Ranked List

You have to have an almost crazy level of dedication to your company to succeed. Sam Altman

In general, don’t start a startup you’re not willing to work on for ten years. Sam Altman

Be relentlessly resourceful. Sam Altman

In the current pivot-happy world, good ideas are underweight. It’s worth the time to think through a good one. Sam Altman

Growth solves (nearly) all problems. Sam Altman

While growth is critical and you should focus on it, occasionally consider where you’re going—you need both growth and to be growing towards something valuable. Sam Altman

Obsess about the quality of the product. Sam Altman

Overcommunicate with your team. For some reason most founders are really bad at this one. Transparency is your friend. Sam Altman

Move fast. Speed is one of your main advantages over large companies. Sam Altman

Hire slow; fire fast. Hiring is the most important thing you do; spend at least a third of your time on it. Sam Altman

Occasionally think about why the 20th person will join your company. Sam Altman

Hire smart and effective people that are committed to what you’re doing. The last five words there are important. Sam Altman

Generally, value aptitude over experience. Sam Altman

Hire people that you could describe as animals. Sam Altman

Eliminate distractions. Sam Altman

Don’t die. Sam Altman

Be frugal. Sam Altman

You’ll often hear conflicting advice about everything but “build a great product”. This means you can go either way on much of the rest of it and it doesn’t really matter. Just make a decision and get back to work. Product/market fit is what matters. You can—and will—make a lot of mistakes. Sam Altman

You make what you measure. Sam Altman

Startups are very hard no matter what you do; you may as well go after a big opportunity. Sam Altman

Momentum is critical. Don’t lose it. Sam Altman

Keep salaries low and equity high. Sam Altman

Keep the organization as flat as you can. Sam Altman

When working on a deal—raising money, trying to get a partnership, etc.—it’s important to create a competitive situation. Sam Altman

Schleps are good. Sam Altman

Don’t forget to make money. Sam Altman

Journalists like hearing directly from founders. If you hire PR people, resist their desire to control all the contact. Sam Altman

It’s standard for founders to keep board control in the first round. Sam Altman

Listen to everyone. Then make your own decision. Sam Altman

Remember that you are more likely to die because you execute badly than get crushed by a competitor. Sam Altman

Get lucky. Sam Altman

Have a direct relationship with your customers. Sam Altman

Be formidable—do not be easy to push around. Sam Altman

Don’t let your company be run by a sales guy. But do learn how to sell your product. Sam Altman

Have a culture that rewards output. Sam Altman

Don’t hire professional managers too early. Sam Altman

Simple is good. Be suspicious of complexity. Sam Altman

Get on planes in marginal situations. In-person is still better than tele-anything. Sam Altman

Most things are not as risky as they seem. Sam Altman

Be suspect of anyone who says the word process too often. Sam Altman

Raise a bit more money than you think you need. Sam Altman

Ignore the fact that “the press loves [you]”. Sam Altman

Have great customer service. Sam Altman

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

Board observers are usually a headache. Sam Altman

If you pivot, do it fully and with conviction. The worst thing is to try to do a bit of the old and the new—it’s hard to kill your babies. Sam Altman

It’s better to make a decision and be wrong than to equivocate. Sam Altman

Set goals for the company and motivate people to get there. Sam Altman

Always praise good work. Sam Altman

Celebrate your wins as a company. Get t-shirts for big milestones. Sam Altman

Have a good operational cadence where projects are short and you’re releasing something new on a regular basis. Sam Altman

You can win with the best product, the best price, or the best experience. Sam Altman

Meetups and conferences are generally a waste of time. Sam Altman

If the founders of your company seem to care more about being founders than they care about your specific company, go join another company. Sam Altman

It’s easier to sell painkillers than vitamins. Sam Altman

Be suspicious of any work that is not building product or getting customers. It’s easy to get sucked into an infrastructure rewrite death spiral. Sam Altman

It’s better to have a few users love your product than for a lot of users to sort of like it. Sam Altman

Learn how to stay extermally optimistic when your world is melting down. Sam Altman

Startups should require as few miracles as possible, but at least one. Sam Altman

You have to have great execution—far more people have good ideas than are willing to roll up their sleeves and get shit done. Sam Altman

Don’t have a diverse culture in the early days. Sam Altman

Set a clear, easy-to-understand vision for your company, and make it be a mission people believe in. Sam Altman

Stay focused and don’t try to do too many things at once. Care about execution quality. Sam Altman

A great team and a great market are both critically important—you have to have both. The debate about which is more important is silly. Sam Altman

Hire friends and friends of friends. Go after these people like crazy to get them to join. Some other candidate sources are ok, but I always got bad results from technical recruiters. Sam Altman

Keep a to-do list every day. At the top of it, put the one or two big things you want to work on. Sam Altman

Being the CEO is miserable more often than it’s good. But when it’s good, it’s really good. Sam Altman

On the really bad days, remember that tomorrow will be better—it’s hard to see it being much worse! Sam Altman

Sleep and exercise. Sam Altman

Success in a startup is usually pass/fail. Worry more about making sure you pass than an extra point of dilution. Sam Altman

Good investors are worth a reasonable premium. Sam Altman

Give your investors something to do. Sam Altman

Go for a few highly involved investors over a lot of lightly engaged ones. Sam Altman

Raise money on promise. Raise money on clean terms. Sam Altman

Do reference checks on your potential investors. Ask other founders how they are when everything goes wrong. Sam Altman

Investors love companies other investors love. Sam Altman

A lot of the best ideas seem silly or bad initially—you want an idea at the intersection of “seems like bad idea” and “is good idea”. (It’s important to note you need to be contrarian and right, not simply contrarian.) Sam Altman

Surf someone else’s wave. Sam Altman

Sometimes you can succeed through sheer force of will. Sam Altman

All startups are fucked in at least one major way. Keep going. Sam Altman

Keep an eye on cash in the bank and don’t run out of it. Sam Altman

Pay a lot of attention to the relationship between cofounders, especially if both/all of you want to be CEO. Sam Altman

Stay small and nimble. Sam Altman

Have a staff meeting at least once a week. Sam Altman

Find a mentor that will teach you how to manage. Sam Altman

Keep burn low until you’re sure everything is working. Sam Altman

Be suspect about buying users. Sam Altman

Lead by example. Sam Altman

Have the right kind of office. The proper office for a very small company is an apartment or house. Sam Altman

Share results (financial and key metrics) with the company every month. Sam Altman

Have a table in your offer letters that shows how much the stock you’re granting a new hire could be worth in various scenarios. Sam Altman

Write code, talk to users, and build the company (hire the best people you can find, get the culture right, fundraise, close sales, etc.) Most other things that founders do are a waste of time. Sam Altman

Make something people want. Sam Altman

The best startups are defined by exceptions; all of these rules are probably breakable, but probably not all at the same time. Sam Altman

Your desire for success should be greater than your fear of failure. Bill Cosby

I don't know the key to success, but the key to failure is trying to please everybody. Bill Cosby

People ignore design that ignores people. Frank Chimero

There is no design without discipline. There is no discipline without intelligence Massimo Vignelli

Delay always breeds danger; and to protract a great design is often to ruin it. Miguel de Cervantes

Good design is good business. Thomas J. Watson

Computers are useless. They can only give you answers. Pablo Picasso

We are stuck with technology when what we really want is just stuff that works. Douglas Adams

Don't launch on Fridays. Rudy Menendez - Founder Digital Haiku

If this was your last day, would you be doing what you're doing now? Ed Menendez - Founder Digital Haiku

Getting information off the Internet is like taking a drink from a fire hydrant. Mitchell Kapor

Dream big and dare to fail. Norman Vaughan

Build your own dreams, or someone else will hire you to build theirs. Farrah Gray

If you are not embarrassed by the first version of your product, you’ve launched too late. Reid Hoffman, founder LinkedIn

They always say time changes things, but you actually have to change them yourself. Andy Warhol