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- Sam Altman explains why “the great wave” is the most important concept for good startup ideas
Sam Altman explains why “the great wave” is the most important concept for good startup ideas
“This idea of the great wave - I think this is the most important concept to find good ideas out there. People wonder why startups cluster in small periods of time… The reason is that there are these great waves.”
He gives the example of the internet giving rise to a number of massive companies in the late 90s and early 2000s. Then smartphones gave rise to another group of companies in the 2009-2011 period.
“All of a sudden, new things are possible that were never possible before. And when that happens - because startups can move so quickly - you can do things that otherwise would never happen. Or that a big company would otherwise win on. You want to think about what the next great wave is.”
In this lecture that was given in 2017, Sam predicts that the next great wave will be “machine learning applied to every vertical.” He continues:
“You want to identify this - What is the big tectonic shift that’s going to happen in the next couple of years? And do something that’s enabled by that and built on that platform.”