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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

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Sam Altman
Age: 39
Born: 1985
Born: April 22
Entrepreneur
Chicago
Illinois
Samuel H. Altman
Samuel Altman
Fate
Early
Days
Start
Miracles
Dies
Multiple
State
Require
Natural
Escape
States
Miracle

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One of the great and terrible things about starting a start up is that you get no credit for trying.
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I really believe that the single hardest thing in business is building a company that does repeatable innovation... and just has this ongoing culture of excellence as it grows.
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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.
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Long term thinking is so rare anywhere, but especially in startups. This is a huge advantage if you do it.
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... and you can only have 2 or 3 things everyday, because everything else will just come at you you know fires in a day.
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You should think about for the next 10 years, you're going to be giving out 3-5% of the company every year.
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In YC's case, the number one cause of early death for startups is cofounder blowups.
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One thing that founders forget is that after they hire employees, they have to retain them.
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Startups are very hard no matter what you do you may as well go after a big opportunity.
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Mediocre founders spend a lot of time talking about grand plans, but they never quite make a decision.
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If you compromise in the first five, ten hires it might kill the company.
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The second part of how to hire: try not to.
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If it takes more than a sentence to explain what you are doing, it's almost always a sign that what you are doing is too complicated.
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... how much time you should be spending on hiring? The answer is 0 or 25 percent.
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The other piece besides focus for execution is intensity. Startups only work at a fairly intense level.
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Growth and momentum are what a startup lives on and you always have to focus on maintaining these.
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... 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.
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... but actually it sucks to have a lot of employees, and you should be proud of how few employees you have.
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When lack of structure fails, it fails all at once. What works totally fine from 0-20 employees, is disastrous at 30.
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To get the very best people- they have a lot of great options, and so it can easily take a year to recruit someone.
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