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The other piece besides focus for execution is intensity. Startups only work at a fairly intense level.

Sam Altman

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Sam Altman
Age: 39
Born: 1985
Born: April 22
Entrepreneur
Chicago
Illinois
Samuel H. Altman
Samuel Altman
Piece
Level
Pieces
Execution
Levels
Besides
Focus
Fairly
Work
Intensity
Intense

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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.
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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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You cannot create a market that doesn't want to exist.
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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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Another way of looking at this, is that the best companies are almost always mission oriented.
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Companies that I've been very involved with, that have had a very bad first hire in the first 3 or so employees never recover from it.
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Growth and momentum are what a startup lives on and you always have to focus on maintaining these.
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In general, it's best if you're building something that you yourself need.
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If you pivot, do it fully and with conviction. The worst thing is to try to do a bit of the old and the new-it's hard to kill your babies.
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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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If someone is getting every decision wrong, that's when you need to act, and at that point it'll be painfully aware to everyone.
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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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If you compromise in the first five, ten hires it might kill the company.
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Momentum and growth are the lifeblood of startups. This is probably in the top three secrets of executing well.
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You can have a startup and one other thing, you can have a family, but you probably can't have many other things.
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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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Obsess about the quality of the product.
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It's easy to move fast or be obsessed with quality, but the trick is you have to do both at a startup.
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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.
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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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