Sam altman quotes

... but actually it sucks to have a lot of employees, and you should be proud of how few employees you have.

I care much more about the growth rate of the market than it's current size and I also care if there's any reason it's going to top out.

You also want to fire people who a) create office politics, and b) who are persistently negative.

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.

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

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.

Great execution towards a terrible idea will get you nowhere.

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.

You think you have this great idea that everyone's going to come join, but that's not how it works.

Most things are not as risky as they seem.

For early employees you want people that have somewhat of a risk-taking attitude.

... and you can only have 2 or 3 things everyday, because everything else will just come at you; you know fires in a day.

At YC we have this public phrase, and it's relentlessly resourceful.

If you look at successful pivots, they almost always are a pivot into something that the founder wanted. Not a random made up idea.

You have to find a small market in which you can get a monopoly and then quickly expand.

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

Later, you should learn to hire fast and scale up the company, but in the early days the goal should be not to hire. Not to hire.

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

The best people know that they should join a rocketship.

Aim to be the best in the world at whatever you do professionally. Even if you miss, you'll probably end up in a pretty good place.

Two other things that we hear again and again from our founders, they wish they had done earlier, and that is... simply writing down how you do things and why you do things.

If you ever take your foot off the gas pedal, things will spiral out of control, snowball downwards.

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

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

You never want to be in a place where an employee has vested 3 out of the 4 years of stock and they start thinking about leaving.

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

Study the unusually successful people you know, and you will find them imbued with enthusiasm for their work which is contagious. Not only are they themselves excited about what they are doing, but they also get you excited

Why couldn't it have been done 2 years ago, and why will 2 years in the future be too late?

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

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

One thing I tell startups all the time is that the best way to grow is to make their product better.

If it takes more than a sentence to explain what you are doing, it's almost always a sign that what you are doing is too complicated.

Most startups are not nearly focussed enough. They work hard...maybe, but they don't work hard on the right things.

... you want to be proud of how much you can get done with a small numbers of employees.

You cannot create a market that doesn't want to exist.

You should be able to describe any employee as an animal at what they do.

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

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

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

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

You should think about for the next 10 years, you're going to be giving out 3-5% of the company every year.

There are 3 things I look for when I hire people. Are they smart? Do they get things done? Do I want to spend a lot of time around them?

It's easy to move fast or be obsessed with quality, but the trick is you have to do both at a startup.

You want to sound crazy, but you want to actually be right.

Before product/market fit, your only job that matters is to build a great product.

At the beginning, you should only hire when you have a desperate need to.

Stay focused and don't try to do too many things at once. Care about execution quality.

A lot of people treat choosing their cofounder with even less importance than they put on hiring. Don't do this.

More important than starting any startup, is getting to know a lot of potential co-founders.

Long term thinking is so rare anywhere, but especially in startups. This is a huge advantage if you do it.

Good startups usually take 10 years.

For most of the early hires you make in a startup, experience doesn't matter very much, and you should go for aptitude.

Unpopular but right is what you're going for.

If you compromise in the first five, ten hires it might kill the company.

... how much time you should be spending on hiring? The answer is 0 or 25 percent.

You should be giving out a lot of equity to your employees.

Because so few people make an actual long term commitment to what they're building, the ones that do have a huge advantage.

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

The idea should come first, the startup should come second.

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

You only get points when you make something the market wants. So if you work really hard on the wrong things, no one will care.

If someone is choosing between joining McKinsey or your startup it's very unlikely they're going to work out at the startup.

If you compromise and hire someone mediocre you will always regret it.

Unfortunately the trick to great execution is to say no a lot.

When it comes to starting startups, in many ways, it's easier to start a hard startup than an easy startup.

We talk to a team they've gotten new things done, that's the best predictor we have that a company will be successful.

If you can just learn to think about the market first, you will have a big leg up on most people starting startups.

A board member of mine used to say sales fix everything in a startup, and that is really true.

The best source by far for hiring is people that you already know and people that other employees in the company already know.

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 company just needs to see you as like this maniacal execution machine.

The second part of how to hire: try not to.

As long as you keep doing the right thing and have the best product, you can beat the bigger company.

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

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

One thing that founders always underestimate is how hard it is to recruit.

Momentum and growth are the lifeblood of startups. This is probably in the top three secrets of executing well.

... for the top twenty most valuable YC companies, all of them have at least two founders.

You can win with the best product, the best price, or the best experience.

To get the very best people- they have a lot of great options, and so it can easily take a year to recruit someone.

... if you talk to say any of the first 40 or 50 employees, they all feel like they were a part of the founding of the company.

Investors will sort of like write the check and then, despite a lot of promises, don't usually do that much; sometimes they do.

Another way of looking at this, is that the best companies are almost always mission oriented.

I myself used to believe ideas didn't matter that much, but I'm very sure that's wrong now.

Great execution is at least 10 times more important and a 100 times harder than a good idea.

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

You want to think about what is the path for my first 10 or 15 employees going to be as the company grows.

Why now, why is this the perfect time for this particular idea, and to start this particular company?

Be suspicious of any work that is not building product or getting customers.

Founders need to figure out what the message of the company is going to be.

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

It really is true that you become an average of the people you spend the most time with.

Every first time founder waits too long, everyone hopes that an employee will turn around. But the right answer is to fire fast.

You need to have a culture where people have very high quality standards in everything the company does, but still move quickly.

Keep salaries low and equity high. Keep the organization as flat as you can.

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

You can basically change everything in a startup but the market.

Even though plans themselves are worthless, the exercise of planning is very valuable and totally missing in most startups today.

Obsess about the quality of the product.

If it works out, you're going to be working on this for 10 years.

You should always know how you're doing against your metrics. You should always have a weekly review meeting every week.

In the early days of a startup, people's compensation is whatever you negotiate with a founder and it's all over the place.

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

Growth and momentum are what a startup lives on and you always have to focus on maintaining these.

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

It's better to have no cofounder than to have a bad cofounder, but it's still bad to be a solo founder.

The track record for founders that don't already know each other is really bad.

You want an idea about what you can say. I know it sounds like a bad idea but here's specifically why its actually a great one. You want to sound crazy but you want to ask to be right.

In YC's case, the number one cause of early death for startups is cofounder blowups.

In general, it's best if you're building something that you yourself need.

It's better to have a few users love your product than for a lot of users to sort of like it.

One of the great and terrible things about starting a start up is that you get no credit for trying.

You really want to know your cofounders for a while, ideally years.

Cofounder relationships are among the most important in the entire company.

You also really want to take the time to think about how the market is going to evolve.You need a market that's going to be big in 10 years.

You have to let your team get all the credit for all the good stuff that happens, and you take responsibility for the bad stuff.

Facebook has this famous poster that says move fast and break things. But at the same time they manage to be obsessed with quality.

Remember that you are more likely to die because you execute badly than get crushed by a competitor.

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

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

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

One thing that founders forget is that after they hire employees, they have to retain them.

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

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

You can't be focussed without really great communication