Two months after OpenAI launched ChatGPT, Sam Altman sought advice from PayPal founder Peter Thiel, who warned him of the big "Google mistake" he was making, Altman said on the David Senra podcast. Altman said that after the launch, "it was sort of this weird thing because people didn't really know what to use it for," and while ChatGPT was growing super fast, "it felt very unstable." Thiel told him "It's an obvious mistake to do anything but this, besides the fact that it's growing, which is rare and great," comparing the power of ChatGPT to "the power of the Google text box," and noting it didn't match current Silicon Valley wisdom requiring feeds and a network effect. Thiel said people had been chasing the Google business model for 20 years and that the empty text box worked for Google, so Altman should double down. Altman said "we went super hard on ChatGPT and it was great." In August, Altman also shared investing advice from Thiel and Y Combinator co-founder Paul Graham, saying the best investment opportunities are almost never the ones that look really popular, a lesson that shaped the philosophy behind his portfolio of nearly 400 companies.