Quote

You don't get to make their decisions but you do get to choose the decision makers.

Sam Altman

Change background

T
T
T

Change font

TAGS & TOPICS

Sam Altman
Age: 39
Born: 1985
Born: April 22
Entrepreneur
Chicago
Illinois
Samuel H. Altman
Samuel Altman
Makers
Decisions
Choose
Team
Decision
Make

More quotes by Sam Altman

Image
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.
Sam Altman
Image
... but actually it sucks to have a lot of employees, and you should be proud of how few employees you have.
Sam Altman
Image
AirBnB spent 5 months interviewing their first employee, before they hired someone and in their first year, they only hired 2 people.
Sam Altman
Image
One thing that often disrupts momentum and really shouldn't is competitors.
Sam Altman
Image
You need unstoppable people. You want people that are just going to get it done.
Sam Altman
Image
Aim to be the best in the world at whatever you do professionally. Even if you miss, you'll probably end up in a pretty good place.
Sam Altman
Image
The hard part is that this is a very fine line. There's right on one side of it, and crazy on the other.
Sam Altman
Image
These all sounded really bad, but they turned out to be good. If they had sounded really good, there would have been too many people working on them.
Sam Altman
Image
You only get points when you make something the market wants. So if you work really hard on the wrong things, no one will care.
Sam Altman
Image
At the beginning, you should only hire when you have a desperate need to.
Sam Altman
Image
The most important thing is that there is clear reporting structure and everyone knows what it is.
Sam Altman
Image
Everyone starting a startup for the first time is scared, and everyone feels like a bit of an imposter.
Sam Altman
Image
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.
Sam Altman
Image
You need this sort of a tailwind to make a startup successful.
Sam Altman
Image
Startups are very hard no matter what you do you may as well go after a big opportunity.
Sam Altman
Image
You should always know how you're doing against your metrics. You should always have a weekly review meeting every week.
Sam Altman
Image
The second part of how to hire: try not to.
Sam Altman
Image
Most good founders that I know at any given time have a set of small overarching goals for the company that everybody in the company knows.
Sam Altman
Image
It's easy to move fast or be obsessed with quality, but the trick is you have to do both at a startup.
Sam Altman
Image
Unfortunately the trick to great execution is to say no a lot.
Sam Altman