Quote

You want to sound crazy, but you want to actually be right.

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
Crazy
Actually
Sound
Right

More quotes by Sam Altman

Image
Obsess about the quality of the product.
Sam Altman
Image
You need unstoppable people. You want people that are just going to get it done.
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
Whatever the founder cares about, whatever the founders think are the key goals, that's going to be what the whole company focusses on.
Sam Altman
Image
If it works out, you're going to be working on this for 10 years.
Sam Altman
Image
The second part of how to hire: try not to.
Sam Altman
Image
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.
Sam Altman
Image
A board member of mine used to say sales fix everything in a startup, and that is really true.
Sam Altman
Image
One thing that often disrupts momentum and really shouldn't is competitors.
Sam Altman
Image
... for the top twenty most valuable YC companies, all of them have at least two founders.
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
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.
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
Unpopular but right is what you're going for.
Sam Altman
Image
For most software startups, this translates to keep growing. For hardware startups, it translates to don't let your ship date slip.
Sam Altman
Image
Growth and momentum are what a startup lives on and you always have to focus on maintaining these.
Sam Altman
Image
1 of the hardest parts about being a founder, is that there are a 100 important things competing for your attention each day.
Sam Altman
Image
Ideas by themselves are not worth anything, only executing well is what creates value.
Sam Altman
Image
Startups are not the best choice for work-life balance, and that's sort of just the sad reality.
Sam Altman
Image
I think as a rough estimate, you should aim to give about 10% of the company to the first 10 employees.
Sam Altman