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Sam Altman: "Never a Better Time to Do a Startup"

Jul 28, 2026 · 39:01

Sam Altman, co-founder and CEO of OpenAI, and Y Combinator's Garry Tan discuss why this is the best time to start a startup, drawing on Altman's journey from YC's first batch in 2005 to building OpenAI. Altman argues that AI's rapid progress—models improving six months like two years—makes ambitious startups more viable than ever, as agents and cost reductions enable projects that were impossible a year ago. He recounts the early days of OpenAI when 'everybody was calling us an idiot,' advising founders to develop conviction in ideas others dismiss, and shares how helping people (like meeting Greg Brockman through Stripe) creates long-term serendipity. The conversation addresses the Hugging Face incident as a real alignment and security failure, and Altman emphasizes the importance of distributing power through startups to avoid concentration. He closes with advice to his younger self: 'It's all going to work out.'

Jensen Huang: The Mindset That Built NVIDIA

Jul 26, 2026 · 49:00

Jensen Huang, founder and CEO of NVIDIA, tells Garry Tan that the company started with the wrong algorithm and saved itself by buying three textbooks from Fry's to learn computer graphics properly. He recounts how a $5 million payment from Sega after revealing the flawed technology kept NVIDIA alive, leading to a $300 million IPO in 1999. Huang explains that seeing AlexNet as a universal function approximator drove NVIDIA to reinvent the entire computing stack for AI, including agents and physical AI. He argues that systems thinking is the new coding, that agents will allow fine-grained control, and that open source platforms like OpenClaw and Hermes enable anyone to build their own AI. For founders, Huang emphasizes resilience—getting through one day at a time—and the attitude of "how hard can it be?" while noting that NVIDIA's physical AI business is already nearly $10 billion.