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The cost of getting an early hire wrong is really high.

Sam Altman

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Sam Altman
Age: 39
Born: 1985
Born: April 22
Entrepreneur
Chicago
Illinois
Samuel H. Altman
Samuel Altman
Hire
Early
Cost
Team
High
Getting
Wrong
Really

More quotes by Sam Altman

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The best people know that they should join a rocketship.
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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.
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You have to let your team get all the credit for all the good stuff that happens, and you take responsibility for the bad stuff.
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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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You really want to know your cofounders for a while, ideally years.
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... you want to be proud of how much you can get done with a small numbers of employees.
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For most software startups, this translates to keep growing. For hardware startups, it translates to don't let your ship date slip.
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If you compromise in the first five, ten hires it might kill the company.
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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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Ideas by themselves are not worth anything, only executing well is what creates value.
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Great execution towards a terrible idea will get you nowhere.
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As the company grows and about this 25 or so employee size, your main job shifts from building a great product to building a great company.
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Unfortunately the trick to great execution is to say no a lot.
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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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One thing that often disrupts momentum and really shouldn't is competitors.
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... you can think about that for everyone you hire: will I bet the future of this company on this single hire? And that's a tough bar.
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At the beginning, you should only hire when you have a desperate need to.
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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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If you have several ideas that all seem pretty good, work on the one that you think about, when you're not trying to think about work.
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One of the great and terrible things about starting a start up is that you get no credit for trying.
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