Sam Altman Quotes about Team - Page 2

The track record for founders that don't already know each other is really bad.

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

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

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

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

The second part of how to hire: try not to.

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

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

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

... 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.

If you compromise and hire someone mediocre you will always regret it.

We talk to a team they've gotten new things done, that's the best predictor we have that a company will be successful.

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

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

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

... 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.

Companies that I've been very involved with, that have had a very bad first hire in the first 3 or so employees never recover from it.

Most of the best hires that I've made in my entire life have never done that thing before.

Employees will only add more value over time.

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.

Experience matters for some roles and not others.

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

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

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

If you're not in college and you don't know a cofounder, the next best thing I think is to go work at an interesting company.