Altman Quotes

Nonviolence is not just abstention from war, fighting, or animal flesh. It is abstention from negative thoughts and negative speech. ~ Nathaniel Altman

Dana daydreamed of one day being able to set her agenda at B.Altman with the same courage and tenacity as the woman who was now driving the VW while speaking animatedly about her travel plans for the near future. She would be journeying to India in search of exotic merchandise for the store's Indian extravaganza, a lavish event planned by Ira Neimark and Dawn Mello to compete with Bloomingdale's Retailing as Theater movement. The movement was the brainchild of Bloomingdale's Marvin Traub, who staged elaborate presentations such as China: Heralding the Dawn of a New Era. Typical extravaganzas featured fashion, clothing, food, and art from various regions of the world.
"I'll bring back enough items to make Bloomingdale's blush!" Nina said confidently. "And I'm not just talking sweaters, hats, and walking sticks. I'll stop first in the Himalayas and prowl the Landour Bazaar."
Lynn Steward ~ A Very Good Life ~ Lynn Steward

Whatever clutter may be getting in your way during a conversation or communication, use the simple acronym HEAR to enter a more spacious and less defensive awareness. HEAR stands for: hold all assumptions; enter the emotional world; absorb and accept; and reflect, then respect. H ~ Donald Altman

A lot of people treat choosing their cofounder with even less importance than they put on hiring. Don't do this. ~ Sam Altman

Generally, you want to raise capital either when you have to or when it's really easy. If the company desperately needs money, and they can't figure out any other way, then they need to raise money. Or if someone's offering you easy money on good terms, you should take it because you can use it for good things. ~ Sam Altman

Most of the best hires that I've made in my entire life have never done that thing before. ~ Sam Altman

Most investors are obsessed with the market size today and they don't think about how the market is going to evolve. ~ Sam Altman

Titanic I thought was the most dreadful piece of work I've ever seen in my entire life. Another film that I think is equally bad was American Beauty. So badly acted and directed. But people like that. ~ Robert Altman

Loopt isn't a service that keeps you locked in, staring at your screen. ~ Sam Altman

If you have a startup that's keeping it up at night because you think it's so great, then you should do that. ~ Sam Altman

Developing a personal connection with anyone you're trying to do a big deal with is really important. ~ Sam Altman

We've seen a lot of data at YC now, and the most successful companies and the ones where the investors do the best ... end up giving a lot of stock out to employees- year after year after year. ~ Sam Altman

At YC we have this public phrase, and it's relentlessly resourceful. ~ Sam Altman

Fire fast when it's not working. It's better for the company, it's also better for the employee. ~ Sam Altman

For the top twenty most valuable YC companies, all of them have at least two founders. ~ Sam Altman

The tenth social network, and limited only to college students with no money, also terrible. Myspace had won. ~ Sam Altman

Rich countries want unfettered access to poor countries' markets, which are often heavily protected by tariffs, but they don't want to give up all the protections for their own goods and services. ~ Daniel Altman

(I)f France's righteous bloviating against war makes them your Dashboard Saint of International Integrity, it's either because you are sand-poundingly ignorant of how the world works or it's because you think France's self-interest is more important than America's. If the former applies to you, read a book. If it's the latter, maybe you should move there along with Alec Baldwin, Robert Altman, and the rest of the crowd who promised to leave a long time ago. But whatever you do, don't call France's position principled, because that just insults us both. ~ Jonah Goldberg

You're saying no ninety-seven times out of a hundred, and most founders find they have to make a very conscious effort to do this. ~ Sam Altman

Once your product is working, switch from not caring about this to caring about this a little bit. ~ Sam Altman

No matter what you choose, build stuff and be around smart people. ~ Sam Altman

A related advantage of mission oriented ideas, is that you yourself will be dedicated to them. ~ Sam Altman

You also want to fire people who a) create office politics, and b) who are persistently negative. ~ Sam Altman

Set a clear, easy-to-understand vision for your company, and make it be a mission people believe in. ~ Sam Altman

Your own ego is the only trap that I think you can fall into. ~ Robert Altman

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

It was a pity that movies and live TV left New York for Hollywood. London theater, movies, television - until (Britain's) money ran out - were always better than ours since the city was the political capital of the country, as well as the artistic and literary one. In L.A. we've always been slightly sealed off from real life. It's no accident that two of our most interesting directors, Woody Allen and Bob Altman, are more or less settled in the real world. ~ Gore Vidal

Don't hire for the sake of hiring. Hire because there is no other way to do what you want to do. ~ Sam Altman

It's better to have no cofounder than to have a bad cofounder, but it's still bad to be a solo founder. ~ Sam Altman

The body knows things the thinking mind can only imagine. ~ Donald Altman

Companies generally work better when they are smaller. It's always worth spending time to think about the least amount of projects/work you can feasibly do, and then having as small a team as possible to do it. ~ Sam Altman

If you don't need it yourself, and you're building something that someone else needs, realize you're at a big disadvantage. ~ Sam Altman

There are 3 things I look for when I hire people. Are they smart? Do they get things done? Do I want to spend a lot of time around them? ~ Sam Altman

The point of an accelerator is to teach you about companies and business, not about technology. ~ Sam Altman

If you don't love and believe in what you're building, you're likely to give up at some point along the way. ~ Sam Altman

As the company grows and about this 25 or so employee size, your main job shifts from building a great product to building a great company. ~ Sam Altman

Who am I? Who am I?"
"You're Jude St. Francis. You are my oldest, dearest friend. You're the son of Harold Stein and Julia Altman. You're the friend of Malcolm Irvine, of Jean-Baptiste Marion, of Richard Goldfarb, of Andy Contractor, of Lucien Voigt, of Citizen van Straaten, of Rhodes Arrowsmith, of Elijah Kozma, of Phaedra de los Santos, of the Henry Youngs. You're a New Yorker. You live in SoHo. You volunteer for an arts organization; you volunteer for a food kitchen. You're a swimmer. You're a baker. You're a cook. You're a reader. You have a beautiful voice, though you never sing anymore. You're an excellent pianist. You're an art collector. You write me lovely messages when I'm away. You're patient. You're generous. You're the best listener I know. You're the smartest person I know, in every way. You're the bravest person I know, in every way. You're a lawyer. You're the chair of the litigation department at Rosen Pritchard and Klein. You love your job; you work hard at it. You're a mathematician. You're a logician. You've tried to teach me, again and again. You were treated horribly. You came out on the other end. You were always you."

"And who are you?"
"I'm Willem Ragnarsson. And I will never let you go. ~ Hanya Yanagihara

The way you get deals done and the way you get good terms, is to have a competitive situation. ~ Sam Altman

It's really easy to get PR with no results & it actually feels like you're really actually cool, but in a year you'll still have nothing. ~ Sam Altman

Traditional local advertising is not what retailers want. They want not just for you to see an ad - they want you to come into the store, to be a repeat customer and to spread the word. ~ Sam Altman

I was born in Montreal in 1939, the second son of poor immigrants. ~ Sidney Altman

...greet the day gently and with utmost care. ~ Donald Altman

You have to be decisive. Indecisiveness is a startup killer. ~ Sam Altman

So always keep momentum, it's this prime directive for managing a startup. ~ Sam Altman

Filmmaking is a chance to live many lifetimes. ~ Robert Altman

A single mediocre hire in the first five will often in fact kill a startup. ~ Sam Altman

So it's worth some real up front time to think through the long term value and the defensibility of the business. ~ Sam Altman

The Fed is the major U.S. firefighter. It's not the Treasury. It's not the Congress. We certainly saw that vividly in 2008. ~ Roger Altman

How much time you should be spending on hiring? The answer is 0 or 25 percent. ~ Sam Altman

The biggest PR hack you can do, is not hire a PR firm. ~ Sam Altman

The best source by far for hiring is people that you already know and people that other employees in the company already know. ~ Sam Altman

If you talk to say any of the first 40 or 50 employees, they all feel like they were a part of the founding of the company. ~ Sam Altman

Facebook has this famous poster that says move fast and break things. But at the same time they manage to be obsessed with quality. ~ Sam Altman

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. ~ Sam Altman

A small communication breakdown is enough for everyone to be working on slightly different things. And then you loose focus ... ~ Sam Altman

You should always know how you're doing against your metrics. You should always have a weekly review meeting every week. ~ Sam Altman

Diverse groups of countries can do a lot by trading amongst themselves, exploiting differences in costs, resources, and technologies. ~ Daniel Altman

Sitting around waiting for inspiration is for amateurs. If you're a professional, you show up every day at work. ~ Mara Altman

All throughout my life I have been deeply immersed in startups, either because I was running one or investing in them or helping them. ~ Sam Altman

Like the Centralia Mine Fire, my mother and I have been burning for half a century. ~ Elissa Altman

I should mention that while I was growing up, Einstein was presented as a worthy role model for a young boy who was good at his studies. ~ Sidney Altman

I love fishing. You put that line in the water and you don't know what's on the other end. Your imagination is under there. ~ Robert Altman

Facebook and Instagram are spiritual brothers. ~ Sam Altman

The more Mr. Putin extends the fighting in eastern Ukraine, the more the financial markets will ratchet up their own pressure on Russia. ~ Roger Altman

With Altman, he does discuss everything with you, but then leaves you to it and gives you full rein and lets you improvise and create a character while the camera is rolling. ~ Vincent D'Onofrio

You can have a startup and one other thing, you can have a family, but you probably can't have many other hobbies. ~ Sam Altman

As developing countries became bigger traders, it was clear that the old way of doing business wouldn't fly. To get them back to the bargaining table, the wealthy countries had to offer something more: a new round of talks that would use trade as a tool to help developing countries grow. ~ Daniel Altman

Growth solves (nearly) all problems ~ Sam Altman

Quiet the noise around you; soften its pitch. Our deepest stories are our best teachers. Let the weapons of the weak - the poison, the nagging, the gossip - burn themselves to ash. Cast them to the wind. Take back the permission to succeed. Make it yours. ~ Elissa Altman

Although other animals cannot reason nor speak the way humans do, this does not give us the right to do with them as we like. Even though our supposed possession of a soul and superior intelligence are used to create an arbitrary dividing line over rights, the fact remains that all animals have the capacity to experience pain and suffering, and in suffering they are our equals. ~ Nathaniel Altman

If you wanted to build an Internet startup in 2005, you had to buy your own servers and hire someone to manage it. Now, that's unheard of. ~ Sam Altman

Growth and momentum are what a startup lives on and you always have to focus on maintaining these. ~ Sam Altman

Jazz has endured because it doesn't have a beginning or an ending. It's a moment. ~ Robert Altman

Founders need to figure out what the message of the company is going to be. ~ Sam Altman

You can win with the best product, the best price, or the best experience. ~ Sam Altman

Keep salaries low and equity high. Keep the organization as flat as you can. ~ Sam Altman

The correlation of quality of life and cost of energy is huge. ~ Sam Altman

The WTO has outlived its usefulness as a setting for trade negotiations. It can still be a good place to resolve disputes (though this can take years) and share ideas, but most countries would be better off choosing their own trading partners and lowering trade barriers at their own pace. ~ Daniel Altman

I prefer to invest in a company that's going after a small but rapidly growing market than a big but slow growing one. ~ Sam Altman

It's better to have a few users love your product than for a lot of users to sort of like it. ~ Sam Altman

My intention was to enroll at McGill University but an unexpected series of events led me to study physics at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. ~ Sidney Altman

And yes, there definitely are many good desires. For example, without the desire for food we would not stay alive. It is when our desire becomes an unquenchable craving or obsession, or causes us to do harm to ourselves or others, that it creates suffering and unhappiness. If you have ever been hurt because you tied your happiness or well-being to a person, place, opinion, self-identity, behavior, or goal, then you have firsthand experience of desire. ~ Don Altman

Too many companies are just being big for the sheer sake of it. Too many CEOs thinking bigger is better. ~ Roger Altman

The thing that kills startups at some level, is the founders giving up. ~ Sam Altman

You also really want to take the time to think about how the market is going to evolve.You need a market that's going to be big in 10 years. ~ Sam Altman

If you don't have a leg to stand on, you can't put your foot down. ~ Robert Altman

To be alive is to totally and openly participate in the simplicity and elegance of here and now. ~ Don Altman

Bob Altman got nothing from the TV series 'M*A*S*H,' and the royalties for the theme song went to his oldest son, Michael, who wrote it as a 15-year-old poet! ~ Mitchell Zuckoff

Momentum and growth are the lifeblood of startups. This is probably in the top three secrets of executing well. ~ Sam Altman

In general though, if you look at the track record of pivots, they don't become big companies. ~ Sam Altman

About seven years later I was given a book about the periodic table of the elements. For the first time I saw the elegance of scientific theory and its predictive power. ~ Sidney Altman

Someday, you need to build a business that's difficult to replicate. This is an important part of a good idea. ~ Sam Altman

There are two ways to live your life: one is as though nothing is a miracle, the other is as though everything is a miracle. - Albert Einstein ~ Donald Altman Ma Lpc

If the Reddit community cannot learn to balance authenticity and compassion, it may be a great website, but it will never be a truly great community. ~ Sam Altman

I spent eighteen months as a graduate student in physics at Columbia University, waiting unhappily for an opportunity to work in a laboratory and wondering if I should continue in physics. ~ Sidney Altman

Do you think we would become a better civilization if we all took acid? TR: Oh, absolutely. I think that LSD is the genie in the bottle of the world. ~ Mara Altman

I have plenty of investments that I wish I'd never made. But the model is to lose money on a lot of investments and then make 1,000X or 10,000X on an investment. ~ Sam Altman

More important than starting any startup, is getting to know a lot of potential co-founders. ~ Sam Altman

I suppose I learned organization from Altman. ~ Shelley Duvall

I believe in fighting with investors to reduce the amount of equity they get and then being as generous as you possibly can with employees. ~ Sam Altman