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The best people know that they should join a rocketship.

Sam Altman

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Sam Altman
Age: 39
Born: 1985
Born: April 22
Entrepreneur
Chicago
Illinois
Samuel H. Altman
Samuel Altman
Join
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Best
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More quotes by Sam Altman

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You don't get to make their decisions but you do get to choose the decision makers.
Sam Altman
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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.
Sam Altman
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Most investors are obsessed with the market size today and they don't think about how the market is going to evolve.
Sam Altman
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Later, you should learn to hire fast and scale up the company, but in the early days the goal should be not to hire. Not to hire.
Sam Altman
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Firing people is one of the worst parts of running a company. Actually in my own experience, I think it is the worst.
Sam Altman
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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.
Sam Altman
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... but the pendulum has swung way out of whack here. A bad idea is still bad, and the pivot happy world we're in today feels suboptimal.
Sam Altman
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The second part of how to hire: try not to.
Sam Altman
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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.
Sam Altman
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You cannot create a market that doesn't want to exist.
Sam Altman
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Long term thinking is so rare anywhere, but especially in startups. This is a huge advantage if you do it.
Sam Altman
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Most good founders that I know at any given time have a set of small overarching goals for the company that everybody in the company knows.
Sam Altman
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Startups are very hard no matter what you do you may as well go after a big opportunity.
Sam Altman
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A board member of mine used to say sales fix everything in a startup, and that is really true.
Sam Altman
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... and you can only have 2 or 3 things everyday, because everything else will just come at you you know fires in a day.
Sam Altman
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The track record for founders that don't already know each other is really bad.
Sam Altman
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The way to have a company that executes well is you have to execute well yourself.
Sam Altman
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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
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If you want something in a deal, just ask for it.
Sam Altman
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... for the top twenty most valuable YC companies, all of them have at least two founders.
Sam Altman