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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
Ten
Kill
Team
Company
Five
Might
Hires
Firsts
First
Compromise

More quotes by Sam Altman

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For most software startups, this translates to keep growing. For hardware startups, it translates to don't let your ship date slip.
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Mediocre founders spend a lot of time talking about grand plans, but they never quite make a decision.
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I think as a rough estimate, you should aim to give about 10% of the company to the first 10 employees.
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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 really want to know your cofounders for a while, ideally years.
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Obsess about the quality of the product.
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In YC's case, the number one cause of early death for startups is cofounder blowups.
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Employees will only add more value over time.
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If you compromise and hire someone mediocre you will always regret it.
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Move fast. Speed is one of your main advantages over large companies.
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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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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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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.
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Why now, why is this the perfect time for this particular idea, and to start this particular company?
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Everyone starting a startup for the first time is scared, and everyone feels like a bit of an imposter.
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Because so few people make an actual long term commitment to what they're building, the ones that do have a huge advantage.
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Startups are not the best choice for work-life balance, and that's sort of just the sad reality.
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Most things are not as risky as they seem.
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Startups are very hard no matter what you do you may as well go after a big opportunity.
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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.
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