Sam Altman
Sam Altman
Samuel H. "Sam" Altmanis an American entrepreneur, programmer, venture capitalist and blogger. He is the president of Y Combinator and co-chairman of OpenAI...
NationalityAmerican
ProfessionBusinessman
CountryUnited States of America
team needs desperate
At the beginning, you should only hire when you have a desperate need to.
team years numbers
Many of the best YC companies have had phenomenally small number of employees for their first year, sometimes none besides the founders.
team numbers want
... you want to be proud of how much you can get done with a small numbers of employees.
team proud should
... but actually it sucks to have a lot of employees, and you should be proud of how few employees you have.
team trying
The second part of how to hire: try not to.
team perfect founders
In YC experience, 2 or 3 co-founders seems to be about perfect.
boards members used
A board member of mine used to say sales fix everything in a startup, and that is really true.
team people source
The best source by far for hiring is people that you already know and people that other employees in the company already know.
team firsts referrals
Most great companies in tech have been built by personal referrals for the first...at least 100 employees and often many more.
important needs figures
You need to figure out what the 2 or 3 most important things are, and then just do those.
attitude team people
You also want people who are maniacally determined and that is slightly different than having a risk tolerant attitude.
fire everyday knows
... and you can only have 2 or 3 things everyday, because everything else will just come at you; you know fires in a day.
team work-out joining
If someone is choosing between joining McKinsey or your startup it's very unlikely they're going to work out at the startup.
attitude team people
For early employees you want people that have somewhat of a risk-taking attitude.