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Starting a business is like riding a wave between life and death. If you can hang on long enough, you're bound to succeed

Sam Altman

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Sam Altman
Age: 39
Born: 1985
Born: April 22
Entrepreneur
Chicago
Illinois
Samuel H. Altman
Samuel Altman
Death
Riding
Enough
Bound
Long
Hang
Life
Bounds
Like
Wave
Starting
Succeed
Business

More quotes by Sam Altman

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One thing I tell startups all the time is that the best way to grow is to make their product better.
Sam Altman
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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.
Sam Altman
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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
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I think as a rough estimate, you should aim to give about 10% of the company to the first 10 employees.
Sam Altman
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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
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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
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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.
Sam Altman
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Don't let the company get distracted or excited about other things. A common mistake is that companies get excited by their own PR.
Sam Altman
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A single mediocre hire in the first five will often in fact kill a startup.
Sam Altman
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You cannot create a market that doesn't want to exist.
Sam Altman
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Most startups are not nearly focussed enough. They work hard...maybe, but they don't work hard on the right things.
Sam Altman
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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.
Sam Altman
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You should be able to describe any employee as an animal at what they do.
Sam Altman
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In general, it's best if you're building something that you yourself need.
Sam Altman
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Because it's one of these sort of connections between nodes- every pair of people adds communication overhead.
Sam Altman
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One thing that founders always underestimate is how hard it is to recruit.
Sam Altman
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Founders are usually very stingy with equity to employees and very generous with equity to investors. I think this is totally backwards.
Sam Altman
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Aim to be the best in the world at whatever you do professionally. Even if you miss, you'll probably end up in a pretty good place.
Sam Altman
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... fire fast when it's not working. It's better for the company, it's also better for the employee.
Sam Altman
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Developing a personal connection with anyone you're trying to do a big deal with is really important.
Sam Altman