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The thing that kills startups at some level, is the founders giving up.

Sam Altman

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Sam Altman
Age: 39
Born: 1985
Born: April 22
Entrepreneur
Chicago
Illinois
Samuel H. Altman
Samuel Altman
Level
Levels
Giving
Thing
Kills
Founders

More quotes by Sam Altman

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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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The track record for founders that don't already know each other is really bad.
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Or a way to stay on strangers couches, that just sounds terrible all around.
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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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You don't get to make their decisions but you do get to choose the decision makers.
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The natural state of a start-up is to die most start-ups require multiple miracles in their early days to escape this fate.
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No matter what you choose, build stuff and be around smart people.
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You need this sort of a tailwind to make a startup successful.
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You certainly don't need to have everything figured out in the path from here to world domination.
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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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Every company has a rocky beginning.
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What being a founder means, is signing up for this years long grind on execution - and you can't outsource this.
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So always keep momentum, it's this prime directive for managing a startup.
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For most of the early hires you make in a startup, experience doesn't matter very much, and you should go for aptitude.
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In addition to relentlessly resourceful, you want a tough and a calm cofounder.
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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.
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A small communication breakdown is enough for everyone to be working on slightly different things. And then you loose focus.
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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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You also want to fire people who a) create office politics, and b) who are persistently negative.
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You cannot create a market that doesn't want to exist.
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