Top 200 Sam Altman Quotes (2026 Update)
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101. “One thing that often disrupts momentum and really shouldn’t is competitors.”

— Sam Altman

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

— Sam Altman

103. “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

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

— Sam Altman

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

— Sam Altman

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

— Sam Altman

107. “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

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

— Sam Altman

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

— Sam Altman

110. “If someone is difficult to talk to, if someone cannot communicate clearly, it’s a real problem in terms of their likelihood to work out.”

— Sam Altman

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

— Sam Altman

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

— Sam Altman

113. “Most founders have not managed people before, and they certainly haven’t managed managers.”

— Sam Altman

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

— Sam Altman

115. “In the beginning of a company, there is no management and this actually works really well.”

— Sam Altman

116. “If it works out, you’re going to be working on this for 10 years.”

— Sam Altman

117. “Most things are not as risky as they seem.”

— Sam Altman

118. “One thing that founders forget is that after they hire employees, they have to retain them.”

— Sam Altman

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

— Sam Altman

120. “You should think about for the next 10 years, you’re going to be giving out 3-5% of the company every year.”

— Sam Altman

121. “I care much more about the growth rate of the market than it’s current size and I also care if there’s any reason it’s going to top out.”

— Sam Altman

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

— Sam Altman

123. “Once your product is working, switch from not caring about this to caring about this a little bit.”

— Sam Altman

124. “If you have several ideas that all seem pretty good, work on the one that you think about, when you’re not trying to think about work.”

— Sam Altman

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

— Sam Altman

126. “For early employees you want people that have somewhat of a risk-taking attitude.”

— Sam Altman

127. “Losing focus is another way that founders get off track.”

— Sam Altman

128. “It’s easy to move fast or be obsessed with quality, but the trick is you have to do both at a startup.”

— Sam Altman

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

— Sam Altman

130. “Why couldn’t it have been done 2 years ago, and why will 2 years in the future be too late?”

— Sam Altman

131. “AirBnB spent 5 months interviewing their first employee, before they hired someone and in their first year, they only hired 2 people.”

— Sam Altman

132. “You need this sort of a tailwind to make a startup successful.”

— Sam Altman

133. “By the way, that’s my number one piece of advice if you’re going to join a startup: pick a rocket ship.”

— Sam Altman

134. “You need to have a culture where people have very high quality standards in everything the company does, but still move quickly.”

— Sam Altman

135. “The best ideas often look terrible at the beginning the truly good ideas, don’t seem like they’re worth stealing.”

— Sam Altman

136. “You need unstoppable people. You want people that are just going to get it done.”

— Sam Altman

137. “A related advantage of mission oriented ideas, is that you yourself will be dedicated to them.”

— Sam Altman

138. “Many of the best YC companies have had phenomenally small number of employees for their first year, sometimes none besides the founders.”

— Sam Altman

139. “It really is true that you become an average of the people you spend the most time with.”

— Sam Altman

140. “I prefer to invest in a company that’s going after a small but rapidly growing market than a big but slow growing one.”

— Sam Altman

141. “Later, you should learn to hire fast and scale up the company, but in the early days the goal should be not to hire. Not to hire.”

— Sam Altman

142. “The way you get deals done and the way you get good terms, is to have a competitive situation.”

— Sam Altman

143. “In general don’t start a startup you’re not willing to work on for ten years.”

— Sam Altman

144. “These all sounded really bad, but they turned out to be good. If they had sounded really good, there would have been too many people working on them.”

— Sam Altman

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

— Sam Altman

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

— Sam Altman

147. “Momentum and growth are the lifeblood of startups. This is probably in the top three secrets of executing well.”

— Sam Altman

148. “It’s difficult to get large groups of people, to the extreme levels of focus and productivity that you need, for a startup to be successful.”

— Sam Altman

149. “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.”

— Sam Altman

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

— Sam Altman