CEOInterviews.AI
Start App
Try: AI strategy tariffs earnings guidance layoffs interest rates growth

Paul Buchheit

Creator of Gmail, Y Combinator

Search every verified Paul Buchheit interview, podcast appearance, and on-the-record quote — each transcript cross-checked by AI and human review to confirm speaker identity. Paul Buchheit discussed the origins of OpenAI, stating that it was created at Y Combinator in 2015 under the name YC Research. He said that he and Dalton Caldwell interviewed Ilya Sutskever for the role of OpenAI co-founder at the request of Sam Altman. Buchheit recalled asking Sutskever why neural networks began working, noting that Sutskever explained that researchers had been initializing neural net weights incorrectly, using a random number between zero and 0.2 instead of between negative one and one. Buchheit said that during the interview, Sutskever made predictions about AI that he described as "wild" and "extreme" for 2015, including that AI would become the most important problem in the world and lead to superhuman intelligence. Buchheit stated that with hindsight, Sutskever's predictions proved to be accurate.

Recent appearances

Notable quotes

“Traditionally series A is the most expensive round. Uh venture firms usually want 20 to 25% stake in a company. Um and you know when that's combined with the employee option pool and everything else that causes a lot of founder dilution and our view is there's no reason why why should series A be more expensive than seed or more expensive than series B. So 10% is the number we chose because uh you know we think that ”

“We are not going to charge any legal fees to founders. And that may seem obvious, I don't know, maybe some of the listeners out there, but one ugly truth about the VC industry is that VCs bill to the founders their own legal fees. It's usually about $30,000 per transaction. They invest in you and then they give you the bill for their legal fees every time.”

“The really only job of a board member or the most important job is to fire the founder. if we're just helping you, we actually don't need a board seat to help you. And obviously, um, one thing we've learned through the many years is that, uh, founders actually don't like being fired. So, we we think that'll be a big feature.”

“Standard Capital has an application process and anyone in the world can just apply and you don't need permission and maybe please don't email us like we don't want pitch decks. I know this is the opposite of most firms. Please don't send us your pitch decks uh or cold emails or warm intros. Use our application process.”

Other executives at Y Combinator

The summary and quote tags on this profile are produced with AI assistance from verified, first-person interview transcripts, then checked by our team to confirm the speaker's identity and the accuracy of every quote. See how we verify →