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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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Sam Altman
Age: 39
Born: 1985
Born: April 22
Entrepreneur
Chicago
Illinois
Samuel H. Altman
Samuel Altman
Competing
Hardest
Parts
Attention
Important
Things
Founder
Founders

More quotes by Sam Altman

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The way to have a company that executes well is you have to execute well yourself.
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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.
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In the beginning of a company, there is no management and this actually works really well.
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It really is true that you become an average of the people you spend the most time with.
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You really want to know your cofounders for a while, ideally years.
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In YC's case, the number one cause of early death for startups is cofounder blowups.
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Move fast. Speed is one of your main advantages over large companies.
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If you want something in a deal, just ask for it.
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... how much time you should be spending on hiring? The answer is 0 or 25 percent.
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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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... the thing we see wrong with YC apps most frequently, is that people have not thought about the market first and what people want first.
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One thing I tell startups all the time is that the best way to grow is to make their product better.
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Employees will only add more value over time.
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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.
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A single mediocre hire in the first five will often in fact kill a startup.
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... for the top twenty most valuable YC companies, all of them have at least two founders.
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Founders need to figure out what the message of the company is going to be.
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Or a way to stay on strangers couches, that just sounds terrible all around.
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Before product/market fit, your only job that matters is to build a great product.
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We talk to a team they've gotten new things done, that's the best predictor we have that a company will be successful.
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