Sam Altman Quotes

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.

Each company is different because they get their DNA from the founders.

When you have a programmer-founded company it often gets really techy, if you have a producer or a business-person, it all really sets the flavor of the company, just the priorities and the way you deal with everything.

For better or for worse, our company (The News Corporation Ltd.) is a reflection of my thinking, my character, my values.

The classic problem as an entrepreneur is that they have a hard time delegating. But that's really crazy. Recruiting other executives is critical, so is dealing with customers and dealing with regulators. Those are functions that only the top founders can do.

Corporate culture matters. How management chooses to treat its people impacts everything - for better or for worse.

Jeremy Stoppelman started Yelp. Max Levchin started Slide. I started LinkedIn. It was a mininova explosion of folks jumping out to doing other entrepreneurial activities.

In talking to founder after founder; I've heard almost visceral reactions to working for companies, even very cool ones with great things to work on and lots of opportunity, like Facebook, Google, or consulting firms.

Culture is what happens when the CEO isn't in the room.

Every Uber employee should be proud of the culture we have and what we will build together over time.

I started angel investing because I like hanging out with entrepreneurs.

About every other week, I sit down with all of our new Zynga hires and I talk to them for about 90 minutes, have an open Q&A. There is no formal presentation. I talk about our values, where they came from and why they are so important, and I ask them to challenge those values.

Our culture is the foundation for our company.

Companies become what they want to become.

I've seen small businesses turn into terrible midsize or big ones because they let their desire to achieve some arbitrary metric get the best of them. Whatever is compromised as a result doesn't matter anymore, as long as the company is growing.

I think culture is a big word for corporate character.

I live, breathe, and die by what kind of company we're creating.

Most companies overlook the most basic of all training functions: the onboarding of new employees into their corporate culture.

I think the company that has the clearest set of values is Amazon. That company knows what it is. It may be that it's not your cup of tea, but every single person at that company knows what the Amazon values are.

Companies have centers of gravity. Where they are is part of their identity.

Values can set a company apart from the competition by clarifying its identity and serving as a rallying point for employees. But coming up with strong values - and sticking to them - requires real guts.

We're trying to build the largest start-up ever without becoming a big company.

When we started WeWork it really was thought of holistically.

The people inside the company are the people who define GE, not the people outside the company.

Netflix is famous for its corporate culture, which rightly emphasizes directness and personal responsibility.