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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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Sam Altman
Age: 39
Born: 1985
Born: April 22
Entrepreneur
Chicago
Illinois
Samuel H. Altman
Samuel Altman
Employee
Companies
Involved
Team
Company
Recover
Firsts
Employees
First
Never
Hire

More quotes by Sam Altman

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A single mediocre hire in the first five will often in fact kill a startup.
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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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Most things are not as risky as they seem.
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As you grow, it feels hopelessly corporate but it really is worth putting in place these compensation bands.
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In the early stage of a startup, hiring senior people is usually a mistake. You just want people that get stuff done.
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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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Move fast. Speed is one of your main advantages over large companies.
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The most common post YC failure case for the companies we fund, is they're incredibly focussed during YC on their company... and after they start doing a lot of other things. They advise companies, they go to conferences, whatever.
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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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A small communication breakdown is enough for everyone to be working on slightly different things. And then you loose focus.
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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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No matter what you choose, build stuff and be around smart people.
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The company just needs to see you as like this maniacal execution machine.
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One thing that founders forget is that after they hire employees, they have to retain them.
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When lack of structure fails, it fails all at once. What works totally fine from 0-20 employees, is disastrous at 30.
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Growth solves (nearly) all problems
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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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The other piece besides focus for execution is intensity. Startups only work at a fairly intense level.
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No growth hack, brilliant marketing idea, or sales team can save you long term if you don't have a sufficiently good product.
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... if you talk to say any of the first 40 or 50 employees, they all feel like they were a part of the founding of the company.
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