Sam Altman

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

— Sam Altman

A related advantage of mission oriented ideas, is that you yourself will be dedicated to them.

— Sam Altman

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

— Sam Altman

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

— Sam Altman

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

— Sam Altman

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

— Sam Altman

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

— Sam Altman

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

— Sam Altman

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

— Sam Altman

You never want to be in a place where an employee has vested 3 out of the 4 years of stock and…

— Sam Altman

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

— Sam Altman

There's no way I know, to get through the pain of a startup without belief that the mission really matters.

— Sam Altman

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

— Sam Altman

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

— Sam Altman

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

— Sam Altman

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

— Sam Altman

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

— Sam Altman

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

— Sam Altman

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

— Sam Altman

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

— Sam Altman

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.

— Sam Altman

It takes years and years, usually a decade, to create a great startup.

— Sam Altman

So always keep momentum, it's this prime directive for managing a startup.

— Sam Altman

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

— Sam Altman

One thing that often disrupts momentum and really shouldn't is competitors.

— Sam Altman

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

— Sam Altman

A winning team feels good and keeps winning. A team that hasn't won in a while gets demotivated and keeps losing.

— Sam Altman

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

— Sam Altman

Really dig into projects people have worked on and call references; that is another thing that first time founders like to skip.

— Sam Altman

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

— Sam Altman

Ideas by themselves are not worth anything, only executing well is what creates value.

— Sam Altman

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

— Sam Altman

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

— Sam Altman

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

— Sam Altman

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

— Sam Altman