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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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Sam Altman
Age: 39
Born: 1985
Born: April 22
Entrepreneur
Chicago
Illinois
Samuel H. Altman
Samuel Altman
Hard
Way
Starting
Easier
Ways
Start
Easy
Comes
Many

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You have to be decisive. Indecisiveness is a startup killer.
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... for the top twenty most valuable YC companies, all of them have at least two founders.
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The way to have a company that executes well is you have to execute well yourself.
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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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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.
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... the thing we see wrong with YC apps most frequently, is that people have not thought about the market first and what people want first.
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You don't need to make the structure complicated, in fact you shouldn't. All you need is for every employee to know who their manager is.
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A single mediocre hire in the first five will often in fact kill a startup.
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Ideas by themselves are not worth anything, only executing well is what creates value.
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AirBnB spent 5 months interviewing their first employee, before they hired someone and in their first year, they only hired 2 people.
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The cost of getting an early hire wrong is really high.
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If you compromise in the first five, ten hires it might kill the company.
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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.
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You want to sound crazy, but you want to actually be right.
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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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In the beginning of a company, there is no management and this actually works really well.
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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.
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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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To get the very best people- they have a lot of great options, and so it can easily take a year to recruit someone.
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You don't get to make their decisions but you do get to choose the decision makers.
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