Quote

If it takes more than a sentence to explain what you are doing, it's almost always a sign that what you are doing is too complicated.

Sam Altman

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Sam Altman
Age: 39
Born: 1985
Born: April 22
Entrepreneur
Chicago
Illinois
Samuel H. Altman
Samuel Altman
Takes
Almost
Always
Sentence
Sentences
Explain
Sign
Complicated

More quotes by Sam Altman

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I really believe that the single hardest thing in business is building a company that does repeatable innovation... and just has this ongoing culture of excellence as it grows.
Sam Altman
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You have to be decisive. Indecisiveness is a startup killer.
Sam Altman
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Startups are not the best choice for work-life balance, and that's sort of just the sad reality.
Sam Altman
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If it works out, you're going to be working on this for 10 years.
Sam Altman
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At the beginning, you should only hire when you have a desperate need to.
Sam Altman
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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.
Sam Altman
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In the beginning of a company, there is no management and this actually works really well.
Sam Altman
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Move fast. Speed is one of your main advantages over large companies.
Sam Altman
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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.
Sam Altman
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The hard part is that this is a very fine line. There's right on one side of it, and crazy on the other.
Sam Altman
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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.
Sam Altman
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A single mediocre hire in the first five will often in fact kill a startup.
Sam Altman
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Obsess about the quality of the product.
Sam Altman
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... you want to be proud of how much you can get done with a small numbers of employees.
Sam Altman
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Long term thinking is so rare anywhere, but especially in startups. This is a huge advantage if you do it.
Sam Altman
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Most investors are obsessed with the market size today and they don't think about how the market is going to evolve.
Sam Altman
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I think as a rough estimate, you should aim to give about 10% of the company to the first 10 employees.
Sam Altman
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... for the top twenty most valuable YC companies, all of them have at least two founders.
Sam Altman
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The best people know that they should join a rocketship.
Sam Altman
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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.
Sam Altman