Sam Altman on the power of decisiveness, Steve Jobs on product design, and principles from Marcus Aurelius

Welcome back to the Z Fellows newsletter! Every Monday we share 3 ideas - to help you build companies, ship products, and create your life's work.

1: Sam Altman on the power of decisiveness

Tyler Cowen: “Why is being quick and decisive such an important personality trait in a founder?”

Sam Altman: “That is a great question. I have thought a lot about this because the correlation is clear, that one of the most fun things about YC is that, I think, we have more data points on what successful founders and bad founders look like than any other organization has had in the history of the world. We have that all in our heads, and that’s great. So I can say, with a high degree of confidence, that this correlation is true.

Being a fast mover and being decisive — it is very hard to be successful and not have those traits as a founder. Why that is, I’m not perfectly clear on, but I think it is something… about the only advantage that startups have or the biggest advantage that startups have over large companies is agility, speed, willing to make nonconsensus, concentrated bets, incredible focus. That’s really how you get to beat a big company.”

Tyler Cowen: “How quickly should someone answer your email to count as quick and decisive?”

Sam Altman: “You know, years ago I wrote a little program to look at this, like how quickly our best founders — the founders that run billion-plus companies — answer my emails versus our bad founders. I don’t remember the exact data, but it was mind-blowingly different. It was a difference of minutes versus days on average response times.”

Source: Sam Altman on Loving Community, Hating Coworking, and the Hunt for Talent

2: Steve Jobs on product design

“One of the things that really hurt Apple was after I left… it’s the disease of thinking that a really great idea is 90% of the work, and that if you just tell all these other people, “Here is this great idea,” then, of course, they can go off and make it happen.

And the problem with that is that there is just a tremendous amount of craftsmanship in between a great idea and a great product. And as you evolve that great idea, it changes and grows. It never comes out like it starts because you learn a lot more as you get into the subtleties of it, and you also find there is tremendous tradeoffs that you have to make.

There are just certain things you can’t make electrons do. There are certain things you can’t make plastic do or glass do or factories do or robots do.

As you get into all these things, designing a product is keeping 5,000 things in your brain, these concepts, and fitting them all together and continuing to push to fit them together in new and different ways to get what you want.

Every day you discover something new, that is a new problem or a new opportunity to fit these things together a little differently. And it’s that process that is the magic.”

Source: Steve Jobs: The Lost Interview

3: Principles from Marcus Aurelius

Best of The Week

See you next Monday,

- The Z Fellows Team

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