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One of the great and terrible things about starting a start up is that you get no credit for trying.

Sam Altman

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Sam Altman
Age: 39
Born: 1985
Born: April 22
Entrepreneur
Chicago
Illinois
Samuel H. Altman
Samuel Altman
Credit
Starting
Terrible
Start
Great
Trying
Things

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One thing that founders forget is that after they hire employees, they have to retain them.
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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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Obsess about the quality of the product.
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Growth solves (nearly) all problems
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Some day everyone will find out everyone else's comp, if it's all over the place, it will be a complete meltdown disaster
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Aim to be the best in the world at whatever you do professionally. Even if you miss, you'll probably end up in a pretty good place.
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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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You need to figure out what the 2 or 3 most important things are, and then just do those.
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You need conviction in your own beliefs, and the willingness to ignore others naysaying.
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The second part of how to hire: try not to.
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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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I really believe that the single hardest thing in business is building a company that does repeatable innovation... and just has this ongoing culture of excellence as it grows.
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For most software startups, this translates to keep growing. For hardware startups, it translates to don't let your ship date slip.
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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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If you compromise in the first five, ten hires it might kill the company.
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So you should always stay on top of people's vesting schedules.
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... for the top twenty most valuable YC companies, all of them have at least two founders.
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The biggest PR hack you can do, is not hire a PR firm.
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The startups that do well are the ones that are working all the time.
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