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The second part of how to hire: try not to.

Sam Altman

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Sam Altman
Age: 39
Born: 1985
Born: April 22
Entrepreneur
Chicago
Illinois
Samuel H. Altman
Samuel Altman
Hire
Second
Team
Part
Trying

More quotes by 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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Starting a business is like riding a wave between life and death. If you can hang on long enough, you're bound to succeed
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In general, it's best if you're building something that you yourself need.
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In YC's case, the number one cause of early death for startups is cofounder blowups.
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Before product/market fit, your only job that matters is to build a great product.
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The hard part is that this is a very fine line. There's right on one side of it, and crazy on the other.
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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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Unfortunately the trick to great execution is to say no a lot.
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No matter what you choose, build stuff and be around smart people.
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Most things are not as risky as they seem.
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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.
Sam Altman
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Most startups are not nearly focussed enough. They work hard...maybe, but they don't work hard on the right things.
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The cost of getting an early hire wrong is really high.
Sam Altman
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... 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
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One thing I tell startups all the time is that the best way to grow is to make their product better.
Sam Altman
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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.
Sam Altman
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In the beginning of a company, there is no management and this actually works really well.
Sam Altman
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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.
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.
Sam Altman
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The other piece besides focus for execution is intensity. Startups only work at a fairly intense level.
Sam Altman