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The single word that matters most I think to keep the company productive as it grows is alignment.

Sam Altman

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Sam Altman
Age: 39
Born: 1985
Born: April 22
Entrepreneur
Chicago
Illinois
Samuel H. Altman
Samuel Altman
Company
Word
Keep
Matter
Alignment
Think
Productive
Thinking
Matters
Single
Grows

More quotes by Sam Altman

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Developing a personal connection with anyone you're trying to do a big deal with is really important.
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The second part of how to hire: try not to.
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At the beginning, you should only hire when you have a desperate need to.
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You want to sound crazy, but you want to actually be right.
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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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In the early stage of a startup, hiring senior people is usually a mistake. You just want people that get stuff done.
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If someone is getting every decision wrong, that's when you need to act, and at that point it'll be painfully aware to everyone.
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If you have several ideas that all seem pretty good, work on the one that you think about, when you're not trying to think about work.
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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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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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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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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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When it comes to starting startups, in many ways, it's easier to start a hard startup than an easy startup.
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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.
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In general, it's best if you're building something that you yourself need.
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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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So it's worth some real up front time to think through the long term value and the defensibility of the business.
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You have to save the vision speeches for when the company is winning. When you're not winning, you just have to get momentum back.
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... you want to be proud of how much you can get done with a small numbers of employees.
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You need unstoppable people. You want people that are just going to get it done.
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