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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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You also want to fire people who a) create office politics, and b) who are persistently negative.
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Remember that the idea will expand, and become more ambitious as you go.
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I believe in fighting with investors to reduce the amount of equity they get and then being as generous as you possibly can with employees.
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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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Obsess about the quality of the product.
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Most of the best hires that I've made in my entire life have never done that thing before.
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Founders are usually very stingy with equity to employees and very generous with equity to investors. I think this is totally backwards.
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You need to have a culture where people have very high quality standards in everything the company does, but still move quickly.
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Press releases are easier to write than code, and that is still easier than making a great product.
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You should always know how you're doing against your metrics. You should always have a weekly review meeting every week.
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You need conviction in your own beliefs, and the willingness to ignore others naysaying.
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You have to be decisive. Indecisiveness is a startup killer.
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It's easy to move fast or be obsessed with quality, but the trick is you have to do both at a startup.
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The cost of getting an early hire wrong is really high.
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... how much time you should be spending on hiring? The answer is 0 or 25 percent.
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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.
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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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If you don't need it yourself, and you're building something that someone else needs, realize you're at a big disadvantage.
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The other piece besides focus for execution is intensity. Startups only work at a fairly intense level.
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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.
Sam Altman