What Early Startups Should Consider More Important Than Growth (Sam Altman)
Date
Oct 28, 2025
Classification
- Startups
#
- Product/Methodology
Alex Note / NOWBELL, Developer
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"Growth hacking is a drug": The survival rules for early-stage startups according to Sam Altman
🫑 3-Line Summary
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OpenAI's Sam Altman warned that the Silicon Valley trend of setting unrealistic growth goals before the essence and direction of a product are established is making startups sick.
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The only metric early-stage entrepreneurs should focus on is not fake growth achieved through 'growth hacking,' but the 'Love Test'—verifying whether a small number of users genuinely love the product and voluntarily recommend it.
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Great companies have always passed this test before growing, emphasizing that unloved products are bound to fail no matter how excellent their marketing skills are.
🥦 Insight
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Stop pouring water into a bottomless pit.
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Are you burning through your marketing budget out of anxiety, wondering, "Why isn't my MAU going up this month?" To borrow Sam Altman's words, you might be pouring water into a 'broken jar'.
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Many entrepreneurs create a "nice-to-have" product and artificially inflate numbers by packaging it with flashy marketing. However, that is not "growth," but "inflating." If retention is lacking and customers leave faster than they join, that business is doomed.
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Ten "die-hard fans" are far more valuable than 1,000 "mediocre" users. The moment those ten bring in friends, and those friends bring in others, is the starting point of "real growth." Turn off the numbers on your dashboard today and ask your customers: "If our service were to disappear tomorrow, would you really miss it?" If the answer isn't overwhelmingly "yes," then...
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It is time to stop marketing and rework the product.
— View original —
Hello, this is Alex.
I translated the essay by OpenAI founder Sam Altman.
While growth hacking and fancy viral marketing strategies have been gaining attention recently, it seems that ultimately, the most important thing is "Do users love it?"
I hope this helps.
What Early-Stage Startups Should Consider More Important Than Growth
Startups are constantly told that they "must grow fast." While this isn't wrong, I believe that Silicon Valley startups are taking this advice too seriously and heading in an unhealthy direction. It seems to have become a trend to set weekly growth goals before even having a solid plan for what to build.
During the first few weeks of a startup, the first thing founders must do is clearly define what they are trying to do and why. Next, they must pour all their energy into building a product that even a small number of users will genuinely love. Only after successfully navigating these steps should they focus entirely on growth.
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