Sam Altman Quotes: top 100 famous quotes about Sam Altman

Sam Altman Quotes & Sayings

Happy to read and share the best inspirational Sam Altman quotes, sayings and quotations on Wise Famous Quotes.

These all sounded really bad, but they turned out to be good. If they had sounded really good, there would have been too many people working on them. — Sam Altman

If a company is profitable, the founder is in control. If it's not, investors are in control. — Sam Altman

There's no way I know, to get through the pain of a startup without belief that the mission really matters. — Sam Altman

The best source by far for hiring is people that you already know and people that other employees in the company already know. — Sam Altman

Because so few people make an actual long term commitment to what they're building, the ones that do have a huge advantage. — Sam Altman

For most of the early hires you make in a startup, experience doesn't matter very much, and you should go for aptitude. — Sam Altman

If someone is difficult to talk to, if someone cannot communicate clearly, it's a real problem in terms of their likelihood to work out. — Sam Altman

The most important thing is that there is clear reporting structure and everyone knows what it is. — Sam Altman

You also want to fire people who a) create office politics, and b) who are persistently negative. — Sam Altman

How much time you should be spending on hiring? The answer is 0 or 25 percent. — Sam Altman

The thing we see wrong with YC apps most frequently, is that people have not thought about the market first and what people want first. — Sam Altman

The way you get deals done and the way you get good terms, is to have a competitive situation. — Sam Altman

Most things are not as risky as they seem. — Sam Altman

You need conviction in your own beliefs, and the willingness to ignore others naysaying. — Sam Altman

If you ever take your foot off the gas pedal, things will spiral out of control, snowball downwards. — Sam Altman

The way to have a company that executes well is you have to execute well yourself. — Sam Altman

If you look at people who have an iPhone or Android and are under 40 and are dissatisfied with their bank, it's actually quite a large market. — Sam Altman

Don't let yourself make excuses for not doing the things you want to do. — Sam Altman

Even though plans themselves are worthless, the exercise of planning is very valuable and totally missing in most startups today. — Sam Altman

Firing people is one of the worst parts of running a company. Actually in my own experience, I think it is the worst. — Sam Altman

You want to continue to be run by great products, not process for it's own sake. — Sam Altman

Cofounder relationships are among the most important in the entire company. — Sam Altman

I care much more about the growth rate of the market than it's current size and I also care if there's any reason it's going to top out. — Sam Altman

Share results (financial and key metrics) with the company every month. — Sam Altman

Another way of looking at this, is that the best companies are almost always mission oriented. — Sam Altman

To get the very best people- they have a lot of great options, and so it can easily take a year to recruit someone. — Sam Altman

Every first time founder waits too long, everyone hopes that an employee will turn around. But the right answer is to fire fast ... — Sam Altman

If the Reddit community cannot learn to balance authenticity and compassion, it may be a great website, but it will never be a truly great community. — Sam Altman

All throughout my life I have been deeply immersed in startups, either because I was running one or investing in them or helping them. — Sam Altman

At YC we have this public phrase, and it's relentlessly resourceful. — Sam Altman

The nice thing about Reddit is, we don't have to sell your data or build a profile of you or do stuff that makes people feel uncomfortable. — Sam Altman

Before 20 or 25 employees, most companies are structured with everyone reporting to the founder. It's totally flat. — Sam Altman

Most of the best hires that I've made in my entire life have never done that thing before. — Sam Altman

Intelligence is usually easy to tell in a 10-minute conversation. Determination is harder. — Sam Altman

And you can only have 2 or 3 things everyday, because everything else will just come at you; you know fires in a day. — Sam Altman

If you talk to say any of the first 40 or 50 employees, they all feel like they were a part of the founding of the company. — Sam Altman

The natural state of a start-up is to die; most start-ups require multiple miracles in their early days to escape this fate. — Sam Altman

Sometimes people think Y Combinator has big ideas about themes. But really, we just fund the best startups. — Sam Altman

As the company grows and about this 25 or so employee size, your main job shifts from building a great product to building a great company. — Sam Altman

You think you have this great idea that everyone's going to come join, but that's not how it works. — Sam Altman

The reduction in compassion that happens when we're all behind computer screens is not good for the world. — Sam Altman

We pretty much won't fund a company now where the founders don't have vested equity because it's just that hard to do. — Sam Altman

It's better to have a few users love your product than for a lot of users to sort of like it. — Sam Altman

The whole concept of rewarding customers is a big trend. — Sam Altman

The market for local advertising is in the billions. — Sam Altman

If you can just learn to think about the market first, you will have a big leg up on most people starting startups. — Sam Altman

One of the biggest advantages that start ups have is execution speed, and you have to have this relentless operating rhythm. — Sam Altman

A lot of people don't love their bank. — Sam Altman

Background updating is absolutely the future. — Sam Altman

Most startups are not nearly focussed enough. They work hard ... maybe, but they don't work hard on the right things. — Sam Altman

It's really easy to get PR with no results & it actually feels like you're really actually cool, but in a year you'll still have nothing. — Sam Altman

Why I said cofounders that aren't friends really struggle, is that you can't be focused without good communication. — Sam Altman

Developing a personal connection with anyone you're trying to do a big deal with is really important. — Sam Altman

A third advantage of mission oriented companies, is that people outside the company are more willing to help you. — Sam Altman

In the early stage of a startup, hiring senior people is usually a mistake. You just want people that get stuff done. — Sam Altman

There's at least a hundred times more people with great ideas than people that are willing to put in the effort to execute them well. — Sam Altman

The thing about Y Combinator that's cool is that most companies won't happen if we don't fund them. — Sam Altman

You need this sort of a tailwind to make a startup successful. — Sam Altman

M&A negotiations feel really fun. This is one of the biggest killers of companies, is they entertain acquisition conversations. — Sam Altman

The biggest part of Loopt is about discovering the world around you, never replacing a social experience - only adding to it. — Sam Altman

Don't hire for the sake of hiring. Hire because there is no other way to do what you want to do. — Sam Altman

You want to sound crazy, but you want to actually be right. — Sam Altman

Because it's one of these sort of connections between nodes- every pair of people adds communication overhead. — Sam Altman

If you ask a founder how their company is doing, they always say, 'Oh it's great. We're totally crushing it,' and that's almost never true. — Sam Altman

If you compromise in the first five, ten hires it might kill the company. — Sam Altman

If you wanted to build an Internet startup in 2005, you had to buy your own servers and hire someone to manage it. Now, that's unheard of. — Sam Altman

All companies that grow really big do so in only one way: people recommend the product or service to other people. — Sam Altman

Obsess about the quality of the product. — Sam Altman

You can have a startup and one other thing, you can have a family, but you probably can't have many other hobbies. — Sam Altman

Really dig into projects people have worked on and call references; that is another thing that first time founders like to skip. — Sam Altman

Keep salaries low and equity high. Keep the organization as flat as you can. — Sam Altman

You can win with the best product, the best price, or the best experience. — Sam Altman

As you grow, it feels hopelessly corporate but it really is worth putting in place these compensation bands. — Sam Altman

If you go to a paintball subreddit, paintball companies can advertise to you. — Sam Altman

That culture of frugality and discipline is really important for the Y Combinator mindset. — Sam Altman

Loopt isn't a service that keeps you locked in, staring at your screen. — Sam Altman

It's become popular in recent years to say that the idea doesn't matter. — Sam Altman

Just put a little pin in your mind: when you cross 50 employees, there are a new set of HR rules that you have to comply with. — Sam Altman

The tenth social network, and limited only to college students with no money, also terrible. Myspace had won. — Sam Altman

Great execution towards a terrible idea will get you nowhere. — Sam Altman

Why couldn't it have been done 2 years ago, and why will 2 years in the future be too late? — Sam Altman

The way to really scale a venture firm is with software. — Sam Altman

If you don't love and believe in what you're building, you're likely to give up at some point along the way. — Sam Altman

The hard part is that this is a very fine line. There's right on one side of it, and crazy on the other. — Sam Altman

Very ambitious startups often take a long time to work - or sometimes they take a very long time to look ambitious. — Sam Altman

Ideas by themselves are not worth anything, only executing well is what creates value. — Sam Altman

Facebook and Instagram are spiritual brothers. — Sam Altman

You shouldn't try to manufacture progress. — Sam Altman

The best founders work on things that seem small but they move really quickly. They get things done really quickly. — Sam Altman

So you should always stay on top of people's vesting schedules. — Sam Altman

The thing that kills startups at some level, is the founders giving up. — Sam Altman

You have to be decisive. Indecisiveness is a startup killer. — Sam Altman

The track record for founders that don't already know each other is really bad. — Sam Altman

Most good founders that I know at any given time have a set of small overarching goals for the company that everybody in the company knows. — Sam Altman

We hear again and again from founders, that they wish they had waited to start a startup until they came up with an idea they really loved. — Sam Altman

AI will probably most likely lead to the end of the world, but in the meantime, there'll be great companies. — Sam Altman

Execution gets divided into two key questions: 1) can you figure out what to do and 2) can you get it done. — Sam Altman

You have to let your team get all the credit for all the good stuff that happens, and you take responsibility for the bad stuff. — Sam Altman

The Loopt mobile app is all about giving you the latest local deals and insider tips. — Sam Altman

You'll get more support on a hard, important, project than a derivative one. — Sam Altman