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No growth hack, brilliant marketing idea, or sales team can save you long term if you don't have a sufficiently good product.

Sam Altman

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Sam Altman
Age: 39
Born: 1985
Born: April 22
Entrepreneur
Chicago
Illinois
Samuel H. Altman
Samuel Altman
Products
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Growth
Hacks
Team
Sufficiently
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More quotes by Sam Altman

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... you can think about that for everyone you hire: will I bet the future of this company on this single hire? And that's a tough bar.
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... how much time you should be spending on hiring? The answer is 0 or 25 percent.
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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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For most of the early hires you make in a startup, experience doesn't matter very much, and you should go for aptitude.
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Unpopular but right is what you're going for.
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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.
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Later, you should learn to hire fast and scale up the company, but in the early days the goal should be not to hire. Not to hire.
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In the beginning of a company, there is no management and this actually works really well.
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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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One thing that founders forget is that after they hire employees, they have to retain them.
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If you don't need it yourself, and you're building something that someone else needs, realize you're at a big disadvantage.
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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.
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For most software startups, this translates to keep growing. For hardware startups, it translates to don't let your ship date slip.
Sam Altman
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Mediocre founders spend a lot of time talking about grand plans, but they never quite make a decision.
Sam Altman
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So you should always stay on top of people's vesting schedules.
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The startups that do well are the ones that are working all the time.
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1 of the hardest parts about being a founder, is that there are a 100 important things competing for your attention each day.
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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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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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You can have a startup and one other thing, you can have a family, but you probably can't have many other things.
Sam Altman