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Great execution towards a terrible idea will get you nowhere.

Sam Altman

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Sam Altman
Age: 39
Born: 1985
Born: April 22
Entrepreneur
Chicago
Illinois
Samuel H. Altman
Samuel Altman
Terrible
Idea
Ideas
Great
Execution
Nowhere
Towards

More quotes by Sam Altman

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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.
Sam Altman
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Long term thinking is so rare anywhere, but especially in startups. This is a huge advantage if you do it.
Sam Altman
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You need unstoppable people. You want people that are just going to get it done.
Sam Altman
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Another way of looking at this, is that the best companies are almost always mission oriented.
Sam Altman
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If you have several ideas that all seem pretty good, work on the one that you think about, when you're not trying to think about work.
Sam Altman
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Everyone starting a startup for the first time is scared, and everyone feels like a bit of an imposter.
Sam Altman
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Obsess about the quality of the product.
Sam Altman
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You certainly don't need to have everything figured out in the path from here to world domination.
Sam Altman
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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.
Sam Altman
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One thing that founders forget is that after they hire employees, they have to retain them.
Sam Altman
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... fire fast when it's not working. It's better for the company, it's also better for the employee.
Sam Altman
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When it comes to starting startups, in many ways, it's easier to start a hard startup than an easy startup.
Sam Altman
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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.
Sam Altman
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... but actually it sucks to have a lot of employees, and you should be proud of how few employees you have.
Sam Altman
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So always keep momentum, it's this prime directive for managing a startup.
Sam Altman
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The second part of how to hire: try not to.
Sam Altman
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A board member of mine used to say sales fix everything in a startup, and that is really true.
Sam Altman
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One of the great and terrible things about starting a start up is that you get no credit for trying.
Sam Altman
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... how much time you should be spending on hiring? The answer is 0 or 25 percent.
Sam Altman
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... for the top twenty most valuable YC companies, all of them have at least two founders.
Sam Altman