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The way to have a company that executes well is you have to execute well yourself.

Sam Altman

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Sam Altman
Age: 39
Born: 1985
Born: April 22
Entrepreneur
Chicago
Illinois
Samuel H. Altman
Samuel Altman
Way
Executes
Execute
Company
Wells
Well

More quotes by Sam Altman

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You have to be decisive. Indecisiveness is a startup killer.
Sam Altman
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You also want to fire people who a) create office politics, and b) who are persistently negative.
Sam Altman
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If you pivot, do it fully and with conviction. The worst thing is to try to do a bit of the old and the new-it's hard to kill your babies.
Sam Altman
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If you compromise and hire someone mediocre you will always regret it.
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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It's easy to move fast or be obsessed with quality, but the trick is you have to do both at a startup.
Sam Altman
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The other piece besides focus for execution is intensity. Startups only work at a fairly intense level.
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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... 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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So you should always stay on top of people's vesting schedules.
Sam Altman
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As you grow, it feels hopelessly corporate but it really is worth putting in place these compensation bands.
Sam Altman
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A small communication breakdown is enough for everyone to be working on slightly different things. And then you loose focus.
Sam Altman
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In YC's case, the number one cause of early death for startups is cofounder blowups.
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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Or a way to stay on strangers couches, that just sounds terrible all around.
Sam Altman
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... how much time you should be spending on hiring? The answer is 0 or 25 percent.
Sam Altman
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Most investors are obsessed with the market size today and they don't think about how the market is going to evolve.
Sam Altman
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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.
Sam Altman
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These all sounded really bad, but they turned out to be good. If they had sounded really good, there would have been too many people working on them.
Sam Altman
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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