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One thing that founders always underestimate is how hard it is to recruit.

Sam Altman

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Sam Altman
Age: 39
Born: 1985
Born: April 22
Entrepreneur
Chicago
Illinois
Samuel H. Altman
Samuel Altman
Team
Hard
Thing
Always
Recruit
Founders
Underestimate

More quotes by Sam Altman

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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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If you pivot, do it fully and with conviction. The worst thing is to try to do a bit of the old and the new-it's hard to kill your babies.
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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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... 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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The track record for founders that don't already know each other is really bad.
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Press releases are easier to write than code, and that is still easier than making a great product.
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You can create value with breakthrough innovation, incremental refinement, or complex coordination. Great companies often do two of these. The very best companies do all three.
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You also want to fire people who a) create office politics, and b) who are persistently negative.
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... for the top twenty most valuable YC companies, all of them have at least two founders.
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If you compromise in the first five, ten hires it might kill the company.
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You need this sort of a tailwind to make a startup successful.
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The second part of how to hire: try not to.
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In general, it's best if you're building something that you yourself need.
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Founders need to figure out what the message of the company is going to be.
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If it works out, you're going to be working on this for 10 years.
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Because it's one of these sort of connections between nodes- every pair of people adds communication overhead.
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If it takes more than a sentence to explain what you are doing, it's almost always a sign that what you are doing is too complicated.
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The cost of getting an early hire wrong is really high.
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You don't need to make the structure complicated, in fact you shouldn't. All you need is for every employee to know who their manager is.
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A single mediocre hire in the first five will often in fact kill a startup.
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