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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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As the company grows and about this 25 or so employee size, your main job shifts from building a great product to building a great company.
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If you want something in a deal, just ask for it.
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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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You should be able to describe any employee as an animal at what they do.
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The startups that do well are the ones that are working all the time.
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Because so few people make an actual long term commitment to what they're building, the ones that do have a huge advantage.
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Startups are not the best choice for work-life balance, and that's sort of just the sad reality.
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Founders need to figure out what the message of the company is going to be.
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If you pivot, do it fully and with conviction. The worst thing is to try to do a bit of the old and the new-it's hard to kill your babies.
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One thing that often disrupts momentum and really shouldn't is competitors.
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For most of the early hires you make in a startup, experience doesn't matter very much, and you should go for aptitude.
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You really want to know your cofounders for a while, ideally years.
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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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You can create value with breakthrough innovation, incremental refinement, or complex coordination. Great companies often do two of these. The very best companies do all three.
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If someone is getting every decision wrong, that's when you need to act, and at that point it'll be painfully aware to everyone.
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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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In the beginning of a company, there is no management and this actually works really well.
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... and you can only have 2 or 3 things everyday, because everything else will just come at you you know fires in a day.
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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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You cannot create a market that doesn't want to exist.
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