Sam Altman Quotes
Browse 43 quotes from Sam Altman, featuring insights on success, personal growth, leadership, mindset, and achievement.
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“Aim to be the best in the world at whatever you do professionally. Even if you miss, you’ll probably end up in a pretty good place.”
“You can’t build an important company without being optimistic.”
“Because so few people make an actual long term commitment to what they’re building, the ones that do have a huge advantage.”
“I am going to keep going until this works, and no matter what the challenges are I’m going to figure them out.”
“Most things are ok in moderation. Almost nothing is ok in extreme amounts.”
“If you don’t believe in yourself, it’s hard to let yourself have contrarian ideas about the future. But this is where most value gets created.”
“You need conviction in your own beliefs, and the willingness to ignore others naysaying.”
“Everyone starting a startup for the first time is scared, and everyone feels like a bit of an imposter.”
“Unpopular but right is what you’re going for.”
“No matter how successful you are, the haters will never go away.”
“Don’t let yourself make excuses for not doing the things you want to do.”
“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.”
“Don’t claim you’re changing the world until you’ve changed it.”
“Never put your family, friends, or significant other low on your priority list. Prefer a handful of truly close friends to a hundred acquaintances.”
“Long term thinking is so rare anywhere, but especially in startups. This is a huge advantage if you do it.”
“Look for small bets you can make where you lose 1x if you’re wrong but make 100x if it works.”
“Most things are not as risky as they seem.”
“Taking risks is important because it’s impossible to be right all the time - you have to try many things and adapt quickly as you learn more.”
“Great execution is at least 10 times more important and a 100 times harder than a good idea.”
“You have to be decisive. Indecisiveness is a startup killer.”
“Unfortunately the trick to great execution is to say no a lot.”
“You only get points when you make something the market wants. So if you work really hard on the wrong things, no one will care.”
“A winning team feels good and keeps winning. A team that hasn’t won in a while gets demotivated and keeps losing.”
“Everyone is looking for the hack, the secret to success without hard work.”
“One of the most powerful lessons to learn is that you can figure out what to do in situations that seem to have no solution.”
“The thing that kills startups at some level, is the founders giving up.”
“Don’t spend time trying to maintain relationships with people you don’t like, and cut negative people out of your life. Negativity is really bad.”
“No matter what you choose, build stuff and be around smart people.”
“One of the greatest skills of a leader is the ability to calm others in a storm.”
“All great careers, to some degree, become sales jobs.”
“The best way to be good at sales is to genuinely believe in what you’re selling.”
“If you want something in a deal, just ask for it.”
“Most people get bogged down in linear opportunities. Be willing to let small opportunities go to focus on potential step changes.”
“If you can build a product that is so good people spontaneously tell their friends about it, you have done 80% of the work that you need to be a really successful startup.”
“The best ideas are fragile and easy to kill.”
“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.”
“Very few startups die from competition, most die because they themselves fail to make something users love.”
“It’s better to have a few users love your product than for a lot of users to sort of like it.”
“All companies that grow really big do so in only one way: people recommend the product or service to other people.”
“Move fast. Speed is one of your main advantages over large competitors.”
“Someday, you need to build a business that’s difficult to replicate. This is an important part of a good idea.”
“Whether or not money can buy happiness, it can buy freedom, and that’s a big deal. Also, lack of money is very stressful.”
“You get truly rich by owning things that increase rapidly in value.”
