Sam Altman: Treat your idea as a project rather than a company at first

“As soon as you declare something a company and not a project, there’s this pressure to figure something out quickly, and it can’t sound too crazy because it’s like, ‘now it’s my startup and I have to tell people that it’s my startup.’ But when it’s still just a project, it can sound pretty crazy.”

Sam continues:

“I think the most important thing to do at the beginning is actually take the time to figure out what you’re going to do and let it be a project before it’s a company.”

If you raise money before you have a lot of conviction in your idea, it will usually lead to a host of problems. As Sam explains:

“If you raise money but still don’t know exactly what you’re going to build, that’s usually really problematic because now you have these investors and you feel like you owe them progress. But this phase of thinking actually takes a while.”

Full video: Startup Grind “Sam Altman | How to Get Funded by Y Combinator“ (Feb 2015)