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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
Early
Cost
Team
High
Getting
Wrong
Really
Hire

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To get the very best people- they have a lot of great options, and so it can easily take a year to recruit someone.
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You certainly don't need to have everything figured out in the path from here to world domination.
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Every company has a rocky beginning.
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Great execution towards a terrible idea will get you nowhere.
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In general though, if you look at the track record of pivots, they don't become big companies.
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It really is true that you become an average of the people you spend the most time with.
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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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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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... 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.
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If it works out, you're going to be working on this for 10 years.
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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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You need conviction in your own beliefs, and the willingness to ignore others naysaying.
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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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In the beginning of a company, there is no management and this actually works really well.
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Obsess about the quality of the product.
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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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Losing focus is another way that founders get off track.
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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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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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