Sam Altman Quotes

The other piece besides focus for execution is intensity. Startups only work at a fairly intense level.

The way to have a company that executes well is you have to execute well yourself.

You'll get more support on a hard, important, project than a derivative one.

Just put a little pin in your mind: when you cross 50 employees, there are a new set of HR rules that you have to comply with.

As you grow, the productivity I think, goes down with the square of the number of employees if you don't make an effort.

Because it's one of these sort of connections between nodes- every pair of people adds communication overhead.

The single word that matters most I think to keep the company productive as it grows is alignment.

You want to continue to be run by great products, not process for it's own sake.

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.

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.

So you should always stay on top of people's vesting schedules.

You need conviction in your own beliefs, and the willingness to ignore others naysaying.

Every thing at a startup gets modeled after the founders. Whatever the founders do becomes the culture.

So if you want a culture where people work hard, & pay attention to detail, focus on the customer, are frugal: you have to do it yourself.

A single mediocre hire in the first five will often in fact kill a startup.

You want an idea that turns into a monopoly. But you can't get a monopoly, in a big market right away; too much competition for that.

These all sounded really bad, but they turned out to be good. If they had sounded really good, there would have been too many people working on them.

Or a way to stay on strangers couches, that just sounds terrible all around.

The thirteenth search engine- and without all the features of a web portal, most people thought that was pointless.

Growth solves (nearly) all problems

If you want something in a deal, just ask for it.

The way you get deals done and the way you get good terms, is to have a competitive situation.

Developing a personal connection with anyone you're trying to do a big deal with is really important.

Starting a business is like riding a wave between life and death. If you can hang on long enough, you're bound to succeed

The biggest PR hack you can do, is not hire a PR firm.

Press releases are easier to write than code, and that is still easier than making a great product.

Once your product is working, switch from not caring about this to caring about this a little bit.

Here's a good rule of thumb: don't worry about a competitor at all, until they're actually beating you with a real shipped product.

The best founders work on things that seem small but they move really quickly. They get things done really quickly.

Losing focus is another way that founders get off track.

When lack of structure fails, it fails all at once. What works totally fine from 0-20 employees, is disastrous at 30.

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.

M&A negotiations feel really fun. This is one of the biggest killers of companies, is they entertain acquisition conversations.

Check-ins are cool, but kind of a pain.

Many founders hire just because it seems like a cool thing to do, and people always ask how many employees you have.

Communication services need interoperability to succeed - and Loopt is the first such service since SMS that is available across all major U.S. wireless carriers.

Intelligence is usually easy to tell in a 10-minute conversation. Determination is harder.

Making money is often more fun than spending it, though I personally have never regretted money I've spent on friends, new experiences, saving time, travel, and causes I believe in.