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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.

Sam Altman

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Sam Altman
Age: 39
Born: 1985
Born: April 22
Entrepreneur
Chicago
Illinois
Samuel H. Altman
Samuel Altman
Enough
Right
Hard
Work
Things
Focussed
Nearly
Maybe

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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.
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One thing that founders always underestimate is how hard it is to recruit.
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You have to let your team get all the credit for all the good stuff that happens, and you take responsibility for the bad stuff.
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... how much time you should be spending on hiring? The answer is 0 or 25 percent.
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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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You cannot create a market that doesn't want to exist.
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You need to figure out what the 2 or 3 most important things are, and then just do those.
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You should be able to describe any employee as an animal at what they do.
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Why now, why is this the perfect time for this particular idea, and to start this particular company?
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You can create value with breakthrough innovation, incremental refinement, or complex coordination. Great companies often do two of these. The very best companies do all three.
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The way to have a company that executes well is you have to execute well yourself.
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... for the top twenty most valuable YC companies, all of them have at least two founders.
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A single mediocre hire in the first five will often in fact kill a startup.
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Startups are not the best choice for work-life balance, and that's sort of just the sad reality.
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The biggest PR hack you can do, is not hire a PR firm.
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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.
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Obsess about the quality of the product.
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I think as a rough estimate, you should aim to give about 10% of the company to the first 10 employees.
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The most common post YC failure case for the companies we fund, is they're incredibly focussed during YC on their company... and after they start doing a lot of other things. They advise companies, they go to conferences, whatever.
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If you compromise in the first five, ten hires it might kill the company.
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