Quote

You can have a startup and one other thing, you can have a family, but you probably can't have many other things.

Sam Altman

Change background

T
T
T

Change font

TAGS & TOPICS

Sam Altman
Age: 39
Born: 1985
Born: April 22
Entrepreneur
Chicago
Illinois
Samuel H. Altman
Samuel Altman
Hobbies
Probably
Family
Many
Thing
Things

More quotes by Sam Altman

Image
When lack of structure fails, it fails all at once. What works totally fine from 0-20 employees, is disastrous at 30.
Sam Altman
Image
... if you talk to say any of the first 40 or 50 employees, they all feel like they were a part of the founding of the company.
Sam Altman
Image
... 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.
Sam Altman
Image
... for the top twenty most valuable YC companies, all of them have at least two founders.
Sam Altman
Image
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.
Sam Altman
Image
The most important thing is that there is clear reporting structure and everyone knows what it is.
Sam Altman
Image
Everyone starting a startup for the first time is scared, and everyone feels like a bit of an imposter.
Sam Altman
Image
In YC's case, the number one cause of early death for startups is cofounder blowups.
Sam Altman
Image
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.
Sam Altman
Image
... you can think about that for everyone you hire: will I bet the future of this company on this single hire? And that's a tough bar.
Sam Altman
Image
One thing that founders forget is that after they hire employees, they have to retain them.
Sam Altman
Image
At the beginning, you should only hire when you have a desperate need to.
Sam Altman
Image
... but the pendulum has swung way out of whack here. A bad idea is still bad, and the pivot happy world we're in today feels suboptimal.
Sam Altman
Image
The natural state of a start-up is to die most start-ups require multiple miracles in their early days to escape this fate.
Sam Altman
Image
Most founders have not managed people before, and they certainly haven't managed managers.
Sam Altman
Image
Move fast. Speed is one of your main advantages over large companies.
Sam Altman
Image
One thing that often disrupts momentum and really shouldn't is competitors.
Sam Altman
Image
Founders are usually very stingy with equity to employees and very generous with equity to investors. I think this is totally backwards.
Sam Altman
Image
Employees will only add more value over time.
Sam Altman
Image
Cofounder relationships are among the most important in the entire company.
Sam Altman