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You can basically change everything in a startup but the market.

Sam Altman

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Sam Altman
Age: 39
Born: 1985
Born: April 22
Entrepreneur
Chicago
Illinois
Samuel H. Altman
Samuel Altman
Basically
Market
Change
Everything

More quotes by Sam Altman

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Momentum and growth are the lifeblood of startups. This is probably in the top three secrets of executing well.
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What being a founder means, is signing up for this years long grind on execution - and you can't outsource this.
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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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It really is true that you become an average of the people you spend the most time with.
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Mediocre founders spend a lot of time talking about grand plans, but they never quite make a decision.
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Whatever the founder cares about, whatever the founders think are the key goals, that's going to be what the whole company focusses on.
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A small communication breakdown is enough for everyone to be working on slightly different things. And then you loose focus.
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Be suspicious of any work that is not building product or getting customers.
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You think you have this great idea that everyone's going to come join, but that's not how it works.
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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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Growth and momentum are what a startup lives on and you always have to focus on maintaining these.
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You need unstoppable people. You want people that are just going to get it done.
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Cofounder relationships are among the most important in the entire company.
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You cannot create a market that doesn't want to exist.
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You also want to fire people who a) create office politics, and b) who are persistently negative.
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You need to figure out what the 2 or 3 most important things are, and then just do those.
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So it's worth some real up front time to think through the long term value and the defensibility of the business.
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Unfortunately the trick to great execution is to say no a lot.
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Developing a personal connection with anyone you're trying to do a big deal with is really important.
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