Sam Altman Quotes & Sayings

A single mediocre hire in the first five will often in fact kill a startup. — Sam Altman

In general though, if you look at the track record of pivots, they don't become big companies. — Sam Altman

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

The Loopt mobile app is all about giving you the latest local deals and insider tips. — Sam Altman

The idea should come first, the startup should come second. — Sam Altman

With Loopt Star, consumers get to tap interactive rewards wherever they may be. — Sam Altman

The way you get deals done and the way you get good terms, is to have a competitive situation. — Sam Altman

You're saying no ninety-seven times out of a hundred, and most founders find they have to make a very conscious effort to do this. — Sam Altman

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

If you have several ideas that all seem pretty good, work on the one that you think about, when you're not trying to think about work. — Sam Altman

It's easy to say, 'I'm going to build something that already exists,' but it's difficult to clearly and succinctly describe something new. — Sam Altman

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

You also really want to take the time to think about how the market is going to evolve.You need a market that's going to be big in 10 years. — Sam Altman

A third advantage of mission oriented companies, is that people outside the company are more willing to help you. — Sam Altman

One of the things we urge Y-Combinator companies to do is to have profitability in grasp. If you need to get profitable before your A round of money, you ought to be able to do that. — Sam Altman

Whether or not money can buy happiness, it can buy freedom, and that's a big deal. Also, lack of money is very stressful. — Sam Altman

Growth solves (nearly) all problems — Sam Altman

I care much more about the growth rate of the market than it's current size and I also care if there's any reason it's going to top out. — Sam Altman

I believe whatever smart, ambitious people are working on will be the trend of the future. I do think that it's worth thinking critically about what the future will be. — Sam Altman

You want to sound crazy, but you want to actually be right. — Sam Altman

People appreciate when you make an effort to speak their language. — Sam Altman

If you don't love and believe in what you're building, you're likely to give up at some point along the way. — Sam Altman

Losing focus is another way that founders get off track. — Sam Altman

Many founders hire just because it seems like a cool thing to do, and people always ask how many employees you have. — Sam Altman

Loopt wouldn't have happened without Y Combinator. — Sam Altman

There is a long history of founders returning to companies and doing great things. Founders are able to set the vision for their companies with an authority no one else can. — Sam Altman

Maybe I am a bit unusual here, but I am less stressed if I have my phone with me. Because I can spend like an hour in the morning taking care of everything instead of I sit there and wonder what I missed or wonder what's happening. So it's way less stressful for me to just answer my phone. — Sam Altman

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

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

Being a public company is really terrible for most companies. I'd say Facebook and Google have done a pretty good job of standing up to the incredible quarterly pressure to hit numbers, but most companies - and I've observed a lot now - don't do a very good job of that. — Sam Altman

You can think about that for everyone you hire: will I bet the future of this company on this single hire? And that's a tough bar. — Sam Altman

Founders need to figure out what the message of the company is going to be. — 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

So if you want a culture where people work hard, & pay attention to detail, focus on the customer, are frugal: you have to do it yourself. — Sam Altman

I grew up with a computer, and many of my friends were people I met online. — Sam Altman

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

M&A negotiations feel really fun. This is one of the biggest killers of companies, is they entertain acquisition conversations. — Sam Altman

The thing we see wrong with YC apps most frequently, is that people have not thought about the market first and what people want first. — Sam Altman

For the top twenty most valuable YC companies, all of them have at least two founders. — Sam Altman

It's better to have no cofounder than to have a bad cofounder, but it's still bad to be a solo founder. — Sam Altman

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

I believe that sexism in tech is a real problem. — Sam Altman

The role of the board is advice and consent. If the CEO does not lay out a clear strategy and tries to get the board to set one, it will usually end in disaster. — Sam Altman

Firing people is one of the worst parts of running a company. Actually in my own experience, I think it is the worst. — Sam Altman

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

Two other things that we hear again and again from our founders, they wish they had done earlier, and that is ... simply writing down how you do things and why you do things. — Sam Altman

Sometimes people think Y Combinator has big ideas about themes. But really, we just fund the best startups. — Sam Altman

I think the mistake people make most often when they invest in other kinds of startups is they say, 'This is totally different.' And so the things that matter, like making a product that people desperately want, like talking to customers, they throw this out the window. That is a recipe for heartache and tears. — Sam Altman

The whole concept of rewarding customers is a big trend. — 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

Don't let the company get distracted or excited about other things. A common mistake is that companies get excited by their own PR. — Sam Altman

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

Some day everyone will find out everyone else's comp, if it's all over the place, it will be a complete meltdown disaster — 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

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

I always tell my partners that our job is to fund all the companies we can that can be worth $10 billion or more. That's such a difficult constraint, we can't have any other constraints. — Sam Altman

The company just needs to see you as like this maniacal execution machine. — Sam Altman

Even though plans themselves are worthless, the exercise of planning is very valuable and totally missing in most startups today. — Sam Altman

You have to save the vision speeches for when the company is winning. When you're not winning, you just have to get momentum back ... — Sam Altman

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

The best ideas often look terrible at the beginning the truly good ideas, don't seem like they're worth stealing. — Sam Altman

The point of an accelerator is to teach you about companies and business, not about technology. — Sam Altman

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

You don't get to make their decisions but you do get to choose the decision makers. — Sam Altman

I prefer to invest in a company that's going after a small but rapidly growing market than a big but slow growing one. — Sam Altman

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

If you ask a founder how their company is doing, they always say, 'Oh it's great. We're totally crushing it,' and that's almost never true. — Sam Altman

People hate searching. — 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 best ... end up giving a lot of stock out to employees- year after year after year. — Sam Altman

If you can just learn to think about the market first, you will have a big leg up on most people starting startups. — Sam Altman

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

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

People that are really smart and that can learn new things can almost always find a role in the company as time goes on. — Sam Altman

I love working with really early stage startups where the outcome is still in doubt. Maybe they'll go on to greatness, or maybe they'll never get off the runway at all. — Sam Altman

Startups are not the best choice for work-life balance, and that's sort of just the sad reality. — Sam Altman

Facebook and Instagram are spiritual brothers. — Sam Altman

A lot of people don't love their bank. — Sam Altman

Employees will only add more value over time. — Sam Altman

A successful startup takes a very long time - certainly much longer than most founders think at the outset. You cannot treat it as an all-nighter. You have to eat well, sleep well, and exercise. You have to spend time with your family and friends. You also need to work in an area you're actually passionate about - nothing else will sustain you for ten years. — Sam Altman

If you look at people who have an iPhone or Android and are under 40 and are dissatisfied with their bank, it's actually quite a large market. — Sam Altman

The best founders work on things that seem small but they move really quickly. They get things done really quickly. — Sam Altman

What you want to do is innovate on your product and your business model, management structure is not where I would try and innovate. — Sam Altman

In YC's case, the number one cause of early death for startups is cofounder blowups. — Sam Altman

One of the pieces of advice that we give at YC is: try to work together on a project rather than just doing an interview. — Sam Altman

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

Remember that the idea will expand, and become more ambitious as you go. — Sam Altman

As long as you keep doing the right thing and have the best product, you can beat the bigger company. — 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

Seed investing is the status symbol of Silicon Valley. Most people don't want Ferraris, they want a winning seed investment. — Sam Altman

Ideas are cheap and easy, and there are a lot of them. — Sam Altman

These all sounded really bad, but they turned out to be good. If they had sounded really good, there would have been too many people working on them. — Sam Altman

You need unstoppable people. You want people that are just going to get it done. — Sam Altman

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

We hear again and again from founders, that they wish they had waited to start a startup until they came up with an idea they really loved. — Sam Altman

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

I don't invest in companies where my mental model is that they need to get themselves acquired in the next few years - or ever. — Sam Altman

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

Most good founders that I know at any given time have a set of small overarching goals for the company that everybody in the company knows. — Sam Altman

Everyone starting a startup for the first time is scared, and everyone feels like a bit of an imposter. — Sam Altman