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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
Executes
Execute
Company
Wells
Well
Way

More quotes by Sam Altman

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The track record for founders that don't already know each other is really bad.
Sam Altman
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AirBnB spent 5 months interviewing their first employee, before they hired someone and in their first year, they only hired 2 people.
Sam Altman
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You don't need to make the structure complicated, in fact you shouldn't. All you need is for every employee to know who their manager is.
Sam Altman
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Employees will only add more value over time.
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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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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Most good founders that I know at any given time have a set of small overarching goals for the company that everybody in the company knows.
Sam Altman
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At the beginning, you should only hire when you have a desperate need to.
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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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
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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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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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Be suspicious of any work that is not building product or getting customers. It's easy to get sucked into an infrastructure rewrite death spiral.
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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What being a founder means, is signing up for this years long grind on execution - and you can't outsource this.
Sam Altman
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Every company has a rocky beginning.
Sam Altman
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Be suspicious of any work that is not building product or getting customers.
Sam Altman
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Cofounder relationships are among the most important in the entire company.
Sam Altman