Sam Altman

If a company is profitable, the founder is in control. If it's not, investors are in control.

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.

If you have the opportunity to go be an early employee at a company that's just going crazy, and you believe it's the next Facebook or Google, you should go join that company.

Seed investing is the status symbol of Silicon Valley. Most people don't want Ferraris, they want a winning seed investment.

People always make the mistake of calling an idea small or stupid because they don't understand how it's going to evolve.

Technology magnifies differences, and it's been replacing or obviating jobs for a long time. But what happens as that case accelerates? I'm not one of these doomsayers who says, 'There will be no jobs.'

All companies that grow really big do so in only one way: people recommend the product or service to other people.

The hard part of running a business is that there are a hundred things that you could be doing, and only five of those actually matter, and only one of them matters more than all of the rest of them combined. So figuring out there is a critical path thing to focus on and ignoring everything else is really important.

There is a long history of founders returning to companies and doing great things. Founders are able to set the vision for their companies with an authority no one else can.

Starting a business is like riding a wave between life and death. If you can hang on long enough, you're bound to succeed

As long as you keep doing the right thing and have the best product, you can beat the bigger company.

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.

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.

Obsess about the quality of the product.