Sam Altman Quotes - Page 5

Quotes about:

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

  Sam Altman

  Team, Track, Records

  4 Copy quote

• 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

  4 Copy quote

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

  Sam Altman

  Long, Life And Death, Riding

  4 Copy quote

• 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

  4 Copy quote

• 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

  4 Copy quote

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

  Sam Altman

  Metrics, Week, Should

  4 Copy quote

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

  Sam Altman

  Moving, Quality, Easy

  4 Copy quote

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

  Sam Altman

  Team, Writing, Promise

  4 Copy quote

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

  Sam Altman

  Feet, Spirals, Pedals

  4 Copy quote

• 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

  20 Copy quote

• Whatever the founder cares about, whatever the founders think are the key goals, that's going to be what the whole company focusses on.

  Sam Altman

  Thinking, Keys, Goal

  4 Copy quote

• Growth solves (nearly) all problems

  Sam Altman

  Growth, Problem, Solve

  4 Copy quote

• Every company has a rocky beginning.

  Sam Altman

  Company

  4 Copy quote

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

  Sam Altman

  Moving, People, Quality

  4 Copy quote

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

  Sam Altman

  4 Copy quote

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

  Sam Altman

  Giving Up, Giving, Levels

  4 Copy quote

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

  Sam Altman

  Team, Work Out, Joining

  "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.

  4 Copy quote

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

  Sam Altman

  People, Portal, Search Engine

  4 Copy quote

• 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.

  Sam Altman

  Crazy, Ideas, Want

  4 Copy quote

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

  Sam Altman

  Regret, Team, Compromise

  4 Copy quote

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

  Sam Altman

  Trying, Important, Connections

  4 Copy quote

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

  Sam Altman

  Want Something, Deals, Ifs

  4 Copy quote

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

  Sam Altman

  Years, Work Out, Ifs

  4 Copy quote

• ... 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

  4 Copy quote

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

  Sam Altman

  Fire, Everyday, Knows

  4 Copy quote

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