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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.

Sam Altman

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Sam Altman
Age: 39
Born: 1985
Born: April 22
Entrepreneur
Chicago
Illinois
Samuel H. Altman
Samuel Altman
Product
Size
Products
Building
Grows
Shifts
Company
Employee
Jobs
Great
Main

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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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Ideas by themselves are not worth anything, only executing well is what creates value.
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Every company has a rocky beginning.
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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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If you want something in a deal, just ask for it.
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We talk to a team they've gotten new things done, that's the best predictor we have that a company will be successful.
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Or a way to stay on strangers couches, that just sounds terrible all around.
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Cofounder relationships are among the most important in the entire company.
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You can have a startup and one other thing, you can have a family, but you probably can't have many other things.
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You don't need to make the structure complicated, in fact you shouldn't. All you need is for every employee to know who their manager is.
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You need this sort of a tailwind to make a startup successful.
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The role of the board is advice and consent. If the CEO does not lay out a clear strategy and tries to get the board to set one, it will usually end in disaster.
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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.
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... but the pendulum has swung way out of whack here. A bad idea is still bad, and the pivot happy world we're in today feels suboptimal.
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At the beginning, you should only hire when you have a desperate need to.
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Later, you should learn to hire fast and scale up the company, but in the early days the goal should be not to hire. Not to hire.
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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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