Top 200 Sam Altman Quotes (2024 Update)

1. “Stay focused and don’t try to do too many things at once. Care about execution quality.”

— Sam Altman

2. “If you ever take your foot off the gas pedal, things will spiral out of control, snowball downwards.”

— Sam Altman

3. “You have to be decisive. Indecisiveness is a startup killer.”

— Sam Altman

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

— Sam Altman

5. “AirBnB happened because Brian Chesky couldn’t pay his rent, but did have some space.”

— Sam Altman

6. “One of the biggest advantages that start ups have is execution speed, and you have to have this relentless operating rhythm.”

— Sam Altman

7. “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

8. “A winning team feels good and keeps winning. A team that hasn’t won in a while gets demotivated and keeps losing.”

— Sam Altman

9. “The most important thing is that there is clear reporting structure and everyone knows what it is.”

— Sam Altman

10. “Growth and momentum are what a startup lives on and you always have to focus on maintaining these.”

— Sam Altman

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

— Sam Altman

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

— Sam Altman

13. “At YC we have this public phrase, and it’s relentlessly resourceful.”

— Sam Altman

14. “You can win with the best product, the best price, or the best experience.”

— Sam Altman

15. “There are 3 things I look for when I hire people. Are they smart? Do they get things done? Do I want to spend a lot of time around them?”

— Sam Altman

16. “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

17. “You should always know how you’re doing against your metrics. You should always have a weekly review meeting every week.”

— Sam Altman

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

— Sam Altman

19. “Good startups usually take 10 years.”

— Sam Altman

20. “Ideas by themselves are not worth anything, only executing well is what creates value.”

— Sam Altman

21. “Move fast. Speed is one of your main advantages over large companies.”

— Sam Altman

22. “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

23. “Starting a business is like riding a wave between life and death. If you can hang on long enough, you’re bound to succeed.”

— Sam Altman

24. “The other piece besides focus for execution is intensity. Startups only work at a fairly intense level.”

— Sam Altman

25. “Aim to be the best in the world at whatever you do professionally. Even if you miss, you’ll probably end up in a pretty good place.”

— Sam Altman

26. “The company just needs to see you as like this maniacal execution machine.”

— Sam Altman

27. “The single word that matters most I think to keep the company productive as it grows is alignment.”

— Sam Altman

29. “You’ll get more support on a hard, important, project than a derivative one.”

— Sam Altman

30. “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

31. “A lot of people treat choosing their cofounder with even less importance than they put on hiring. Don’t do this.”

— Sam Altman

32. “I think the best thing you can do is be aware that as a first time founder you are likely to be a very bad manager.”

— Sam Altman

33. “Unpopular but right is what you’re going for.”

— Sam Altman

34. “If someone is getting every decision wrong, that’s when you need to act, and at that point it’ll be painfully aware to everyone.”

— Sam Altman

35. “I think as a rough estimate, you should aim to give about 10% of the company to the first 10 employees.”

— Sam Altman

36. “A small communication breakdown is enough for everyone to be working on slightly different things. And then you loose focus...”

— Sam Altman

37. “If you look at successful pivots, they almost always are a pivot into something that the founder wanted. Not a random made up idea.”

— Sam Altman

38. “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

39. “Experience matters for some roles and not others.”

— Sam Altman

40. “The tenth social network, and limited only to college students with no money, also terrible. Myspace had won.”

— Sam Altman

41. “In addition to relentlessly resourceful, you want a tough and a calm cofounder.”

— Sam Altman

42. “One of the great and terrible things about starting a start up is that you get no credit for trying.”

— Sam Altman

43. “When lack of structure fails, it fails all at once. What works totally fine from 0-20 employees, is disastrous at 30.”

— Sam Altman

44. “Obsess about the quality of the product.”

— Sam Altman

45. “You need someone that behaves like James Bond more than you need someone that is an expert in some particular domain.”

— Sam Altman

46. “No growth hack, brilliant marketing idea, or sales team can save you long term if you don’t have a sufficiently good product.”

— Sam Altman

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

— Sam Altman

48. “Most investors are obsessed with the market size today and they don’t think about how the market is going to evolve.”

— Sam Altman

49. “Study the unusually successful people you know, and you will find them imbued with enthusiasm for their work which is contagious. Not only are they themselves excited about what they are doing, but they also get you excited.”

— Sam Altman

50. “Facebook has this famous poster that says move fast and break things. But at the same time they manage to be obsessed with quality.”

— Sam Altman