Olympic precision, and advice from Sam Altman — weekly roundup

Last week I shared a post summarising what I had learned in the week.

I found it helpful for myself, and hopefully it may be at least mildly interesting for others too.

Here’s a few things I found interesting this week.

An incredibly densely packed set of wisdom from Sam Altman. I found this very motivating to read:

7 frameworks Sam Altman wishes someone told him earlier

I found this via Joel Hansen of Napkin Notes.

  • Getting an idea off the ground: “Optimism, obsession, self-belief, raw horsepower and personal connections are how things get started.”
  • Thinking long term: “Cohesive teams, the right combination of calmness and urgency, and unreasonable commitment are how things get finished. Long-term orientation is in short supply; try not to worry about what people think in the short term, which will get easier over time.”
  • Hiring: “Spend more time recruiting. Take risks on high-potential people with a fastrate of improvement. Look for evidence of getting stuff done in addition to intelligence.”
  • Coworkers: “Working with great people is one of the best parts of life.”
  • Making bets: “Concentrate your resources on a small number of high-conviction bets; this is easy to say but evidently hard to do. You can delete more stuff than you think.”
  • Wasting time: “Fight b*llshit and bureaucracy every time you see it and get other people to fight it too. Do not let the org chart get in the way of people working productively together.”
  • Time: “Fast iteration can make up for a lot; it's usually ok to be wrong if you iterate quickly. Plans should be measured in decades, execution should be measured in weeks.”

Other things this week

  • The first week of the Olympics in Paris has been incredible. Beautiful venues, Paris at its best.
  • I’m blown away by how little separates Olympic athletes between a gold medal and no medal. The men’s 100m final separated gold from silver by just 0.005 of a second.
  • We wrapped up July at EcoSend and it was a busy month.
  • I figured out how to add the Lost and Founder to YouTube. A while ago I started sharing my deepest darkest thoughts as a founder. I haven’t published in a while but I’m hoping to change that. I’ve just started posting old episodes to YouTube to give them a new lease of life. Stay tuned to YouTube for more.
  • I’m excited for something new for GoSquared next week. Stay tuned!

A quote for the week ahead

"The ultimate form of preparation is not planning for a specific scenario, but a mindset that can handle uncertainty." — James Clear

P.S. If you’re receiving this via email, you might notice it’s not sent from EcoSend. I’ll be changing that soon!

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