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In YC's case, the number one cause of early death for startups is cofounder blowups.

Sam Altman

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Sam Altman
Age: 39
Born: 1985
Born: April 22
Entrepreneur
Chicago
Illinois
Samuel H. Altman
Samuel Altman
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More quotes by Sam Altman

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Losing focus is another way that founders get off track.
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Unfortunately the trick to great execution is to say no a lot.
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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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At the beginning, you should only hire when you have a desperate need to.
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The thing that kills startups at some level, is the founders giving up.
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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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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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So you should always stay on top of people's vesting schedules.
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The company just needs to see you as like this maniacal execution machine.
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You need to have a culture where people have very high quality standards in everything the company does, but still move quickly.
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So always keep momentum, it's this prime directive for managing a startup.
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... but actually it sucks to have a lot of employees, and you should be proud of how few employees you have.
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... and you can only have 2 or 3 things everyday, because everything else will just come at you you know fires in a day.
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Be suspicious of any work that is not building product or getting customers.
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Great execution towards a terrible idea will get you nowhere.
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Another way of looking at this, is that the best companies are almost always mission oriented.
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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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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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In the beginning of a company, there is no management and this actually works really well.
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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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