Sam Altman – Most People Give Up on Things Way Too Early

Sam Altman shares his thoughts on when to quit and when to keep going:

“Knowing when to quit and when to give up on something, there’s no perfect answer to that. It’s really challenging to even get that approximately correct. But I think most people give up on things way too early.”

He continues:

“The mistake most people make—especially young entrepreneurs—is they try something, it doesn’t work immediately, and after just seven weeks, they say, ‘I tried this and it’s just not meant to be.’ The satirical version of this is people who are 23 and have already started 14 startups because they gave up on each one before it could ever succeed. These things are really hard. They take a long time. There are a lot of critics. People will tell you: ‘Your thing sucks, it’s going to fail, it’s stupid.’”

Sam also points out what Y Combinator calls “The Trough of Sorrow,” where, as he describes, “No one even bothers to say it sucks because no one cares at all. And that’s at least as demotivating.”

But this doesn’t necessarily mean the idea won’t work.

Sam explains:

“Most of the founders I’ve worked with who went on to become incredibly successful spent a very long time on their ideas when a lot of others would have given up. Either people said it sucks, or they said nothing at all. The framework I use for deciding when to give up versus when to keep working is that the decision should come from within, not from external opinions. If people aren’t using it or are saying it’s bad, that alone is not enough reason to quit. You want to consider their feedback—they might be right. But the best entrepreneurs I know make an internal decision about when to give up or when to keep pushing. The key is when you’ve truly run out of ideas, and nothing is working, then it’s a good time to stop.”