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If you compromise in the first five, ten hires it might kill the company.

Sam Altman

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Sam Altman
Age: 39
Born: 1985
Born: April 22
Entrepreneur
Chicago
Illinois
Samuel H. Altman
Samuel Altman
Team
Company
Five
Might
Firsts
Hires
First
Compromise
Ten
Kill

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If it works out, you're going to be working on this for 10 years.
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1 of the hardest parts about being a founder, is that there are a 100 important things competing for your attention each day.
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Or a way to stay on strangers couches, that just sounds terrible all around.
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Unfortunately the trick to great execution is to say no a lot.
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You have to save the vision speeches for when the company is winning. When you're not winning, you just have to get momentum back.
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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.
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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.
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In general though, if you look at the track record of pivots, they don't become big companies.
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You really want to know your cofounders for a while, ideally years.
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A single mediocre hire in the first five will often in fact kill a startup.
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Great execution towards a terrible idea will get you nowhere.
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One thing that founders forget is that after they hire employees, they have to retain them.
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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.
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... but actually it sucks to have a lot of employees, and you should be proud of how few employees you have.
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Every company has a rocky beginning.
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I really believe that the single hardest thing in business is building a company that does repeatable innovation... and just has this ongoing culture of excellence as it grows.
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In YC's case, the number one cause of early death for startups is cofounder blowups.
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