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Everyone starting a startup for the first time is scared, and everyone feels like a bit of an imposter.

Sam Altman

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Sam Altman
Age: 39
Born: 1985
Born: April 22
Entrepreneur
Chicago
Illinois
Samuel H. Altman
Samuel Altman
Time
Imposter
Like
Scared
Starting
Bits
Everyone
Firsts
First
Feels

More quotes by 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.
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The single word that matters most I think to keep the company productive as it grows is alignment.
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A single mediocre hire in the first five will often in fact kill a startup.
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Most things are not as risky as they seem.
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A board member of mine used to say sales fix everything in a startup, and that is really true.
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Move fast. Speed is one of your main advantages over large companies.
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The thing that kills startups at some level, is the founders giving up.
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In general though, if you look at the track record of pivots, they don't become big companies.
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If it works out, you're going to be working on this for 10 years.
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If you have several ideas that all seem pretty good, work on the one that you think about, when you're not trying to think about work.
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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.
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The track record for founders that don't already know each other is really bad.
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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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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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You can basically change everything in a startup but the market.
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... you want to be proud of how much you can get done with a small numbers of employees.
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You should be able to describe any employee as an animal at what they do.
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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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I think as a rough estimate, you should aim to give about 10% of the company to the first 10 employees.
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So it's worth some real up front time to think through the long term value and the defensibility of the business.
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