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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
Enough
Bound
Long
Hang
Life
Bounds
Like
Wave
Starting
Succeed
Business
Death
Riding

More quotes by Sam Altman

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You need to have a culture where people have very high quality standards in everything the company does, but still move quickly.
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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You need to figure out what the 2 or 3 most important things are, and then just do those.
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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The company just needs to see you as like this maniacal execution machine.
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Most of the best hires that I've made in my entire life have never done that thing before.
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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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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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One thing that founders always underestimate is how hard it is to recruit.
Sam Altman
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Startups are not the best choice for work-life balance, and that's sort of just the sad reality.
Sam Altman
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You can create value with breakthrough innovation, incremental refinement, or complex coordination. Great companies often do two of these. The very best companies do all three.
Sam Altman
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The role of the board is advice and consent. If the CEO does not lay out a clear strategy and tries to get the board to set one, it will usually end in disaster.
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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You don't get to make their decisions but you do get to choose the decision makers.
Sam Altman
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Most things are not as risky as they seem.
Sam Altman
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The most common post YC failure case for the companies we fund, is they're incredibly focussed during YC on their company... and after they start doing a lot of other things. They advise companies, they go to conferences, whatever.
Sam Altman
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In the beginning of a company, there is no management and this actually works really well.
Sam Altman
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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.
Sam Altman
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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.
Sam Altman
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The startups that do well are the ones that are working all the time.
Sam Altman