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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
Thinking
Parts
People
Team
Worst
Company
Actually
Experience
Running
Think
Firing

More quotes by Sam Altman

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Later, you should learn to hire fast and scale up the company, but in the early days the goal should be not to hire. Not to hire.
Sam Altman
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You have to be decisive. Indecisiveness is a startup killer.
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... how much time you should be spending on hiring? The answer is 0 or 25 percent.
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Before product/market fit, your only job that matters is to build a great product.
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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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It's easy to move fast or be obsessed with quality, but the trick is you have to do both at a startup.
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... you want to be proud of how much you can get done with a small numbers of employees.
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The startups that do well are the ones that are working all the time.
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One thing that often disrupts momentum and really shouldn't is competitors.
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Growth solves (nearly) all problems
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In YC's case, the number one cause of early death for startups is cofounder blowups.
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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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The track record for founders that don't already know each other is really bad.
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In the beginning of a company, there is no management and this actually works really well.
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Cofounder relationships are among the most important in the entire company.
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Don't let the company get distracted or excited about other things. A common mistake is that companies get excited by their own PR.
Sam Altman
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Unpopular but right is what you're going for.
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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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Starting a business is like riding a wave between life and death. If you can hang on long enough, you're bound to succeed
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You don't get to make their decisions but you do get to choose the decision makers.
Sam Altman