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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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Sam Altman
Age: 39
Born: 1985
Born: April 22
Entrepreneur
Chicago
Illinois
Samuel H. Altman
Samuel Altman
Wells
Well
Really
Management
Beginning
Works
Company
Actually

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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Unfortunately the trick to great execution is to say no a lot.
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You have to let your team get all the credit for all the good stuff that happens, and you take responsibility for the bad stuff.
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Losing focus is another way that founders get off track.
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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.
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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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Unpopular but right is what you're going for.
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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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... for the top twenty most valuable YC companies, all of them have at least two founders.
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You have to be decisive. Indecisiveness is a startup killer.
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In general, it's best if you're building something that you yourself need.
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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.
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One of the biggest advantages that start ups have is execution speed and you have to have this relentless operating rhythm.
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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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Growth and momentum are what a startup lives on and you always have to focus on maintaining these.
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Cofounder relationships are among the most important in the entire company.
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You should think about for the next 10 years, you're going to be giving out 3-5% of the company every year.
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Startups are very hard no matter what you do you may as well go after a big opportunity.
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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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So it's worth some real up front time to think through the long term value and the defensibility of the business.
Sam Altman