Sam Altman Quotes About Employees

Quotes about: Employees

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

  Sam Altman

  Team, Small Numbers, Done

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

  Sam Altman

  Team, Animal, Able

  "Lecture 2: Ideas, Products, Teams and Execution Part II". Sam Altman's "How To Start a Startup" lecture to the class at Stanford University in Stanford, California, genius.com. 2014.

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

  Sam Altman

  Employee, Founders, Flats

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

  Sam Altman

  Thinking, Firsts, Want

• Many of the best YC companies have had phenomenally small number of employees for their first year, sometimes none besides the founders.

  Sam Altman

  Team, Small Numbers, Years

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

  Sam Altman

  Team, Thinking, Giving

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

  Sam Altman

  Failing, Structure, Fine

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

  Sam Altman

  Thinking, Numbers, Squares

• 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.

  Sam Altman

  Team, Firsts, Employee

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

  Sam Altman

  Team, Thinking, Employee

• 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.

  Sam Altman

  Needs, Facts, Complicated

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

  Sam Altman

  Team, Years, People

• Employees will only add more value over time.

  Sam Altman

  Team, Add, Employee

  "Lecture 2: Ideas, Products, Teams and Execution Part II". Sam Altman's "How To Start a Startup" lecture to the class at Stanford University in Stanford, California, genius.com. 2014.

• As the company grows and about this 25 or so employee size, your main job shifts from building a great product to building a great company.

  Sam Altman

  Jobs, Size, Building

• ... 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.

  Sam Altman

  Team, Firsts, Employee

• 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.

  Sam Altman

  Team, Believe, Fighting

  "Lecture 2: Ideas, Products, Teams and Execution Part II". "How to Start a Startup" lecture, Stanford, genius.com. September 25, 2014.

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

  Sam Altman

  Giving, Should, Employee

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

  Sam Altman

  Team, People, Source

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

  Sam Altman

  Team, Forget, Employee

• We've seen a lot of data at YC now, and the most successful companies and the ones where the investors do the best... end up giving a lot of stock out to employees- year after year after year.

  Sam Altman

  Successful, Data, Years

• Most great companies in tech have been built by personal referrals for the first...at least 100 employees and often many more.

  Sam Altman

  Team, Referrals, Firsts

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

  Sam Altman

  Team, Fire, Long

• 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.

  Sam Altman

  Thinking, Years, Leaving

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

  Sam Altman

  Team, Proud, Should

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

  Sam Altman

  Attitude, Team, People

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