Sam Altman Quotes

Building a product is easy. But building the company that builds the product is hard.

Founders should think of their company as a product and build it and shape it with the same passion and care.

Over the last ten years, technological advances have dramatically lowered the financial bar for starting a new company, but the courage bar for building a great company remains as high as it has ever been.

Whatever business you are in, every company can shoot for the start in their own way.

Businesses that grow by development and improvement do not die.

A company's culture is the foundation for future innovation. An entrepreneurs job is to build the foundation

It's important to remember that innovators in business don't always get a platform.

It's the job of any business owner to be clear about the company's nonnegotiable core values. They're the riverbanks that help guide us as we refine and improve on performance and excellence. A lack of riverbanks creates estuaries and cloudy waters that are confusing to navigate. I want a crystal-clear, swiftly flowing stream.

I've helped some of my classmates on how to strategize to get to the next level of their businesses. And it's interesting, because here I am sitting there from the entertainment industry and the fashion industry, and I'm giving a billionaire that has a business that's been in his family for 300 years - I'm giving him advice about strategy!

The emphasis on innovation and technology in our companies has resulted in a few of them establishing global benchmarks in product design and development, manufacturing practices and human resource capabilities. However, there is no room for complacency.

In 17 years, we have built a business that has revolutionized the industry, with innovation at its core. I am confident that the partnership between Getty Images and the Carlyle Group will see the company's success continue.

It's important for founders to think about how they would build their company from scratch - again.

To maintain our entrepreneurial spirit, we have to create a culture in which everyone remembers that every order, big or small - and every interaction, every moment - will define what our company is today and what it will become tomorrow.

Being a tech company has to be about a pattern of repetitive innovation.

All leading brands started with and still possess the DNA of innovation and creativity, but it is often limited to one or two areas such as design or engineering. For a company to prosper, it must inject this innovative spirit into every aspect of the business.

The philosophy at Valve and Gearbox is that if things can't be done better, they shouldn't be done at all.

Since your company is the product that makes all of your other products, it should be the best product of all. When you begin to think of your company this way, you evaluate it differently. You ask different questions about it. You look at improving it constantly, rather than just accepting what it's become.

If you want your company to succeed, you have to have the confidence in your business to take a bet on its future - to risk destroying a mediocre business model for the chance to have a strong one.

There are companies that are good at improving what they're already doing. There are companies that are good at extending what they're doing. And finally there are companies that are good at innovation. Every large company has to be able to do all three - improve, extend, and innovate - simultaneously.

By questioning all the aspects of our business, we continuously inject improvement and innovation into our culture.

Management and entrepreneurship are only two different dimensions of the same task. An entrepreneur who does not learn how to manage will not last long. A management that does not learn to innovate will not last long.

If life was so easy that you could just go buy success, there would be a lot more successful companies in the world. Successful enterprises are built from the ground up.

One thing I tell startups all the time is that the best way to grow is to make their product better.

There is never a bad time to start a business - unless you want to start a mediocre one.

Managing innovation will increasingly become a challenge to management, and especially to top management, and a touchstone of its competence.