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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
Employee
Possibly
Generous
Amount
Team
Equity
Fighting
Employees
Believe
Reduce
Investors

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You cannot create a market that doesn't want to exist.
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Before product/market fit, your only job that matters is to build a great product.
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The thing that kills startups at some level, is the founders giving up.
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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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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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Most things are not as risky as they seem.
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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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Developing a personal connection with anyone you're trying to do a big deal with is really important.
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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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Unpopular but right is what you're going for.
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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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Most startups are not nearly focussed enough. They work hard...maybe, but they don't work hard on the right things.
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In the early stage of a startup, hiring senior people is usually a mistake. You just want people that get stuff done.
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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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The hard part is that this is a very fine line. There's right on one side of it, and crazy on the other.
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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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... 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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You certainly don't need to have everything figured out in the path from here to world domination.
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So you should always stay on top of people's vesting schedules.
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One thing I tell startups all the time is that the best way to grow is to make their product better.
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