Paul Graham: evaluation

Transcript context

…But they’ve done more than make money. They’ve impressed us with their speed. Well, I meant something very specific in that essay. Incidentally, I talk in that essay about how I was talking to a founder, and I was talking about how Microsoft was this threat. You can see he was clearly puzzled, like, how could Microsoft possibly be threatening? I didn’t mention who the founder was, but it was actually Zuck. It was Mark Zuckerberg, [laughs] who was puzzled that Microsoft could be a threat. Still to this day, if you ask founders, “Are you afraid that Microsoft might do what you’re doing?” None of them are. It’s still not a threat to start-ups. Yes, it makes more money now, but it’s still not a threat like it used to be. It doesn’t matter in the sense of factoring into anyone’s plans for the future. No start-up is thinking, “Well, I better not do that because Microsoft might enter that and destroy me. ” In the early years of Sam Altman, what did you see in him other than determination? Because he’s not a technical guy in the sense of —…

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