Employee Quotes by Sam Altman

Employees will only add more value over time.

— Sam Altman

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

— Sam Altman

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

— Sam Altman

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

— Sam Altman

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

— Sam Altman

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

— Sam Altman

I believe in fighting with investors to reduce the amount of equity they get and then being as generous as you possibly…

— Sam Altman

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

— Sam Altman

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

— Sam Altman

... fire fast when it's not working. It's better for the company, it's also better for the employee.

— Sam Altman

Just put a little pin in your mind: when you cross 50 employees, there are a new set of HR rules that…

— Sam Altman

Companies that I've been very involved with, that have had a very bad first hire in the first 3 or so employees…

— Sam Altman

We've seen a lot of data at YC now, and the most successful companies and the ones where the investors do the…

— Sam Altman

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

— Sam Altman

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

— Sam Altman

You don't need to make the structure complicated, in fact you shouldn't. All you need is for every employee to know who…

— Sam Altman

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

— Sam Altman

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

— Sam Altman

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

— Sam Altman

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

— Sam Altman

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

— Sam Altman

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

— Sam Altman

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

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

— 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

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

— Sam Altman

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

— Sam Altman