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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.

Sam Altman

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Sam Altman
Age: 39
Born: 1985
Born: April 22
Entrepreneur
Chicago
Illinois
Samuel H. Altman
Samuel Altman
Grows
Company
Repeatable
Culture
Ongoing
Business
Excellence
Doe
Innovation
Thing
Hardest
Believe
Building
Really
Single

More quotes by Sam Altman

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... for the top twenty most valuable YC companies, all of them have at least two founders.
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Starting a business is like riding a wave between life and death. If you can hang on long enough, you're bound to succeed
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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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Don't let the company get distracted or excited about other things. A common mistake is that companies get excited by their own PR.
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Most of the best hires that I've made in my entire life have never done that thing before.
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If it works out, you're going to be working on this for 10 years.
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The single word that matters most I think to keep the company productive as it grows is alignment.
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One thing that founders forget is that after they hire employees, they have to retain them.
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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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If it takes more than a sentence to explain what you are doing, it's almost always a sign that what you are doing is too complicated.
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In general though, if you look at the track record of pivots, they don't become big companies.
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The company just needs to see you as like this maniacal execution machine.
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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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Remember that the idea will expand, and become more ambitious as you go.
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The biggest PR hack you can do, is not hire a PR firm.
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... you can think about that for everyone you hire: will I bet the future of this company on this single hire? And that's a tough bar.
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Firing people is one of the worst parts of running a company. Actually in my own experience, I think it is the worst.
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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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At the beginning, you should only hire when you have a desperate need to.
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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.
Sam Altman