Happy Friday Friends,

Welcome back to Napkin Notes: the only founder newsletter that knows you’re skipping work and heading to the lake this morning — so we’re keeping today’s update short and sweet. 🚗

From Olympic memes to VC fights breaking out between David Sacks and Paul Graham, it’s been a full week of updates.

Let’s get to our goods for the day.

📰 Our Menu For Today

• 💡 7 Insights from OpenAI Cofounder Sam Altman

• 🌎 RSVP to our upcoming AI pitch event happening Aug 29th

• ✏️ Apply to pitch at our AI Event

• 🎥 Recap highlights of our pitch event 48 hrs ago

• 👀 Memes of the week

Side note: Know a good AI founder, sponsor, or investor panellist? We wanna meet them for our next event. Email [email protected] to make an intro 👋

🎥 Have You Met ChopShop Yet?

Need help with a quick

• Product video?

• Customer testimonial?

• Event recap?

You need to meet our friends at ChopShop. In fact, here’s their email if you wanna book a time with them. Mention the Napkin Notes newsletter sent you and something special may happen…

🌱 7 Frameworks Sam Altman Wish Someone Told Him Earlier

1. Getting an idea off the ground: “Optimism, obsession, self-belief, raw horsepower and personal connections are how things get started.”

2. Thinking long term: “Cohesive teams, the right combination of calmness and urgency, and unreasonable commitment are how things get finished. Long-term orientation is in short supply; try not to worry about what people think in the short term, which will get easier over time.”

3. Hiring: “Spend more time recruiting. Take risks on high-potential people with a fastrate of improvement. Look for evidence of getting stuff done in addition to intelligence.”

4. Coworkers: “Working with great people is one of the best parts of life.

5. Making bets: “Concentrate your resources on a small number of high-conviction bets; this is easy to say but evidently hard to do. You can delete more stuff than you think.”

6. Wasting time: “Fight b*llshit and bureaucracy every time you see it and get other people to fight it too. Do not let the org chart get in the way of people working productively together.”

7. Time: “Fast iteration can make up for a lot; it's usually ok to be wrong if you iterate quickly. Plans should be measured in decades, execution should be measured in weeks.”

🥁 Next Pitch Event: August 29th

👀 Swipes of the Week

Have an amazing weekend friends.

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