Sam Altman quotes: wise famous quotes, sayings and quotations by Sam Altman

Sam Altman Famous Quotes & Sayings

Discover top inspirational quotes from Sam Altman 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.

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

If you're not in college and you don't know a cofounder, the next best thing I think is to go work at an interesting company.

When it comes to starting startups, in many ways, it's easier to start a hard startup than an easy startup.

Tech companies tend to do tech best.

If someone is getting every decision wrong, that's when you need to act, and at that point it'll be painfully aware to everyone.

It's difficult to get large groups of people, to the extreme levels of focus and productivity that you need, for a startup to be successful.

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

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

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

AirBnB happened because Brian Chesky couldn't pay his rent, but did have some space.

You should be giving out a lot of equity to your employees.

One thing that founders forget is that after they hire employees, they have to retain them.

I prefer to invest in a company that's going after a small but rapidly growing market than a big but slow growing one.

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.

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

In YC experience, 2 or 3 co-founders seems to be about perfect.

Losing focus is another way that founders get off track.

If you compromise and hire someone mediocre, you will always regret it.

Whatever the founder cares about, whatever the founders think are the key goals, that's going to be what the whole company focusses on.

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

You certainly don't need to have everything figured out in the path from here to world domination.

With Loopt Star, consumers get to tap interactive rewards wherever they may be.

Companies that I've been very involved with, that have had a very bad first hire in the first 3 or so employees never recover from it ...

In general though, if you look at the track record of pivots, they don't become big companies.

Founders are usually very stingy with equity to employees and very generous with equity to investors. I think this is totally backwards.

The best people know that they should join a rocketship.

When lack of structure fails, it fails all at once. What works totally fine from 0-20 employees, is disastrous at 30.

In YC's case, the number one cause of early death for startups is cofounder blowups.

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

The start-ups that do well are the ones that are working all the time.

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.

Many of the companies in the mobile location space are trying to figure out different ways to tie what they're doing to commerce.

I believe that sexism in tech is a real problem.

What you want to do is innovate on your product and your business model, management structure is not where I would try and innovate.

Many founders hire just because it seems like a cool thing to do, and people always ask how many employees you have.

Growth and momentum are what a startup lives on and you always have to focus on maintaining these.

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.

The second part of how to hire: try not to.

A single mediocre hire in the first five will often in fact kill a startup.

In the beginning of a company, there is no management and this actually works really well.

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

A related advantage of mission oriented ideas, is that you yourself will be dedicated to them.

Don't let the company get distracted or excited about other things. A common mistake is that companies get excited by their own PR.

I think as a rough estimate, you should aim to give about 10% of the company to the first 10 employees.

Investors will sort of like write the check and then, despite a lot of promises, don't usually do that much; sometimes they do.

I believe in the future, and to be a good investor, you have to believe in the future.

More important than starting any startup, is getting to know a lot of potential co-founders.

Startups on the inside are always badly broken.

Every company has a rocky beginning.

You should think about for the next 10 years, you're going to be giving out 3-5% of the company every year.

Whether or not money can buy happiness, it can buy freedom, and that's a big deal. Also, lack of money is very stressful.

One of the great and terrible things about starting a start up is that you get no credit for trying.

You have to save the vision speeches for when the company is winning. When you're not winning, you just have to get momentum back ...

Everyone is looking for the hack, the secret to success without hard work.

The single word that matters most I think to keep the company productive as it grows is alignment.

It's easy to move fast or be obsessed with quality, but the trick is you have to do both at a startup.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Cofounder relationships are among the most important in the entire company.

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.

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

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

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.

Great execution towards a terrible idea will get you nowhere.

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

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

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

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

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

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

You shouldn't try to manufacture progress.

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

Obsess about the quality of the product.

No matter what you choose, build stuff and be around smart people.

You need unstoppable people. You want people that are just going to get it done.

Founders need to figure out what the message of the company is going to be.

The other piece besides focus for execution is intensity. Startups only work at a fairly intense level.

The way to build billion dollar companies is to first build something people love. There isn't really a shortcut there.

People are incredible creatures of habit.

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

For early employees you want people that have somewhat of a risk-taking attitude.

Facebook has this famous poster that says move fast and break things. But at the same time they manage to be obsessed with quality.

The correlation of quality of life and cost of energy is huge.

You need to figure out what the 2 or 3 most important things are, and then just do those.

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.

Some day everyone will find out everyone else's comp, if it's all over the place, it will be a complete meltdown disaster

You're either not hiring at all or it's probably your single biggest block of time.

Experience matters for some roles and not others.

In addition to relentlessly resourceful, you want a tough and a calm cofounder.

Virgin America flyers tend to be more likely to be using a mobile device and tapping social networks - even at 35,000 feet.

You should be able to describe any employee as an animal at what they do.

Set a clear, easy-to-understand vision for your company, and make it be a mission people believe in.

You never want to be in a place where an employee has vested 3 out of the 4 years of stock and they start thinking about leaving.

The crowd's a really powerful force on the Internet, and people finally understand how to harness that.