If a company is profitable, the founder is in control. If it's not, investors are in control.
Sam AltmanRead
As long as you keep doing the right thing and have the best product, you can beat the bigger company.
Interpretation
Holding onto integrity and quality can lead to success against larger competitors.
This quote by Sam Altman emphasizes that maintaining ethical standards and focusing on delivering a high-quality product can enable smaller companies to compete effectively against larger corporations. It suggests that doing the right thing is equally as important as the product itself, implying that consumer trust and loyalty can be built through integrity.
In practice
During a business seminar, you can quote this to inspire entrepreneurs about the importance of ethics and quality.
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.
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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.'
**New business concepts are always, always the product of lucky foresight.** That's right - the essential insight doesn't come out of any dirigiste planning process; it comes form some cocktail of happenstance, desire, curiosity, ambition and need. But at the end of the day, there has to be a degree of foresight -- a sense of where new riches lie. So radical innovation is always one part fortuity and one part clearheaded vision. [first-line bold by author] [2002] p.23
Marketing is too important to be left to the marketing department.
The game business reinvents itself every five years.
The idea that you can create a template that will work forever doesn't happen in any business. There's some really, really bright people in this business. You can't do the same thing the same way and be successful for a long period of time.
The best client is a scared millionaire.
Accounting is the language of business.
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