Quotes from Sam Altman

Move fast. Speed is one of your main advantages over large competitors.

I don't think people spend nearly enough time thinking about what they like and what they're good at.

Companies generally work better when they are smaller. It's always worth spending time to think about the least amount of projects/work you can feasibly do, and then having as small a team as possible to do it.

The nice thing about Reddit is, we don't have to sell your data or build a profile of you or do stuff that makes people feel uncomfortable.

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

Being a public company is really terrible for most companies. I'd say Facebook and Google have done a pretty good job of standing up to the incredible quarterly pressure to hit numbers, but most companies - and I've observed a lot now - don't do a very good job of that.

Loopt isn't a service that keeps you locked in, staring at your screen.

If you have a startup that's keeping it up at night because you think it's so great, then you should do that.

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

All throughout my life I have been deeply immersed in startups, either because I was running one or investing in them or helping them.

It's so important for startups to get their culture right at the start. They need to feel unique and that they are on their own important mission in the world.

I love working with really early stage startups where the outcome is still in doubt. Maybe they'll go on to greatness, or maybe they'll never get off the runway at all.

Startups on the inside are always badly broken.

I think extreme secrecy is a bad sign in all startups. Very few startups die because they tell you exactly how their technology works. On the long list of startup killers, that's pretty far down. Though on the list of entrepreneur fears, it's pretty high.

Asking what I'd do without Loopt is almost like asking what I would do if I didn't have a smartphone because the feature set has become the norm for me.

Maybe I am a bit unusual here, but I am less stressed if I have my phone with me. Because I can spend like an hour in the morning taking care of everything instead of I sit there and wonder what I missed or wonder what's happening. So it's way less stressful for me to just answer my phone.

I grew up with a computer, and many of my friends were people I met online.

One of the things we urge Y-Combinator companies to do is to have profitability in grasp. If you need to get profitable before your A round of money, you ought to be able to do that.

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.

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

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

Most startups are not nearly focussed enough. They work hard...maybe, but they don't work hard on the right things.

So if you want a culture where people work hard, & pay attention to detail, focus on the customer, are frugal: you have to do it yourself.

Whether or not money can buy happiness, it can buy freedom, and that's a big deal. Also, lack of money is very stressful.