Quote

AirBnB spent 5 months interviewing their first employee, before they hired someone and in their first year, they only hired 2 people.

Sam Altman

Change background

T
T
T

Change font

TAGS & TOPICS

Sam Altman
Age: 39
Born: 1985
Born: April 22
Entrepreneur
Chicago
Illinois
Samuel H. Altman
Samuel Altman
Someone
Firsts
Interviewing
First
Hired
Years
Employee
People
Spent
Months
Team
Year

More quotes by Sam Altman

Image
The company just needs to see you as like this maniacal execution machine.
Sam Altman
Image
In general, it's best if you're building something that you yourself need.
Sam Altman
Image
... fire fast when it's not working. It's better for the company, it's also better for the employee.
Sam Altman
Image
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
Image
Another way of looking at this, is that the best companies are almost always mission oriented.
Sam Altman
Image
You need unstoppable people. You want people that are just going to get it done.
Sam Altman
Image
You should always know how you're doing against your metrics. You should always have a weekly review meeting every week.
Sam Altman
Image
You should think about for the next 10 years, you're going to be giving out 3-5% of the company every year.
Sam Altman
Image
One thing that often disrupts momentum and really shouldn't is competitors.
Sam Altman
Image
If you compromise and hire someone mediocre you will always regret it.
Sam Altman
Image
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.
Sam Altman
Image
Losing focus is another way that founders get off track.
Sam Altman
Image
The track record for founders that don't already know each other is really bad.
Sam Altman
Image
I think as a rough estimate, you should aim to give about 10% of the company to the first 10 employees.
Sam Altman
Image
If you don't need it yourself, and you're building something that someone else needs, realize you're at a big disadvantage.
Sam Altman
Image
For most software startups, this translates to keep growing. For hardware startups, it translates to don't let your ship date slip.
Sam Altman
Image
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
Image
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.
Sam Altman
Image
... but actually it sucks to have a lot of employees, and you should be proud of how few employees you have.
Sam Altman
Image
So you should always stay on top of people's vesting schedules.
Sam Altman