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Unfortunately the trick to great execution is to say no a lot.

Sam Altman

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Sam Altman
Age: 39
Born: 1985
Born: April 22
Entrepreneur
Chicago
Illinois
Samuel H. Altman
Samuel Altman
Execution
Trick
Unfortunately
Tricks
Great

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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Whatever the founder cares about, whatever the founders think are the key goals, that's going to be what the whole company focusses on.
Sam Altman
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Employees will only add more value over time.
Sam Altman
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In the early stage of a startup, hiring senior people is usually a mistake. You just want people that get stuff done.
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The second part of how to hire: try not to.
Sam Altman
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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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No growth hack, brilliant marketing idea, or sales team can save you long term if you don't have a sufficiently good product.
Sam Altman
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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.
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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If you have several ideas that all seem pretty good, work on the one that you think about, when you're not trying to think about work.
Sam Altman
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In addition to relentlessly resourceful, you want a tough and a calm cofounder.
Sam Altman
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You should always know how you're doing against your metrics. You should always have a weekly review meeting every week.
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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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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When lack of structure fails, it fails all at once. What works totally fine from 0-20 employees, is disastrous at 30.
Sam Altman
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You really want to know your cofounders for a while, ideally years.
Sam Altman
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The company just needs to see you as like this maniacal execution machine.
Sam Altman
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... you can think about that for everyone you hire: will I bet the future of this company on this single hire? And that's a tough bar.
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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You should be able to describe any employee as an animal at what they do.
Sam Altman