Sam Altman Quotes
Top 100 wise famous quotes and sayings 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 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.
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.
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.
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.
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 ...
Founders are usually very stingy with equity to employees and very generous with equity to investors. I think this is totally backwards.
When lack of structure fails, it fails all at once. What works totally fine from 0-20 employees, is disastrous at 30.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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 ...
It's easy to move fast or be obsessed with quality, but the trick is you have to do both at a startup.
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.
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.
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.
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 tenth social network, and limited only to college students with no money, also terrible. Myspace had won.
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.
Because it's one of these sort of connections between nodes- every pair of people adds communication overhead.
Facebook has this famous poster that says move fast and break things. But at the same time they manage to be obsessed with quality.
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
Virgin America flyers tend to be more likely to be using a mobile device and tapping social networks - even at 35,000 feet.
Set a clear, easy-to-understand vision for your company, and make it be a mission people believe in.