Relentless
00:29:53 · Ty Morse, Sam Altman
[00:29:53] S0: You said that you used to be much harder to work with, I don't know, two thousand eight, nine, ten, somewhere around there, than you are today. [00:30:01] S1: I I don't know if people describe me as fun to work with. I... Like, interesting to work with, like, effective, ambition raising, like, very mission focused, but, like, day to day, like, really fun to work with. I don't think I'm, like, a particularly fun person in general. [00:30:19] S0: I feel like if you are having a good time, it's... Tends to be infectious. And I think if you are generally working on things that you wanna work on, it is having a good time. Maybe I'm wrong. I mean, you [00:30:32] S1: could go ask a bunch of people I work with. I'm not I'm not... I I don't I don't think you would get, like, a resounding fun to work with. [00:30:38] S0: Maybe not that language. [00:30:39] S1: I think people would say stuff like creative solutions to problems, new insights, like, high level of ambition, like, got me to do something I didn't think I could do, that kind of thing. [00:30:52] S0: What does it typically look like when you go into a meeting with someone and you realize that they are not ambitious enough and you need to try to help them become more ambitious?
00:30:52 · Ty Morse, Sam Altman
[00:30:52] S0: What does it typically look like when you go into a meeting with someone and you realize that they are not ambitious enough and you need to try to help them become more ambitious? [00:31:01] S1: The the the version of this that came to mind when you were saying that was, like, first office hours I would have with new YC founders. And you take the average person who's worked in corporate America or, you know, at a big tech company for a few years, and the level of ambition, scaled thinking, self belief, whatever, it's just catastrophically low. Horrible. Horrible. And you realize that, like, this person has never not had a boss in their life. They have never not had a parent or a teacher or a manager or whatever that kind of would tell them what to do or what they were allowed to do or whatever. And they also kind of got punished for being too creative or wanting too much or thinking too big or too ambitious, whatever. Like, the... Most countries or cultures have some sort of phrase for being too ambitious, basically. [00:32:02] S0: Tall poppy syndrome thing? That's one. [00:32:04] S1: And you realize, like, how deep this is in people and that they, like, heard it and their parents said it to them, their teachers said it to them, or friends with them, whatever, from when they were, like, quite little. And getting people to just, like, not think that way takes some real time. What's the [00:32:22] S0: most effective path to get someone from not believing in themselves to believing in themselves?
00:32:22 · Ty Morse, Sam Altman
[00:32:22] S0: most effective path to get someone from not believing in themselves to believing in themselves? [00:32:27] S1: I think small repeated wins. Like, you do something you didn't think you could do or you kinda try something that felt, you know, too ambitious or too high expectation and it works and you say, okay. I'll try it again. [00:32:39] S0: Do you do anything like deep jobs where he would, like... If someone was worried, he would, like, stare into their eyes [00:32:45] S1: No. [00:32:45] S0: And get... No. Nothing like that. [00:32:47] S1: I don't think so. [00:32:48] S0: It's like, you can do it. [00:32:50] S1: I I I don't I don't... I'm not like an ins... I don't do inspirational speeches. I don't I don't do, like, the hards to know that. What's your favorite strategy game? I have not played a game other than, like, my poker night with friends in so long. I wish I had. I guess I'll have to say poker, but I miss, like, great board games. [00:33:13] S0: What was your favorite board game? [00:33:15] S1: There's, like, no one board game where I'd like, I wanna play that, like, again and again. I don't have, like, a... Like, I'm not, like, someone who's like, Catan the best board game of all time or whatever. But they're all fun, and they're fun because they're, like, new and you have to, like, figure out a new set of challenges and
00:33:15 · Sam Altman, Ty Morse
[00:33:15] S1: There's, like, no one board game where I'd like, I wanna play that, like, again and again. I don't have, like, a... Like, I'm not, like, someone who's like, Catan the best board game of all time or whatever. But they're all fun, and they're fun because they're, like, new and you have to, like, figure out a new set of challenges and [00:33:28] S0: rules and everything else. When you're thinking about the business world, I think you build your company differently than almost anyone else is able to build companies, is willing to build companies. What allows you to do that? [00:33:40] S1: Actually, every big company is pretty different. I don't think this is a unique thing. Think just, like, if if you make a list of the 20 biggest tech companies or whatever, they're all, like, shockingly different from each other in terms of their strategy and how they operate and their culture. And I think we are quite different than everybody else, but that's not a deep insight. [00:34:00] S0: What do you think your, like, superpower is? [00:34:04] S1: I think we did a really good job of a principled conviction on something that no one else believed even though it was the obvious thing one should believe, and then putting together all of the pieces and the talent around that to sort of make it happen. [00:34:18] S0: What allowed you to kind of have that conviction that where other people just didn't? I've thought about this
00:34:18 · Ty Morse, Sam Altman
[00:34:18] S0: What allowed you to kind of have that conviction that where other people just didn't? I've thought about this [00:34:24] S1: a lot. I do not know. It seemed so clearly obvious to all of us that I was more worried that we were drinking our own Kool Aid than everybody else was wrong. But with the benefit of hindsight, we were clearly right, and I don't understand the, like, deep mental block and lack of conviction from everybody else. It's very strange. I I have I have [00:34:53] S0: spent a lot of time trying to understand this. Did you find any explanation in your, you know, man's search for
00:34:53 · Ty Morse, Sam Altman
[00:34:53] S0: spent a lot of time trying to understand this. Did you find any explanation in your, you know, man's search for [00:34:59] S1: why or no? I mean, there's all the obvious stuff about, like, groupthink and, like, the big transformations just don't come along that often and exponential curves don't stay powerful for so long... For so often. But, like, you know, maybe between 2016 and 2018, we had to get really lucky, it required, like, a lot of great belief. But then by 2019, certainly by 2020, we shouldn't have really gotten to exist. Google should have just run away with it. Yeah. I think Jeff Bezos called it, like, a business miracle that they built AWS and then didn't have any serious competition for, seven years. And I feel like OpenAI is, like, another business miracle. There's clearly something here about why big companies get sclerotic and set in their ways, and it helps them in a lot of ways too. But this is like... I mean, this is wonderful. I think it's great that the big companies don't stay the only dominant forces forever. That'd be really bad. But there's clearly something where these business miracles happen and they shouldn't. Is that right? Or should they? Well, I think it's great for the world that they do. But to go back and explain in 2019 why OpenAI was allowed by the giants with huge amounts of capital and talent and everything else to do what we've done, it's hard [00:36:25] S0: to explain. Why did Microsoft give you the money?