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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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Sam Altman
Age: 39
Born: 1985
Born: April 22
Entrepreneur
Chicago
Illinois
Samuel H. Altman
Samuel Altman
Figures
Need
Important
Needs
Things
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More quotes by Sam Altman

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In addition to relentlessly resourceful, you want a tough and a calm cofounder.
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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.
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One thing that founders forget is that after they hire employees, they have to retain them.
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Growth solves (nearly) all problems
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If you compromise and hire someone mediocre you will always regret it.
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... fire fast when it's not working. It's better for the company, it's also better for the employee.
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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.
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The hard part is that this is a very fine line. There's right on one side of it, and crazy on the other.
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Or a way to stay on strangers couches, that just sounds terrible all around.
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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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One of the great and terrible things about starting a start up is that you get no credit for trying.
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... if you talk to say any of the first 40 or 50 employees, they all feel like they were a part of the founding of the company.
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I believe in fighting with investors to reduce the amount of equity they get and then being as generous as you possibly can with employees.
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You have to be decisive. Indecisiveness is a startup killer.
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You should think about for the next 10 years, you're going to be giving out 3-5% of the company every year.
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Mediocre founders spend a lot of time talking about grand plans, but they never quite make a decision.
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If someone is getting every decision wrong, that's when you need to act, and at that point it'll be painfully aware to everyone.
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You only get points when you make something the market wants. So if you work really hard on the wrong things, no one will care.
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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.
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Great execution towards a terrible idea will get you nowhere.
Sam Altman