Sam Altman
You should be giving out a lot of equity to your employees.Collection: Giving
If it takes more than a sentence to explain what you are doing, it's almost always a sign that what you are doing is too complicated.Collection: Complicated
Why couldn't it have been done 2 years ago, and why will 2 years in the future be too late?Collection: Years
What being a founder means, is signing up for this years long grind on execution - and you can't outsource this.Collection: Mean
I think as a rough estimate, you should aim to give about 10% of the company to the first 10 employees.Collection: Team
The natural state of a start-up is to die; most start-ups require multiple miracles in their early days to escape this fate.Collection: Fate
Every first time founder waits too long, everyone hopes that an employee will turn around. But the right answer is to fire fast.Collection: Team
It's better to have no cofounder than to have a bad cofounder, but it's still bad to be a solo founder.Collection: Team
If you compromise in the first five, ten hires it might kill the company.Collection: Team
At YC we have this public phrase, and it's relentlessly resourceful.Collection: Team
A lot of people treat choosing their cofounder with even less importance than they put on hiring. Don't do this.Collection: Team
The other piece besides focus for execution is intensity. Startups only work at a fairly intense level.Collection: Focus
So you should always stay on top of people's vesting schedules.Collection: People
What you want to do is innovate on your product and your business model, management structure is not where I would try and innovate.Collection: Trying
As you grow, the productivity I think, goes down with the square of the number of employees if you don't make an effort.Collection: Thinking
Because it's one of these sort of connections between nodes- every pair of people adds communication overhead.Collection: Communication
You don't need to make the structure complicated, in fact you shouldn't. All you need is for every employee to know who their manager is.Collection: Needs
The best founders work on things that seem small but they move really quickly. They get things done really quickly.Collection: Moving
You have to be intense. This only comes from the CEO, this only comes from the founders.Collection: Intense
You need unstoppable people. You want people that are just going to get it done.Collection: Team
The single word that matters most I think to keep the company productive as it grows is alignment.Collection: Thinking
One thing I tell startups all the time is that the best way to grow is to make their product better.Collection: Way
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.Collection: Growth
... how much time you should be spending on hiring? The answer is 0 or 25 percent.Collection: Team
When it comes to starting startups, in many ways, it's easier to start a hard startup than an easy startup.Collection: Way
When lack of structure fails, it fails all at once. What works totally fine from 0-20 employees, is disastrous at 30.Collection: Failing
Another way of looking at this, is that the best companies are almost always mission oriented.Collection: Way
Great execution towards a terrible idea will get you nowhere.Collection: Ideas
At the beginning, you should only hire when you have a desperate need to.Collection: Team
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.Collection: Team
Why now, why is this the perfect time for this particular idea, and to start this particular company?Collection: Ideas
Cofounder relationships are among the most important in the entire company.Collection: Team
You think you have this great idea that everyone's going to come join, but that's not how it works.Collection: Team
A board member of mine used to say sales fix everything in a startup, and that is really true.Collection: Boards
Two other things that we hear again and again from our founders, they wish they had done earlier, and that is... simply writing down how you do things and why you do things.Collection: Writing
You also really want to take the time to think about how the market is going to evolve.You need a market that's going to be big in 10 years.Collection: Thinking
If you can just learn to think about the market first, you will have a big leg up on most people starting startups.Collection: Thinking
Founders need to figure out what the message of the company is going to be.Collection: Messages
... for the top twenty most valuable YC companies, all of them have at least two founders.Collection: Team
For early employees you want people that have somewhat of a risk-taking attitude.Collection: Attitude
Unfortunately the trick to great execution is to say no a lot.Collection: Execution
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.Collection: Real
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.Collection: Winning
You can win with the best product, the best price, or the best experience.Collection: Winning
Everyone starting a startup for the first time is scared, and everyone feels like a bit of an imposter.Collection: Firsts
One of the great and terrible things about starting a start up is that you get no credit for trying.Collection: Trying
The most important thing is that there is clear reporting structure and everyone knows what it is.Collection: Important
As the company grows and about this 25 or so employee size, your main job shifts from building a great product to building a great company.Collection: Jobs
You need someone that behaves like James Bond more than you need someone that is an expert in some particular domain.Collection: Team