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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.

Sam Altman

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Sam Altman
Age: 39
Born: 1985
Born: April 22
Entrepreneur
Chicago
Illinois
Samuel H. Altman
Samuel Altman
Usually
Board
Roles
Tries
Clear
Boards
Ends
Disaster
Doe
Lays
Trying
Strategy
Role
Ceo
Advice
Consent

More quotes by Sam Altman

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You really want to know your cofounders for a while, ideally years.
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In general, it's best if you're building something that you yourself need.
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... but the pendulum has swung way out of whack here. A bad idea is still bad, and the pivot happy world we're in today feels suboptimal.
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Another way of looking at this, is that the best companies are almost always mission oriented.
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A single mediocre hire in the first five will often in fact kill a startup.
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Startups are not the best choice for work-life balance, and that's sort of just the sad reality.
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One thing that founders always underestimate is how hard it is to recruit.
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The startups that do well are the ones that are working all the time.
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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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... fire fast when it's not working. It's better for the company, it's also better for the employee.
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Startups are very hard no matter what you do you may as well go after a big opportunity.
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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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Cofounder relationships are among the most important in the entire company.
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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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In YC's case, the number one cause of early death for startups is cofounder blowups.
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You have to be decisive. Indecisiveness is a startup killer.
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... the thing we see wrong with YC apps most frequently, is that people have not thought about the market first and what people want first.
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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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Be suspicious of any work that is not building product or getting customers.
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You don't need to make the structure complicated, in fact you shouldn't. All you need is for every employee to know who their manager is.
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