Sam Altman Founders Quotations

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

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.

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

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

More important than starting any startup, is getting to know a lot of potential co-founders.

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.

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

You have to be intense. This only comes from the CEO, this only comes from the founders.

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

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.

In the early days of a startup, people's compensation is whatever you negotiate with a founder and it's all over the place.

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

In YC experience, 2 or 3 co-founders seems to be about perfect.

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.

Every thing at a startup gets modeled after the founders. Whatever the founders do becomes the culture.