Sam Altman Lists the Startup Rules ChatGPT Maker OpenAI Broke On...
When it comes to artificial intelligence, the standard advice for startups might not apply – and this is the case with OpenAI, the AI venture responsible for ChatGPT and GPT-4. Founded in 2015, the company is now valued at almost $30 billion, but its success was far from inevitable. CEO Sam Altman, who previously led the startup accelerator Y Combinator, discussed his company's unusual ascent during a fireside chat hosted by fintech company Stripe.
In the talk, Altman explained that OpenAI went against all of the YC advice. For instance, it took the company over four years to launch a product, and it is expected to be the most capital-intensive startup in Silicon Valley history. OpenAI also built a technology without any idea of who their customers were going to be or what they were going to use it for. This was a risky move, but it paid off.
Altman tweeted on Saturday, "ChatGPT has no social features or built-in sharing, you have to sign up before you can use it, no inherent viral loop, etc. seriously questioning the years of advice I gave to startups."
Despite the potential investors telling him he was doing it wrong, Altman was confident, knowing all the startup rules in and out. He served as CEO of Reddit and is a prominent investor, which, combined with his position as the leader of Y Combinator, allowed him to break the rules with confidence.
Greg Brockman, OpenAI president, also reflected this week upon the company's rule-breaking ways. "You’re supposed to have a problem to solve, not a technology in search of the solution," he explained. "Every company, individual, and business is a language business. It has language flows deeply baked in. So if you can add a little bit of value in existing language workflows, then it will just be able to be adopted so broadly."
Therefore, it appears that the traditional startup rules do not apply to the world of AI. OpenAI's success came from breaking the rules and taking risks – a reminder that, sometimes, it can pay off to ignore the standard advice and go your own way.
