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Greg

blog.samaltman.com

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Re: Greg

#41

Post by brudgers »

smacktoward wrote: post #12
codingdave wrote: post #7

Every success DOES need a guy like Greg. But I really worry about the part where Greg was working on the effort full-time, doing it all while the other guys still worked. When it ends in success, it is a great story. When it ends without success, Greg is the guy who put all his time into it, then ends up with nothing. Greg becomes the warning story. Greg is the guy you need. Not necessarily the guy you want to be.

There is a very, very fine line dividing "chief optimist" from "sucker."

I've observed a correlation between people who place a lot of emphasis on not being a chump and the probability that a person will pursue marginal benefits at significant cost to others (including myself). I think it's because both behaviors are rooted in a similar world view and economic model.

Specifically for this context, if Musk and Altman conspired to do wrong by someone, it would be much easier to 'quietly beat them with a $5 wrench' than to engineer and construct OpenAI to publicly serve some cold dish. That's not to say it's all warm and fuzzy, but businesses that can succeed on aligned interests are better than those that seek cut throat markets.

Re: Greg

#42

Post by rl3 »

noonespecial wrote: post #22
ProAm wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sounds like we need a Co-founder basic income?

That's a fantastic idea. We could give it a special name to avoid confusion. How about "salary"?

You often hear about founder salaries being set intentionally low by VCs to keep founders hungry.

While I don't dispute the power of stress and pressure to light a fire under someone's ass, I don't think it should come in the form of a person's livelihood.

For example, it's not hard to imagine founder(s) that have been working for years on something with no pay, putting them far behind their traditionally-employed peers. They may even have family obligations on top of that. Proceeding to then pay them low wages in the interest of motivation isn't exactly the best idea.

Granted, I do tend to agree with the ethos of having the founder being the lowest-paid employee in the company. Ideally that just ensures everyone else is paid really, really well.

Re: Greg

#43

Post by CPLX »

jrowley wrote: post #11
pgroves wrote: post #8

But why does Greg need a cofounder?

a few reasons: a) Technical support b) someone to bounce ideas off of constantly. c) someone to support the organization should he need to take an unexpected leave.

c) they are Elon Musk and Sam Altman

Re: Greg

#44

Post by capocannoniere »

> Greg is a world-class recruiter (he plans every detail of interviews, heavily researches candidate’s backgrounds, sends thoughtful and persistent followups, and so on), and I now believe even more strongly that someone on the founding team has to be an amazing recruiter.

The early openAI team is clearly superb. What's even more impressive to me, is that the quality of the team has remained incredibly strong as the team grew to 45+ people: IMO/IOI medalists, startup founders and key contributors, world-class Phd's who could easily get tenure-track positions at top universities, etc. [1] [2]

It's not uncommon for a startup to have a strong founding team. It's almost unheard of that just about every single individual of a 45+ person team is objectively exceptional.[3]

Not sure how much Greg is still involved in recruiting, but either way, congrats.

(No affiliation to OpenAI, besides knowing a few people there)

[1] https://openai.com/blog/team-update-january/ [2] https://openai.com/blog/team-update-august/ [3] I don't know any startups in which all of the first 50 employees were truly exceptional prior to them joining the company. I guess Google, for example, might have had an incredibly strong early team, but I'm not sure they were as strong prior to them joining Google.

Re: Greg

#45

Post by gist »

Kevin_S wrote: post #4

YC at this moment is able to recruit the absolute top talent for any position they can envision. Damn that is a lot of power they wield, especially in starting these projects like Open AI and the Basic Income. I'd love to be able to invest in YC, as I think a good return at this point is one of the best bets an investor could make.

> YC at this moment is able to recruit the absolute top talent for any position they can envision.

Absolute top talent? I think you are blinded by the light of YC. Not everyone thinks that or even close to it. [1] [2] By way of example I am reminded when I told a young person that I was helping to look on the page of a vc/angel investor that I do work for and know (among many). I said 'look at what they are doing I can get you an easy interview at any of those companies even if they don't have an opening'. They looked (was a woman iim) and said 'no thanks looks like they are all doing strange weird stuff'. This particular person preferred a traditional and solid company I am guessing, not a shot at the moon. And there are plenty of people like that. Plenty of smart capable people in the world and not all would die to work for a YC company or YC affiliated venture.

[1] Note I make money off the shot at the moon company so don't take this as some kind of sour grapes..

[2] And while most people know who Mark Zuckerberg or Jeff Bezos are (what I will call 'the aunt' test) most people have never heard of Sam, PG or YC for that matter.

Re: Greg

#46

Post by MegaButts »

finid wrote: post #39
MegaButts wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So having worked way too hard on my startup only to have it fail, I can somewhat relate to this (I do not pretend to be as amazing as Greg). You're right - after my startup failed people were throwing what were objectively great job offers at me. Even more amazing, many of my investors were encouraging me to start another company and were willing to give me fantastic terms just for agreeing to start a company (entire…

I learned a hell of a lot and I recognize it has opened doors for me, but the real question is what it worth it? If you learnt even one thing from the effort, then it was worth it. Not every endeavor will bring you financial rewards, at least not directly. If you took on the effort because you loved the idea, rewards will flow via other means.

It has nothing to do with money. It's about ruining your life trying to make something work that just isn't going to work. I put my company before friends, family, and my health.

It's easy after-the-fact to see that, but it's hard to know when it's happening. Possibly the most celebrated entrepreneur is Elon Musk, and I don't think there's any question he put his company before his personal life multiple times in order to succeed. But how many other people have done that and then failed? It can leave you as a shell of your former self.

Everybody talks about the upside. Nobody wants to talk about the downside.

Re: Greg

#49

Post by noonespecial »

rl3 wrote: post #42
noonespecial wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's a fantastic idea. We could give it a special name to avoid confusion. How about "salary"?

You often hear about founder salaries being set intentionally low by VCs to keep founders hungry. While I don't dispute the power of stress and pressure to light a fire under someone's ass, I don't think it should come in the form of a person's livelihood. For example, it's not hard to imagine founder(s) that have been working for years on something with no pay, putting them far behind their traditionally-employed pe…

We've kind of had the hat-trick of weasely-ness going on recently. They get overworked, underpaid, and then the promise of a big payout at the end is diluted away by investors who were barely involved beyond sloshing a bunch of other people's money in their general direction.

I don't like industries that institutionalize the consumption of individuals enthusiasm or altruism. We've essentially lost medicine to the latter and it sucks to see the startup scene consumed by the former.

Re: Greg

#50

Post by CptJamesCook »

Greg Brockman:

Went to MIT

Went to Harvard

Was CTO of a 10 billion dollar company for 5 years, starting the year it was founded

Yeah, I'd take a cofounder like that.

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