Sam Altman, who has invested in several companies, including Stripe and Airbnb; on ‘not-to-miss’ investing advice billionaire Peter Thiel gave him

Sam Altman has recently revealed the “not-to-miss” investing advice he learned from billionaire Peter Thiel and Y Combinator co-founder Paul Graham. According to The OpenAI CEO, who has invested in hundreds of startups including Airbnb, Stripe and Reddit, the most valuable investment opportunities are often those that do not appear popular at the time.Speaking on the Invest Like the Best podcast, Altman said the lesson shaped the investment philosophy behind his venture portfolio, which includes stakes in nearly 400 companies. “I really learned from Peter Thiel and Paul Graham, both in two different ways, which is that the very best companies, the very best investment opportunities are almost never the ones that look really popular,” he noted.

What Sam Altman said about his investing philosophy

Altman said investors can achieve reasonable returns by identifying trends early, but argued that larger gains often come from pursuing ideas that are not widely accepted.“You can do okay just following the trend of being a little early, but to do spectacularly well, you almost always have to do things that are not what everybody else is doing. You cannot be following the new wave,” he said.The approach is reflected in Altman’s investment portfolio. According to The Wall Street Journal, Altman and his venture funds have invested in around 400 companies, including early bets on Airbnb, Stripe and Reddit. Forbes has also reported that one of his largest holdings is a stake in nuclear fusion company Helion, where he first invested around 2015.Although OpenAI is valued at about $852 billion, Altman does not own equity in the company and has previously said he receives an annual salary of about $76,000. His estimated net worth exceeds $3.3 billion, largely through investments made before and alongside his work at OpenAI.

How Peter Thiel and Paul Graham influenced Sam Altman

Before leading OpenAI, Altman founded the location-sharing startup Loopt after leaving Stanford University in 2005. The company attracted investment from Paul Graham, who later invited Altman to lead startup accelerator Y Combinator.Altman has described Graham’s mentoring style by comparing startup investing to flight instruction.“The person who sits next to you saying, like, ‘Do this, don’t do this, that worked, you missed that thing,’ or, ‘you’re making these mistakes,’ and ‘I’m just going to talk [to] you about this one,’” Altman said, according to Business Insider.After selling Loopt in 2012, Altman launched his first venture fund, Hydrazine. Billionaire Peter Thiel, co-founder of PayPal and Palantir, became the fund’s largest outside investor. Altman later served as president of Y Combinator from 2014 to 2019.

What Peter Thiel and Warren Buffett thinks about independent thinking

Altman’s comments align with a principle that Thiel has expressed for years: successful investing requires independent thinking rather than simply taking the opposite view.“The most contrarian thing of all is not to oppose the crowd but to think for yourself,” Thiel wrote in his book Zero to One: Notes on Startups, or How to Build the Future.A similar view has also been expressed by Berkshire Hathaway chairman Warren Buffett, who has said investment decisions should not be driven by market sentiment.Speaking at Berkshire Hathaway’s 2010 shareholders meeting, Buffett said, “If you have a temperament that when others are fearful you’re going to get scared yourself, you know, you are not going to make a lot of money in securities over time, in all probability.”