· David Senra, Alexandr Wang
[00:00:00] S0: From an outside perspective, it just seems like Mark empties the clip, is the way I think about this, right? Have you ever read this book called "The Mind of Napoleon"? [00:00:00] S1: No. [00:00:00] S0: Okay, so "Mind of Napoleon" published in 1957. I found it because I saw this interview. I think Tyler Cowen interviewed Sam Altman, and it takes us to 2018, and he asked him, "What's the most important book that you read this year?" And he said, "The Mind of Napoleon." So it's very hard to find. I buy the book. It's 300 pages of just Napoleon, his own words, organized by topic. And in that, he talks about over and over again that hesitation is fatal. But he says, "Before you engage in a course of action, there's a lot of deliberation." He'll study from every angle, make sure he's making the right decision. I feel there's an echo with the way Mark operates. Does a lot of deliberation, make sure he's on the right path. But once he makes that decision, he just goes all in. He just empties the clip. And that's the way I felt about what was occurring right at this point where he comes and gets you, and then you guys start rebuilding this entire organization. [00:00:00] S1: I think he really has internalized that failure doesn't matter. It matters when you win, how big you win. And I think this overall concept, I think, enables him to operate, I think, truly without fear in a lot of circumstances, because I think he is just very comfortable taking lots of risk.
· Alexandr Wang, David Senra
[00:00:00] S1: I think he really has internalized that failure doesn't matter. It matters when you win, how big you win. And I think this overall concept, I think, enables him to operate, I think, truly without fear in a lot of circumstances, because I think he is just very comfortable taking lots of risk. [00:00:00] S0: He's got that great line where it's like, "In a world that's changing all the time, the biggest risk is not taking any." [00:00:00] S1: Yeah, exactly. I think he's internalized this quite deeply. There's certainly versions of the world where Meta looks a lot more like Google in some sense. It's just more slow-moving and more bureaucratic and just looks very different as a company. But I think he, because he's internalized some of these lessons so deeply, keeps the thing dynamic and moving and live. [00:00:00] S0: Talk me through the difference between how you were as... You're the founder, you're running Scale. Now you're refounding this lab, working with Mark. The different ways that you approach your work in those two environments.
· David Senra, Alexandr Wang
[00:00:00] S0: Talk me through the difference between how you were as... You're the founder, you're running Scale. Now you're refounding this lab, working with Mark. The different ways that you approach your work in those two environments. [00:00:00] S1: At Scale, one of the things I really internalized, and I don't even remember where this advice came from, but it was kind of one of these ideas that if you want to be a good founder, you have to be able to do every job. Had a very strong point of view about how every little thing at the company should happen and should work, and that resulted in a company that was very much so a product of my effort and my point of view, and it expressed itself in all sorts of ways throughout the company, but also made me the bottleneck in very big ways. There's pros and cons of that for a company. Definitely, I think that's if you were to start a company and it's your first time starting a company, you should definitely take that approach because it's much more likely to be successful than if you don't take that approach. [00:00:00] S0: Was Scale your first company? [00:00:00] S1: Scale was my first company, yeah. [00:00:00] S0: Incredible.
· David Senra, Alexandr Wang
[00:00:00] S0: Incredible. [00:00:00] S1: Yeah. But at Meta, it was a very different assignment because we had to accomplish so much in so little time. I didn't have the luxury of being able to, quote unquote, "do every job" within the lab. I certainly am not an AI researcher. I'm also not a product designer. I'm not all these things that are totally pivotal to the organization being successful. So at Meta, very much so, I adopted this philosophy around just how do we create an environment where we're going to hire incredible people? It was job number one, hire brilliant and incredible people who are at the top of their field across every discipline. [00:00:00] S0: Why do you think you're able to do that at Meta? It's just because you have more resources? Why can you do that?
· David Senra, Alexandr Wang
[00:00:00] S0: Why do you think you're able to do that at Meta? It's just because you have more resources? Why can you do that? [00:00:00] S1: I think one of the things that was very charismatic and attractive about the founding moment of MSL was there was an opportunity to build a lab from scratch with a really, really small team, and we had a strong point of view of where we're going, personal superintelligence, that I think resonated with people. I think everyone who works on AI wants it to help people, wants it to ultimately mean something to their mom or to their grandma or to their grandpa, wants it to be something that's meaningful to every single person in the world. Because of the fact that we're doing this with the resources of Meta, there was an opportunity to... We weren't going to be bottlenecked by compute. We weren't going to be bottlenecked by infrastructure. We weren't going to be bottlenecked by distribution. We weren't going to be bottlenecked by the things that startups often are bottlenecked, but it was an opportunity to really build something that you could put your stamp on and have a lot of influence over and really shape. I think that was quite exciting for a lot of people. [00:00:00] S0: And so that's why he chooses to spend an insane amount of money, what looks like an insane amount of money, getting a handful of top talent, because then he knows that those top talent will recruit, in turn, other top talent. But you need that as a starting point, correct?
· Alexandr Wang, David Senra
[00:00:00] S1: Yeah, and I think one thing that is maybe somewhat underappreciated about that specific part is that the stock prices of OpenAI and Anthropic ran up a lot. So, it just happened to be the case that- If you looked at how much these people were making if they stayed at OpenAI or Anthropic, it was a lot of money. So, I think for a lot of the talent, it ended up being kind of net neutral in many ways, comp-wise. But obviously, I think it's kind of like the same thing. Like, oftentimes, a lot of us don't think about how much the early employees or the early researchers at these labs that have had immense stock value appreciation, what their comp looks like. We started this fully on the belief of having and hiring the most brilliant people. That's one. Setting clear North Star, personal superintelligence, those two. How do we create the environment where people do their best work? At Meta and in MSL, I'm doing much more of, quote-unquote, "traditional management," so to speak. Because these are the things I'm thinking a lot about, is like, how do I create the environment where all these brilliant people who are exceptional and very, very special can all operate and achieve the greatest expression of their talent? I'm thinking a lot more almost like a coach in some ways, versus at scale, it was very different. I was the auteur. I was the person whose point of view had to be expressed in everything that we did. [00:00:00] S0: Say more about that you feel like a coach.