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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

More quotes by Sam Altman

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Unfortunately the trick to great execution is to say no a lot.
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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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Cofounder relationships are among the most important in the entire company.
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The most important thing is that there is clear reporting structure and everyone knows what it is.
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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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No matter what you choose, build stuff and be around smart people.
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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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Be suspicious of any work that is not building product or getting customers. It's easy to get sucked into an infrastructure rewrite death spiral.
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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.
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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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Founders need to figure out what the message of the company is going to be.
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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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At the beginning, you should only hire when you have a desperate need to.
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It really is true that you become an average of the people you spend the most time with.
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Momentum and growth are the lifeblood of startups. This is probably in the top three secrets of executing well.
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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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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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You have to be decisive. Indecisiveness is a startup killer.
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Whatever the founder cares about, whatever the founders think are the key goals, that's going to be what the whole company focusses on.
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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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