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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
Death
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More quotes by Sam Altman

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In the beginning of a company, there is no management and this actually works really well.
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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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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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So it's worth some real up front time to think through the long term value and the defensibility of the business.
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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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You only get points when you make something the market wants. So if you work really hard on the wrong things, no one will care.
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No matter what you choose, build stuff and be around smart people.
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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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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 biggest PR hack you can do, is not hire a PR firm.
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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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You don't need to make the structure complicated, in fact you shouldn't. All you need is for every employee to know who their manager is.
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These all sounded really bad, but they turned out to be good. If they had sounded really good, there would have been too many people working on them.
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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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The way to have a company that executes well is you have to execute well yourself.
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The other piece besides focus for execution is intensity. Startups only work at a fairly intense level.
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At the beginning, you should only hire when you have a desperate need to.
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Most things are not as risky as they seem.
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Cofounder relationships are among the most important in the entire company.
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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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