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So always keep momentum, it's this prime directive for managing a startup.

Sam Altman

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Sam Altman
Age: 39
Born: 1985
Born: April 22
Entrepreneur
Chicago
Illinois
Samuel H. Altman
Samuel Altman
Keep
Always
Directive
Managing
Momentum
Prime

More quotes by Sam Altman

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Most good founders that I know at any given time have a set of small overarching goals for the company that everybody in the company knows.
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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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The thing that kills startups at some level, is the founders giving up.
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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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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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One of the biggest advantages that start ups have is execution speed and you have to have this relentless operating rhythm.
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The natural state of a start-up is to die most start-ups require multiple miracles in their early days to escape this fate.
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We talk to a team they've gotten new things done, that's the best predictor we have that a company will be successful.
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Founders need to figure out what the message of the company is going to be.
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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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The single word that matters most I think to keep the company productive as it grows is alignment.
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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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Most investors are obsessed with the market size today and they don't think about how the market is going to evolve.
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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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Move fast. Speed is one of your main advantages over large companies.
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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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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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... for the top twenty most valuable YC companies, all of them have at least two founders.
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Founders are usually very stingy with equity to employees and very generous with equity to investors. I think this is totally backwards.
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If it takes more than a sentence to explain what you are doing, it's almost always a sign that what you are doing is too complicated.
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