Zero to Startup: Day 21: The Adventures of Sam

What can we learn about a founder in the crazy events that happened this past weekend?

So I’m sure the majority of you have heard about the recent events happening at OpenAI, and if you haven’t, I believe it’s well worth your time.

If you have been following it closely like me, you feel as if you are watching a Netflix documentary happen in real time - CEO of arguable the most influential company of our time gets fired by the board in a classic coup d’etat —> key leaders follow suit in resignation from the company —> the majority OpenAI community threatens to leave the company —> the board fails to reinstate Sam Altman —> Microsoft designates a whole division to Sam, Greg, and others who left, boosting their value as a company 10-fold.

Now - I’ve spent the last 48 hours sifting through tweets and other sources of information to try and make sense of the rumors surrounding this swift course of action. Was it the allegations between Sam and his sister? Was it Sam was flying to close to the sun and needed to be corrected? Did OpenAI really achieve AGI and this was the board trying to halt it’s release?

Whatever reasoning you choose to subscribe to is up to you for now. I’m not here to give my point-of-view on the matter, but rather offer an analysis the founder because I believe Sam demonstrates key characteristics of a successful founder, and those characteristics were spotlighted during this debacle.

1: Visionary:

Let’s play a game of “Never Have I Ever”… I’ll start. Never have I ever heard of a company so loyal to the founder and his/her mission that over half of the company’s workforce threatens to resign if the founder isn’t reinstated.

The response to the board’s decision by the employees of OpenAI has still left me jaw dropped. The people working at OpenAI are so dedicated to fulfilling the vision of Sam and the other founders that they are willing to drop everything and continue the pursuit of his vision in another entity.

And to be quite frank… I don’t blame them. For me personally, I wanted to figure out a way to work at OpenAI. To be part of a team that trudging forward into a frontier is a dream of mine, and in today’s current world, OpenAI is that company. But without Sam, OpenAI is not that company. Sam was the one at the helm of that plow, and without someone that can see the purpose of plowing, it’s hard to motivate people to plow forward. You see, it wasn’t the company that held the vision, it was the founder, Sam, and without that vision, where is the company to go?

This exemplifies a crucial personality trait of a founder that is very hard to do: bring people on that share the same vision. Not only does this create loyalty amongst your workers, it creates a powerhouse that pushes on no matter what may stop it.

It’s clear through these recent events that the vision was bigger than the company (heck… bigger than the board), and Sam was the only one who could see that vision.

2: People > Company

Many founders, I believe, tend to put the company before the company’s people. Sam did otherwise. Reading through stories other their encounter with Sam, it’s clear that he valued each person that was working towards fulfilling the mission. Even people that weren’t working for OpenAI, he was the one that made them get involved in the industry in the first place. Without him, they wouldn’t be where they are today.

To put this in comparison, I’ll compare it to the founder of Uber, Travis Kalanick. (The only reason I’m comparing to Uber is because I recently watched the historical fiction/documentary on Netflix, Super Pumped). Travis was fired by the board… but why did no one threaten to leave Uber when this happened? In fact, many people were glad that he had left.

This is because Travis put the company before his people. He treated them horribly, specifically the women, saw them as replaceable, and wanted people who were “assholes”. Not only does this cause issues with loyalty, but it’s simply delusional in my opinion. Leaders lead, and they don’t lead companies, but they lead people to build companies. The levels of respect go both ways: founders respect their employees as people and the people will respect their founders. Sam realized this, and the respect of the employees was evident in the recent turn of events.

3: Dedication

I’ve talked about this before, but every founder has their own motivation for dropping everything to pursue their startup. As time goes on, that motivation becomes more of a reason for continuation because the more you tell yourself something, the more you will believe it. I can bet that Sam woke up everyday and said to himself “today is the day we will achieve AGI”.

Sam was a dedicated founder. He didn’t go out to achieve financial success, for if he did, I probably wouldn’t be talking about this today. He chose his mission as a founder and he dedicated everyday to achieving that mission. Even when the board had axed him, he knew (and so did we) that he would just start a new venture to achieve what he set out to do.

You know how many people would say “welp, I guess we tried!”? I don’t either, but I can tell you many people would take their cut and walk away to work on something else. However, Sam is so dedicated to achieving his mission that he has shed his dedication onto the employees and the rest of the world where I find myself almost rooting for him to achieve his mission.

This is the type of dedication that makes founders truly successful. And to be clear… I’m not talking about financial success here.

I’m sure the list goes on, but it’s fascinating to me that this whole course of 48-72 hours has uncovered the quality characteristics of a founder. Many founders would say they found success in starting a company and exiting, and I’m not here to disagree with them.

However, I think the true definition of a successful founder was portrayed on center stage this past weekend, and I for one, am excited to see what Sam and his founding team do next.