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Sam Altman

(1985) Businessperson

235 quotes in 581 categories

Sam Altman’s collection offers over two hundred and thirty‑five statements that blend entrepreneurial insight with a vision for the future. The quotes give readers a concise sense of his approach to innovation, risk, and societal impact.

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Sam Altman is a businessperson.

Quick Facts About Sam Altman

Born: April 22, 1985
Profession: Businessperson

About Sam Altman

Samuel Harris Altman is an American entrepreneur and investor who has been the chief executive officer (CEO) of the artificial intelligence company OpenAI since 2019.

Quotes by Sam Altman

So you should always stay on top of people's vesting schedules.

People

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The best people know that they should join a rocketship.

Join

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

Ifs

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

Phrases

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Unpopular but right is what you're going for.

Going

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You can't be focussed without really great communication

Communication

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

Change

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

Creativity

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

Customer

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

Business

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Most founders have not managed people before, and they certainly haven't managed managers.

Entrepreneurship

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If you pivot, do it fully and with conviction. The worst thing is to try to do a bit of the old…

Baby

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

Customer

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You'll get more support on a hard, important, project than a derivative one.

Derivatives

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

Customer

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One of the pieces of advice that we give at YC is: try to work together on a project rather than just…

Advice

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

Company

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One of the keys to focus, and why I said cofounders that aren't friends really struggle, is that you can't be focused…

Communication

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Study the unusually successful people you know, and you will find them imbued with enthusiasm for their work which is contagious. Not…

Contagious

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I really believe that the single hardest thing in business is building a company that does repeatable innovation... and just has this…

Believe

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You can create value with breakthrough innovation, incremental refinement, or complex coordination. Great companies often do two of these. The very best…

Best company

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These all sounded really bad, but they turned out to be good. If they had sounded really good, there would have been…

Be good

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You want an idea about what you can say. I know it sounds like a bad idea but here's specifically why its…

Asks

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The role of the board is advice and consent. If the CEO does not lay out a clear strategy and tries to…

Advice

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

Matter

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Losing focus is another way that founders get off track.

Another way

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Employees will only add more value over time.

Add

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Great execution towards a terrible idea will get you nowhere.

Execution

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

Diplomat

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

Entrepreneurship

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Obsess about the quality of the product.

Excellence

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

Asks

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

Customer

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

Knows

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You need this sort of a tailwind to make a startup successful.

Customer

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

Employee

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Growth solves (nearly) all problems

Growth

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Good startups usually take 10 years.

Startups

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Most things are not as risky as they seem.

Risk

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The cost of getting an early hire wrong is really high.

Cost

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Sam Altman by topic

Team (67) Customer (55) Entrepreneurship (54) Company (48) Business (39) People (32) Ifs (32) Founders (31) Employee (27) Want (23) Ideas (23) Time (21) Startup (20) Thinking (19) Needs (17) Investing (17) Firsts (17) Years (16) Products (15) Knows (14) Should (13) Way (11) Done (11) Startups (10) Hard (10)