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Ideas by themselves are not worth anything, only executing well is what creates value.

Sam Altman

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Sam Altman
Age: 39
Born: 1985
Born: April 22
Entrepreneur
Chicago
Illinois
Samuel H. Altman
Samuel Altman
Ideas
Wells
Well
Executing
Creates
Value
Worth
Values
Anything

More quotes by 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 get to make their decisions but you do get to choose the decision makers.
Sam Altman
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Long term thinking is so rare anywhere, but especially in startups. This is a huge advantage if you do it.
Sam Altman
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The single word that matters most I think to keep the company productive as it grows is alignment.
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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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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You really want to know your cofounders for a while, ideally years.
Sam Altman
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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.
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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You can basically change everything in a startup but the market.
Sam Altman
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You should be able to describe any employee as an animal at what they do.
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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Mediocre founders spend a lot of time talking about grand plans, but they never quite make a decision.
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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If you don't need it yourself, and you're building something that someone else needs, realize you're at a big disadvantage.
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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If it takes more than a sentence to explain what you are doing, it's almost always a sign that what you are doing is too complicated.
Sam Altman
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... and you can only have 2 or 3 things everyday, because everything else will just come at you you know fires in a day.
Sam Altman
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A single mediocre hire in the first five will often in fact kill a startup.
Sam Altman
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Obsess about the quality of the product.
Sam Altman