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Firing people is one of the worst parts of running a company. Actually in my own experience, I think it is the worst.

Sam Altman

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Sam Altman
Age: 39
Born: 1985
Born: April 22
Entrepreneur
Chicago
Illinois
Samuel H. Altman
Samuel Altman
Actually
Experience
Running
Think
Firing
Thinking
Parts
People
Team
Worst
Company

More quotes by Sam Altman

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In addition to relentlessly resourceful, you want a tough and a calm cofounder.
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When lack of structure fails, it fails all at once. What works totally fine from 0-20 employees, is disastrous at 30.
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Most things are not as risky as they seem.
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The role of the board is advice and consent. If the CEO does not lay out a clear strategy and tries to get the board to set one, it will usually end in disaster.
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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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... how much time you should be spending on hiring? The answer is 0 or 25 percent.
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The most common post YC failure case for the companies we fund, is they're incredibly focussed during YC on their company... and after they start doing a lot of other things. They advise companies, they go to conferences, whatever.
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You can have a startup and one other thing, you can have a family, but you probably can't have many other things.
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One of the great and terrible things about starting a start up is that you get no credit for trying.
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The company just needs to see you as like this maniacal execution machine.
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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.
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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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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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Unpopular but right is what you're going for.
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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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The natural state of a start-up is to die most start-ups require multiple miracles in their early days to escape this fate.
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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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Most founders have not managed people before, and they certainly haven't managed managers.
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You need to figure out what the 2 or 3 most important things are, and then just do those.
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... fire fast when it's not working. It's better for the company, it's also better for the employee.
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