Uncapped with Jack Altman
· Bret Taylor
[00:00:00] S1: We have three members of our board, which represent our three rounds of investment. Peter Fenton from Benchmark, Ravi Gupta who just left Sequoia though he’s still a venture partner there, and Neil Mehta from Greenoaks. Just a fantastic group of people. I chose them all for both the firm and the person. Notably, with Peter, I’ve worked with him at both my previous companies. For our first round of financing, I didn’t talk to anyone else. I introduced him to Clay, my co-founder, who hadn’t spent time with him. We talked once, he sent me a term sheet, I signed it, no edits. It was very much a trust relationship. One of the things I’ve really appreciated about Silicon Valley… There are some downsides to how insular the community is, but one of the great parts is the relationships you can forge over years. For me, it meant Peter and I could start on third base just because we’ve worked together a lot before. You don’t end up with a lot of the… There’s no funny business in the fundraising process. No funny business in the boardroom. It’s just, “Let’s get to work.” It was fun to get the band back together there. But the fun part for me is I had never worked with Ravi nor Neil before, and Clay and I just… It’s just a great board, people we seek out advice from as opposed to people we report to every quarter. It’s amazing.
· Jack Altman, Bret Taylor
[00:00:00] S0: We won’t go back through the story, but when OpenAI had its “Oh my god” moment, Sam was like, “Bret, you’re the board member”, and then you’ve also got a board. You’re in both roles at once. How do you make the most out of a board? Obviously you’ve got these particular relationships, but what do you expect that relationship to look like? [00:00:00] S1: First, I really like written documents for boards over presentations, both as a board member and as a founder of a company. You end up letting people synthesize information ahead of the board meeting, so you end up with more substantive discussions in the boardroom. I’ve done this for the last two companies I’ve started. It’s just been great to send out a board document. Sometimes people will comment ahead of the meeting, but the main thing is it has been read, ahead of time. Then you end up with a meeting about the actual meat and potatoes of the topics. You’re not staring at a bunch of sales numbers for the first time. [00:00:00] S0: You’re not running through slides. [00:00:00] S1: You’re not running through slides. I find it to be incredibly… I think most companies should be run this way. The other thing that is really interesting: don’t write it with AI. It’s so funny to have to say that now, but I find that— [00:00:00] S0: The process of the writing.
· Bret Taylor
[00:00:00] S1: The process of writing is a process of clarifying your thoughts. For Clay and me, this is a process by which we synthesize what’s been happening. You know it and talk about it, but to actually write it and write it eloquently and concisely is incredibly important because it’s essentially a way of… What’s that famous line? “If I had more time, I would’ve written a shorter letter.” Spend the time, because that’s actually how you can show respect to your stakeholders, that you’re thinking about the strategic issues going on in your business. The last thing I’d say is that board members aren’t single-issue voters, but everyone has their strengths. At OpenAI we’ve recruited a pretty diverse set of skills. Zico Kolter is a professor at CMU and specializes in, among other things, jailbreaking. He’s one of the experts on some of the more subtle safety aspects. Nicole Seligman was a great attorney and she’s an expert in a lot of legal issues. What’s really nice is that when you grow out a board beyond your initial investors, find people that your management team will want to go to for advice. Obviously the audit committee chair and your CFO have a really unique relationship. Who’s your head of sales going to go talk to? Do you have someone who’s been there, done that? Because you want them to have that kind of relationship. I always think of it as, who are the advisors you want to surround your management team with? A functional board really has those relationships. Then when you’re in a board discussion, you have all these board members who have had lots of engagement with the company, but in a really valuable, targeted way. I like to think of the board as a collection of people. Don’t look at the individuals. The whole should be greater than the sum of its parts.
· Jack Altman, Bret Taylor
[00:00:00] S0: That’s awesome. Anything this year you’re particularly excited about that you can share? [00:00:00] S1: The real exciting part is going to be adoption in regulated industries. We are moving beyond the early adopters to everyone. If we talk a year from now— [00:00:00] S0: You’re going to be doing the hard stuff. [00:00:00] S1: It’s going to be the really hard stuff. [00:00:00] S0: That’s awesome. [00:00:00] S1: If you want a hot take, my intuition is that regulators will start asking for agents. The idea that you have a human set of controls over a regulated process will start to feel like a risk, rather than the risk being AI. I don’t know if that will happen this year, but I think that will happen. [00:00:00] S0: Alright, I’ll call you in a year and we’ll do take two of this and see. [00:00:00] S1: That sounds great. [00:00:00] S0: Thanks so much for doing this, Bret. This was great. [00:00:00] S1: Thanks for having me.