Altman's Quotes

#1. Robert Altman's 'Nashville' is my all-time favorite film because it covers all the bases - it's original, moving, and has something to say, but also funny and incredibly entertaining.

Douglas Wood

#2. Why movie and dance critics are taking 'The Company' seriously, I can't imagine. Are they impressed by Altman's reputation and naive sincerity? By the fluid semi-documentary approach?

Robert Gottlieb

#3. I hate to go out on a limb after only one viewing, but Nashville strikes me as Altman's best film, and the most exciting dramatic musical since Blue Angel.

Andrew Sarris

#4. You want to continue to be run by great products, not process for it's own sake.

Sam Altman

#5. 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.

Sam Altman

#6. The crowd's a really powerful force on the Internet, and people finally understand how to harness that.

Sam Altman

#7. At YC we have this public phrase, and it's relentlessly resourceful.

Sam Altman

#8. 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

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

Sam Altman

#10. By the time I reached high school my father's grocery store had made our life adequately comfortable and I was able to choose, without any practical encumbrances, the subjects that I wanted to pursue in college.

Sidney Altman

#11. It's all just one film to me. Just different chapters.

Robert Altman

#12. I believe whatever smart, ambitious people are working on will be the trend of the future. I do think that it's worth thinking critically about what the future will be.

Sam Altman

#13. Making a movie is like chipping away at a stone. You take a piece off here, you take a piece off there and when you're finished, you have a sculpture. You know that there's something in there, but you're not sure exactly what it is until you find it.

Robert Altman

#14. Jazz has endured because it doesn't have a beginning or an ending. It's a moment.

Robert Altman

#15. If someone is difficult to talk to, if someone cannot communicate clearly, it's a real problem in terms of their likelihood to work out.

Sam Altman

#16. I have never made a movie that's attracted a 14-year-old boy.

Robert Altman

#17. [The Player is] not a truthful indictment of Hollywood. It's much uglier than I portrayed it, but nobody would've been interested if I'd shown just how sadistic, cruel and self-orientated it is.

Robert Altman

#18. Startups are not the best choice for work-life balance, and that's sort of just the sad reality.

Sam Altman

#19. Russia's oil fields are mature and require capital and Western technology even to keep production flat.

Roger Altman

#20. In the early days of a startup, people's compensation is whatever you negotiate with a founder and it's all over the place.

Sam Altman

#21. In general, it's best if you're building something that you yourself need.

Sam Altman

#22. By the way, that's my number one piece of advice if you're going to join a startup: pick a rocket ship.

Sam Altman

#23. 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.

Sam Altman

#24. I didn't say what kind of book. You have a foul mind Bingley."
"Don't mock me on my sister's wedding day!"
"I mocked you on yours; I hardly see how this is as bad," was Darcy's reply.

Marsha Altman

#25. You want an idea that not many other people are working on, and it's okay if it doesn't sound big at first.

Sam Altman

#26. Some day everyone will find out everyone else's comp, if it's all over the place, it will be a complete meltdown disaster

Sam Altman

#27. The 2008 economic crisis and Great Recession forced widespread restructuring throughout the U.S. economy - not unlike a company gritting its teeth through a lifesaving bankruptcy.

Roger Altman

#28. In YC's case, the number one cause of early death for startups is cofounder blowups.

Sam Altman

#29. 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

#30. There was not a lot of dialogue. The titles were just to keep you up. It's the visual stimulation that hits the audience. That's the reason for film. Otherwise, we might as well turn the light out and call it radio.

Robert Altman

#31. The 2008 financial crisis and the Great Recession that followed have had devastating effects on the U.S. economy and millions of American lives. But the U.S. economy will emerge from its trauma stronger and widely restructured.

Roger Altman

#32. If you're a chronic procrastinator, I would highly suggest you only focus on one thing. It's much better to finish the year achieving only one goal. Then to set three goals and achieve none because you procrastinated on all of them.

Alex Altman

#33. There's at least a hundred times more people with great ideas than people that are willing to put in the effort to execute them well.

Sam Altman

#34. Communication services need interoperability to succeed - and Loopt is the first such service since SMS that is available across all major U.S. wireless carriers.

Sam Altman

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

Sam Altman

#36. It's difficult to get large groups of people, to the extreme levels of focus and productivity that you need, for a startup to be successful.

Sam Altman

#37. We talk to a team, they've gotten new things done, that's the best predictor we have that a company will go on to be successful.

Sam Altman

#38. Because it's one of these sort of connections between nodes- every pair of people adds communication overhead.

Sam Altman

#39. Maybe there's a chance to get back to grown-up films. Anything that uses humor and dramatic values to deal with human emotions and gets down to what people are to people.

Robert Altman

#40. What's a cult? It just means not enough people to make a minority.

Robert Altman

#41. Before 20 or 25 employees, most companies are structured with everyone reporting to the founder. It's totally flat.

Sam Altman

#42. 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

#43. Reasonable mergers generate substantial synergies, so that provides for earnings and cash-flow growth even if it doesn't provide for revenue growth, and I think that's a big driver.

Roger Altman

#44. The United States is much further along because its financial crisis struck three years before Europe's, in 2008, causing headwinds that have pressured it ever since.

Roger Altman

#45. 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

#46. If someone is getting every decision wrong, that's when you need to act, and at that point it'll be painfully aware to everyone.

Sam Altman

#47. We pretty much won't fund a company now where the founders don't have vested equity because it's just that hard to do.

Sam Altman

#48. In September 2008, the overleveraged and undermanaged U.S. banking system suffered a terrifying collapse. And that, in turn, nearly took the whole country down.

Roger Altman

#49. 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

#50. Fire fast when it's not working. It's better for the company, it's also better for the employee.

Sam Altman

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

Sam Altman

#52. Maybe I am a bit unusual here, but I am less stressed if I have my phone with me. Because I can spend like an hour in the morning taking care of everything instead of I sit there and wonder what I missed or wonder what's happening. So it's way less stressful for me to just answer my phone.

Sam Altman

#53. There is a power within and without. If you ask, it answers. It's just a matter of being calm and wise and listening. It takes years.

John Altman

#54. I don't think screenplay writing is the same as writing - I mean, I think it's blueprinting.

Robert Altman

#55. Happy endings are absolutely ludicrous, they're not true at all. We see the guy carry the girl across the threshold and everybody lives happily ever after
that's bullshit. Three weeks later he's beating her up and she's suing for divorce and he's got cancer.

Robert Altman

#56. It's become popular in recent years to say that the idea doesn't matter.

Sam Altman

#57. We live in an era where the global capital markets are the super power in the world, and when they move against you as they've moved against Russia, as we've all seen in the ruble, there's nothing that can stop that.

Roger Altman

#58. I don't think there's a more battle-hardened veteran anywhere than Larry Summers.

Roger Altman

#59. Robert Altman made that movie Kansas City about the jazz scene in the city, and we saw that band all together, and that was an amazing show. That's what I got into. I like jazz.

Nick Kroll

#60. You want an idea about what you can say. I know it sounds like a bad idea but here's specifically why its actually a great one. You want to sound crazy but you want to ask to be right.

Sam Altman

#61. You're either not hiring at all or it's probably your single biggest block of time.

Sam Altman

#62. If it takes more than a sentence to explain what you are doing, it's almost always a sign that what you are doing is too complicated.

Sam Altman

#63. Words don't tell you what people are thinking. Rarely do we use words to really tell. We use words to sell people or to convince people or to make them admire us. It's all disguise. It's all hidden
a secret language.

Robert Altman

#64. You can think about that for everyone you hire: will I bet the future of this company on this single hire? And that's a tough bar.

Sam Altman

#65. I myself used to believe ideas didn't matter that much, but I'm very sure that's wrong now.

Sam Altman

#66. I've had it-the agencies, the winking, the networks, the ratings. Anyone who thinks TV is an art medium is crazy-it's an advertising medium.

Robert Altman

#67. I care much more about the growth rate of the market than it's current size and I also care if there's any reason it's going to top out.

Sam Altman

#68. So you should always stay on top of people's vesting schedules.

Sam Altman

#69. Many Russia experts note the deep and sad capacity of the Russian people for suffering.

Roger Altman

#70. The second part of how to hire: try not to.

Sam Altman

#71. If someone is choosing between joining McKinsey or your startup it's very unlikely they're going to work out at the startup.

Sam Altman

#72. You have to be decisive. Indecisiveness is a startup killer.

Sam Altman

#73. You think you have this great idea that everyone's going to come join, but that's not how it works.

Sam Altman

#74. What is an ending? Theres no such thing. Death is the only ending.

Robert Altman

#75. 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

#76. You have to be intense. This only comes from the CEO, this only comes from the founders.

Sam Altman

#77. 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

#78. There's no way I know, to get through the pain of a startup without belief that the mission really matters.

Sam Altman

#79. 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

#80. I always tell my partners that our job is to fund all the companies we can that can be worth $10 billion or more. That's such a difficult constraint, we can't have any other constraints.

Sam Altman

#81. It's easy to say, 'I'm going to build something that already exists,' but it's difficult to clearly and succinctly describe something new.

Sam Altman

#82. If you look at people who have an iPhone or Android and are under 40 and are dissatisfied with their bank, it's actually quite a large market.

Sam Altman

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

Sam Altman

#84. It's easy to move fast or be obsessed with quality, but the trick is you have to do both at a startup.

Sam Altman

#85. 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

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

Sam Altman

#87. 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.'

Sam Altman

#88. Whatever the founder cares about, whatever the founders think are the key goals, that's going to be what the whole company focusses on.

Sam Altman

#89. Whether or not money can buy happiness, it can buy freedom, and that's a big deal. Also, lack of money is very stressful.

Sam Altman

#90. So always keep momentum, it's this prime directive for managing a startup.

Sam Altman

#91. The idea that America, whose oil production has been declining for the past 40 years, is now on track to become the world's biggest producer by 2015 is still hard to grasp.

Roger Altman

#92. When it comes to starting startups, in many ways, it's easier to start a hard startup than an easy startup.

Sam Altman

#93. The hard part is that this is a very fine line. There's right on one side of it, and crazy on the other.

Sam Altman

#94. 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.

Sam Altman

#95. Cheap natural gas is a big stimulus to petrochemical production and a meaningful one for all U.S. manufacturing.

Roger Altman

#96. 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

#97. If you ask a founder how their company is doing, they always say, 'Oh it's great. We're totally crushing it,' and that's almost never true.

Sam Altman

#98. If you pivot, do it fully and with conviction. The worst thing is to try to do a bit of the old and the new-it's hard to kill your babies.

Sam Altman

#99. 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

#100. The thing about Y Combinator that's cool is that most companies won't happen if we don't fund them.

Sam Altman