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In the early stage of a startup, hiring senior people is usually a mistake. You just want people that get stuff done.

Sam Altman

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Sam Altman
Age: 39
Born: 1985
Born: April 22
Entrepreneur
Chicago
Illinois
Samuel H. Altman
Samuel Altman
Early
Usually
Stage
Mistake
Stuff
Done
People
Hiring
Senior

More quotes by Sam Altman

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It really is true that you become an average of the people you spend the most time with.
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One thing that founders always underestimate is how hard it is to recruit.
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A board member of mine used to say sales fix everything in a startup, and that is really true.
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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 best ideas often look terrible at the beginning the truly good ideas, don't seem like they're worth stealing.
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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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... how much time you should be spending on hiring? The answer is 0 or 25 percent.
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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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Companies that I've been very involved with, that have had a very bad first hire in the first 3 or so employees never recover from it.
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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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Or a way to stay on strangers couches, that just sounds terrible all around.
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Another way of looking at this, is that the best companies are almost always mission oriented.
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The best people know that they should join a rocketship.
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Why now, why is this the perfect time for this particular idea, and to start this particular company?
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The most important thing is that there is clear reporting structure and everyone knows what it is.
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Because it's one of these sort of connections between nodes- every pair of people adds communication overhead.
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If you don't need it yourself, and you're building something that someone else needs, realize you're at a big disadvantage.
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Most startups are not nearly focussed enough. They work hard...maybe, but they don't work hard on the right things.
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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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Whatever the founder cares about, whatever the founders think are the key goals, that's going to be what the whole company focusses on.
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