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I believe in fighting with investors to reduce the amount of equity they get and then being as generous as you possibly can with employees.

Sam Altman

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Sam Altman
Age: 39
Born: 1985
Born: April 22
Entrepreneur
Chicago
Illinois
Samuel H. Altman
Samuel Altman
Amount
Team
Equity
Fighting
Employees
Believe
Reduce
Investors
Employee
Possibly
Generous

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Remember that the idea will expand, and become more ambitious as you go.
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You have to be decisive. Indecisiveness is a startup killer.
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Long term thinking is so rare anywhere, but especially in startups. This is a huge advantage if you do it.
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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.
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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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You certainly don't need to have everything figured out in the path from here to world domination.
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A single mediocre hire in the first five will often in fact kill a startup.
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In YC's case, the number one cause of early death for startups is cofounder blowups.
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Because it's one of these sort of connections between nodes- every pair of people adds communication overhead.
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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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Obsess about the quality of the product.
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In general, it's best if you're building something that you yourself need.
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If someone is getting every decision wrong, that's when you need to act, and at that point it'll be painfully aware to everyone.
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... for the top twenty most valuable YC companies, all of them have at least two founders.
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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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You also want to fire people who a) create office politics, and b) who are persistently negative.
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At the beginning, you should only hire when you have a desperate need to.
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You should always know how you're doing against your metrics. You should always have a weekly review meeting every week.
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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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You think you have this great idea that everyone's going to come join, but that's not how it works.
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