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For most of the early hires you make in a startup, experience doesn't matter very much, and you should go for aptitude.

Sam Altman

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Sam Altman
Age: 39
Born: 1985
Born: April 22
Entrepreneur
Chicago
Illinois
Samuel H. Altman
Samuel Altman
Experience
Doesn
Matter
Much
Hires
Make
Aptitude
Early
Team

More quotes by Sam Altman

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You really want to know your cofounders for a while, ideally years.
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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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Founders are usually very stingy with equity to employees and very generous with equity to investors. I think this is totally backwards.
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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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Or a way to stay on strangers couches, that just sounds terrible all around.
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You need to have a culture where people have very high quality standards in everything the company does, but still move quickly.
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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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... 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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You also want to fire people who a) create office politics, and b) who are persistently negative.
Sam Altman
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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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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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The way to have a company that executes well is you have to execute well yourself.
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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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.
Sam Altman
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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.
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.
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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.
Sam Altman
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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.
Sam Altman
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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.
Sam Altman
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In the beginning of a company, there is no management and this actually works really well.
Sam Altman