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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
Company
Shifts
Jobs
Employee
Great
Main

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... if you talk to say any of the first 40 or 50 employees, they all feel like they were a part of the founding of the company.
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The track record for founders that don't already know each other is really bad.
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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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The second part of how to hire: try not to.
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Every company has a rocky beginning.
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In addition to relentlessly resourceful, you want a tough and a calm cofounder.
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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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You really want to know your cofounders for a while, ideally years.
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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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You should be able to describe any employee as an animal at what they do.
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Or a way to stay on strangers couches, that just sounds terrible all around.
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The cost of getting an early hire wrong is really high.
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The startups that do well are the ones that are working all the time.
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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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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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Ideas by themselves are not worth anything, only executing well is what creates value.
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The best people know that they should join a rocketship.
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One thing I tell startups all the time is that the best way to grow is to make their product better.
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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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The thing that kills startups at some level, is the founders giving up.
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