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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
Hard
Work
Things
Focussed
Nearly
Maybe
Enough
Right

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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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If you compromise in the first five, ten hires it might kill the company.
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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.
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Ideas by themselves are not worth anything, only executing well is what creates value.
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In the beginning of a company, there is no management and this actually works really well.
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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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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 best ideas often look terrible at the beginning the truly good ideas, don't seem like they're worth stealing.
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Obsess about the quality of the product.
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Long term thinking is so rare anywhere, but especially in startups. This is a huge advantage if you do it.
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The cost of getting an early hire wrong is really high.
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Cofounder relationships are among the most important in the entire company.
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Be suspicious of any work that is not building product or getting customers. It's easy to get sucked into an infrastructure rewrite death spiral.
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If it works out, you're going to be working on this for 10 years.
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One thing that founders always underestimate is how hard it is to recruit.
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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.
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Every company has a rocky beginning.
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To get the very best people- they have a lot of great options, and so it can easily take a year to recruit someone.
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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.
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Don't let the company get distracted or excited about other things. A common mistake is that companies get excited by their own PR.
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