Top 200 Sam Altman Quotes (2025 Update)
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51. “The best founders work on things that seem small but they move really quickly. They get things done really quickly.”

— Sam Altman

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

— Sam Altman

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

— Sam Altman

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

— Sam Altman

55. “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

56. “Even though plans themselves are worthless, the exercise of planning is very valuable and totally missing in most startups today.”

— Sam Altman

57. “Great execution towards a terrible idea will get you nowhere.”

— Sam Altman

58. “You can have a startup and one other thing, you can have a family, but you probably can’t have many other hobbies.”

— Sam Altman

59. “Startups are not the best choice for work-life balance, and that’s sort of just the sad reality.”

— Sam Altman

60. “You want an idea about what you can say. I know it sounds like a bad idea but here’s specifically why its actually a great one. You want to sound crazy but you want to ask to be right.”

— Sam Altman

61. “You want an idea that turns into a monopoly. But you can’t get a monopoly, in a big market right away; too much competition for that.”

— Sam Altman

62. “The best people know that they should join a rocketship.”

— Sam Altman

63. “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

64. “You need conviction in your own beliefs, and the willingness to ignore others naysaying.”

— Sam Altman

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

— Sam Altman

66. “Every first time founder waits too long, everyone hopes that an employee will turn around. But the right answer is to fire fast...”

— Sam Altman

67. “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

68. “You also want people who are maniacally determined and that is slightly different than having a risk tolerant attitude.”

— Sam Altman

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

— Sam Altman

70. “As you grow, the productivity I think, goes down with the square of the number of employees if you don’t make an effort.”

— Sam Altman

71. “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

72. “Keep salaries low and equity high. Keep the organization as flat as you can.”

— Sam Altman

73. “You can basically change everything in a startup but the market.”

— Sam Altman

74. “For most software startups, this translates to keep growing. For hardware startups, it translates to don’t let your ship date slip.”

— Sam Altman

75. “The thing that kills startups at some level, is the founders giving up.”

— Sam Altman

76. “In the early stage of a startup, hiring senior people is usually a mistake. You just want people that get stuff done.”

— Sam Altman

77. “Someday, you need to build a business that’s difficult to replicate. This is an important part of a good idea.”

— Sam Altman

78. “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

79. “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

80. “In general, it’s best if you’re building something that you yourself need.”

— Sam Altman

81. “The hard part is that this is a very fine line. There’s right on one side of it, and crazy on the other.”

— Sam Altman

82. “There’s no way I know, to get through the pain of a startup without belief that the mission really matters.”

— Sam Altman

83. “In general though, if you look at the track record of pivots, they don’t become big companies.”

— Sam Altman

84. “The idea should come first, the startup should come second.”

— Sam Altman

85. “Be suspicious of any work that is not building product or getting customers.”

— Sam Altman

86. “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

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

— Sam Altman

88. “Here’s a good rule of thumb: don’t worry about a competitor at all, until they’re actually beating you with a real shipped product.”

— Sam Altman

89. “To get the very best people- they have a lot of great options, and so it can easily take a year to recruit someone.”

— Sam Altman

90. “One thing I tell startups all the time is that the best way to grow is to make their product better.”

— Sam Altman

91. “Why now, why is this the perfect time for this particular idea, and to start this particular company?”

— Sam Altman

92. “Wait to start a startup until you come up with an idea that you feel compelled to explore.”

— Sam Altman

93. “Everyone starting a startup for the first time is scared, and everyone feels like a bit of an imposter.”

— Sam Altman

94. “If you don’t need it yourself, and you’re building something that someone else needs, realize you’re at a big disadvantage.”

— Sam Altman

95. “You need to figure out what the 2 or 3 most important things are, and then just do those.”

— Sam Altman

96. “There’s at least a hundred times more people with great ideas than people that are willing to put in the effort to execute them well.”

— Sam Altman

97. “So you should always stay on top of people’s vesting schedules.”

— Sam Altman

98. “One thing that often disrupts momentum and really shouldn’t is competitors.”

— Sam Altman

99. “Another way of looking at this, is that the best companies are almost always mission oriented.”

— Sam Altman

100. “The biggest PR hack you can do, is not hire a PR firm.”

— Sam Altman