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You really want to know your cofounders for a while, ideally years.

Sam Altman

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Sam Altman
Age: 39
Born: 1985
Born: April 22
Entrepreneur
Chicago
Illinois
Samuel H. Altman
Samuel Altman
Ideally
Team
Years
Really

More quotes by Sam Altman

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Obsess about the quality of the product.
Sam Altman
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Ideas by themselves are not worth anything, only executing well is what creates value.
Sam Altman
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For most of the early hires you make in a startup, experience doesn't matter very much, and you should go for aptitude.
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At the beginning, you should only hire when you have a desperate need to.
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... 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.
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One thing that often disrupts momentum and really shouldn't is competitors.
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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.
Sam Altman
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No matter what you choose, build stuff and be around smart people.
Sam Altman
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Whatever the founder cares about, whatever the founders think are the key goals, that's going to be what the whole company focusses on.
Sam Altman
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The thing that kills startups at some level, is the founders giving up.
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Every company has a rocky beginning.
Sam Altman
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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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I think as a rough estimate, you should aim to give about 10% of the company to the first 10 employees.
Sam Altman
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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.
Sam Altman
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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.
Sam Altman
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One of the great and terrible things about starting a start up is that you get no credit for trying.
Sam Altman
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Before product/market fit, your only job that matters is to build a great product.
Sam Altman
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You need conviction in your own beliefs, and the willingness to ignore others naysaying.
Sam Altman
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I believe in fighting with investors to reduce the amount of equity they get and then being as generous as you possibly can with employees.
Sam Altman
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Or a way to stay on strangers couches, that just sounds terrible all around.
Sam Altman