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If you compromise and hire someone mediocre you will always regret it.

Sam Altman

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Sam Altman
Age: 39
Born: 1985
Born: April 22
Entrepreneur
Chicago
Illinois
Samuel H. Altman
Samuel Altman
Always
Hire
Mediocre
Compromise
Regret
Team
Someone

More quotes by 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.
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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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You really want to know your cofounders for a while, ideally years.
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A board member of mine used to say sales fix everything in a startup, and that is really true.
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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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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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Aim to be the best in the world at whatever you do professionally. Even if you miss, you'll probably end up in a pretty good place.
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Some day everyone will find out everyone else's comp, if it's all over the place, it will be a complete meltdown disaster
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You don't get to make their decisions but you do get to choose the decision makers.
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Another way of looking at this, is that the best companies are almost always mission oriented.
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You want to sound crazy, but you want to actually be right.
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You're saying no ninety-seven times out of a hundred, and most founders find they have to make a very conscious effort to do this.
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The company just needs to see you as like this maniacal execution machine.
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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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What being a founder means, is signing up for this years long grind on execution - and you can't outsource this.
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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 should think about for the next 10 years, you're going to be giving out 3-5% of the company every year.
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Unpopular but right is what you're going for.
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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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So it's worth some real up front time to think through the long term value and the defensibility of the business.
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