Sam Altman Quotes

No matter what you choose, build stuff and be around smart people.

You can create value with breakthrough innovation, incremental refinement, or complex coordination. Great companies often do two of these. The very best companies do all three.

Founders are usually very stingy with equity to employees and very generous with equity to investors. I think this is totally backwards.

Obsess about the quality of the product.

Everyone starting a startup for the first time is scared, and everyone feels like a bit of an imposter.

In general don't start a startup you're not willing to work on for ten years.

No growth hack, brilliant marketing idea, or sales team can save you long term if you don't have a sufficiently good product.

You have to be decisive. Indecisiveness is a startup killer.

Execution gets divided into two key questions: 1) can you figure out what to do and 2) can you get it done.

If you don't need it yourself, and you're building something that someone else needs, realize you're at a big disadvantage.

Most investors are obsessed with the market size today and they don't think about how the market is going to evolve.

I prefer to invest in a company that's going after a small but rapidly growing market than a big but slow growing one.

1 of the hardest parts about being a founder, is that there are a 100 important things competing for your attention each day.

AirBnB happened because Brian Chesky couldn't pay his rent, but did have some space.

Some day everyone will find out everyone else's comp, if it's all over the place, it will be a complete meltdown disaster

What being a founder means, is signing up for this years long grind on execution - and you can't outsource this.

I believe in fighting with investors to reduce the amount of equity they get and then being as generous as you possibly can with employees.

If someone is difficult to talk to, if someone cannot communicate clearly, it's a real problem in terms of their likelihood to work out.

The natural state of a start-up is to die; most start-ups require multiple miracles in their early days to escape this fate.

For most software startups, this translates to keep growing. For hardware startups, it translates to don't let your ship date slip.

The best people know that they should join a rocketship.

One of the biggest advantages that start ups have is execution speed and you have to have this relentless operating rhythm.

Startups are not the best choice for work-life balance, and that's sort of just the sad reality.

Startups are very hard no matter what you do; you may as well go after a big opportunity.

Wait to start a startup until you come up with an idea that you feel compelled to explore.

A small communication breakdown is enough for everyone to be working on slightly different things. And then you loose focus.

The startups that do well are the ones that are working all the time.

The tenth social network, and limited only to college students with no money, also terrible. Myspace had won.

I think as a rough estimate, you should aim to give about 10% of the company to the first 10 employees.

AirBnB spent 5 months interviewing their first employee, before they hired someone and in their first year, they only hired 2 people.

Someday, you need to build a business that's difficult to replicate. This is an important part of a good idea.

Mediocre founders spend a lot of time talking about grand plans, but they never quite make a decision.

I think the best thing you can do is be aware that as a first time founder you are likely to be a very bad manager.

We pretty much won't fund a company now where the founders don't have vested equity because it's just that hard to do.

Don't let the company get distracted or excited about other things. A common mistake is that companies get excited by their own PR.

... 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.

One of the keys to focus, and why I said cofounders that aren't friends really struggle, is that you can't be focused without good communication.

You don't get to make their decisions but you do get to choose the decision makers.

... fire fast when it's not working. It's better for the company, it's also better for the employee.

Move fast. Speed is one of your main advantages over large companies.

If you're not in college and you don't know a cofounder, the next best thing I think is to go work at an interesting company.

Share results (financial and key metrics) with the company every month.

Before 20 or 25 employees, most companies are structured with everyone reporting to the founder. It's totally flat.

In the beginning of a company, there is no management and this actually works really well.

The best ideas often look terrible at the beginning the truly good ideas, don't seem like they're worth stealing.

You need someone that behaves like James Bond more than you need someone that is an expert in some particular domain.

... 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.

Firing people is one of the worst parts of running a company. Actually in my own experience, I think it is the worst.

If you pivot, do it fully and with conviction. The worst thing is to try to do a bit of the old and the new-it's hard to kill your babies.

People that are really smart and that can learn new things can almost always find a role in the company as time goes on.