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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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In addition to relentlessly resourceful, you want a tough and a calm cofounder.
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... for the top twenty most valuable YC companies, all of them have at least two founders.
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You have to save the vision speeches for when the company is winning. When you're not winning, you just have to get momentum back.
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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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Most of the best hires that I've made in my entire life have never done that thing before.
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Startups are very hard no matter what you do you may as well go after a big opportunity.
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Another way of looking at this, is that the best companies are almost always mission oriented.
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You can basically change everything in a startup but the market.
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You cannot create a market that doesn't want to exist.
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Most startups are not nearly focussed enough. They work hard...maybe, but they don't work hard on the right things.
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Because so few people make an actual long term commitment to what they're building, the ones that do have a huge advantage.
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... but actually it sucks to have a lot of employees, and you should be proud of how few employees you have.
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You need this sort of a tailwind to make a startup successful.
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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.
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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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Mediocre founders spend a lot of time talking about grand plans, but they never quite make a decision.
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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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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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You certainly don't need to have everything figured out in the path from here to world domination.
Sam Altman
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The company just needs to see you as like this maniacal execution machine.
Sam Altman