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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
Kills
Founders
Level
Levels
Giving
Thing

More quotes by Sam Altman

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One thing that founders always underestimate is how hard it is to recruit.
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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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1 of the hardest parts about being a founder, is that there are a 100 important things competing for your attention each day.
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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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As you grow, it feels hopelessly corporate but it really is worth putting in place these compensation bands.
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The biggest PR hack you can do, is not hire a PR firm.
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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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You should always know how you're doing against your metrics. You should always have a weekly review meeting every week.
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... for the top twenty most valuable YC companies, all of them have at least two founders.
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To get the very best people- they have a lot of great options, and so it can easily take a year to recruit someone.
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For most software startups, this translates to keep growing. For hardware startups, it translates to don't let your ship date slip.
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Great execution towards a terrible idea will get you nowhere.
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The cost of getting an early hire wrong is really high.
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Losing focus is another way that founders get off track.
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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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... how much time you should be spending on hiring? The answer is 0 or 25 percent.
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The way to have a company that executes well is you have to execute well yourself.
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When lack of structure fails, it fails all at once. What works totally fine from 0-20 employees, is disastrous at 30.
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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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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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