Sam Altman just dropped a new nugget of wisdom about dumpster fires and product launches

“If you strap a rocket to a dumpster, the dumpster can still get to orbit, and the trash fire will go out as it leaves the atmosphere. Many important insights contained in that observation. But also it’s better to launch nice satellites instead,” OpenAI CEO Sam Altman wrote in an X post on Monday.

OpenAI CEO Sam Altman knows a thing or two about product launches.

Under his leadership, OpenAI launched its hit product, ChatGPT, in November 2022. The chatbot took the world by storm and helped kick-start the ongoing AI arms race. Its popularity also helped turn OpenAI into a household name in the tech world.

On Monday, Altman shared his view about launching products while responding to one of OpenAI’s employees on X, formerly Twitter.

“OpenAI works miracles, but we do also wrap a lot of things in bash while loops to work around periodic crashes,” Nat McAleese, an OpenAI technical staff member, wrote on Saturday.

McAleese’s post drew a response from Altman just days later. Altman, for his part, compared the process of launching a product to attaching rockets to a dumpster.

“If you strap a rocket to a dumpster, the dumpster can still get to orbit, and the trash fire will go out as it leaves the atmosphere,” Altman wrote in an X post on Monday.

“Many important insights contained in that observation. But also it’s better to launch nice satellites instead.”

This isn’t the first time Altman has dispensed advice on social media.

The billionaire entrepreneur and investor has posted his insights on tech and leadership on X and his blog.

In December, Altman published a blog post titled “What I Wish Someone Had Told Me.” The post contained 17 pointers on topics as diverse as managing teams and product execution.

“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,” Altman wrote in his post.

Then, in April, Altman said in an X post that being a concise communicator is a “big unlock” for him.

“Learning how to say something in 30 seconds that takes most people 5 minutes is a big unlock,” Altman wrote on April 28.

Mastering brevity, Altman said in a subsequent post, is a “surprisingly learnable skill.”

“If you struggle with this, consider asking a friend who is good at it to listen to you say something and then rephrase it back to you as concisely as they can a few dozen times. I have seen this work really well!” he added.

Representatives for Altman at OpenAI didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment sent outside regular business hours.