to startups in particular industry sectors, government-oriented, or even many hardware oriented ones.&lt;p&gt;This applies to a subset of Silicon Valley-style, hyper consumer oriented, VC-backable startups that at the end of the day, are fairly interchangeable.</text></comment>
<story><title>How to Succeed with a Startup [video]</title><url>https://blog.ycombinator.com/sam-altman-how-to-succeed-with-a-startup/</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>fermienrico</author><text>I find Sam Altman&amp;#x27;s advice on startup completely and utterly useless. They&amp;#x27;re akin to the &amp;quot;How to become a millionaire&amp;quot; books. I&amp;#x27;ve said this in the past [1] that providing generic advice doesn&amp;#x27;t work for startups. Every company is unique and they have unique challenges. Instead, Sam should be focusing on bringing stories of various startups in light, interview their founders and have a focused discourse on what worked and what didn&amp;#x27;t for that __particular__ startup.&lt;p&gt;[1] &lt;a href=&quot;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;news.ycombinator.com&amp;#x2F;item?id=17309725&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;news.ycombinator.com&amp;#x2F;item?id=17309725&lt;/a&gt;</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>projectramo</author><text>I sort of disagree in one important sense: all generic advice is pretty useless.&lt;p&gt;How to succeed in sports? practice, focus, take care of your diet and health&lt;p&gt;How to succeed in a large company? keep your boss happy, work hard, focus&lt;p&gt;etc&lt;p&gt;This is not Altman&amp;#x27;s fault. I don&amp;#x27;t think the videos can -- or are supposed to -- replace actual detailed daily advice on struggles which, presumably, you get if you join Ycombinator.&lt;p&gt;I don&amp;#x27;t think that &amp;quot;focusing on bringing stories of various startups to light&amp;quot; is all that different from what he is doing. The same criticism applies: it is their story not yours.&lt;p&gt;And the same caveat applies: it is a sample of the kind of advice you will get.</text></comment>