OpenAI co-founder Greg Brockman is leaving, too::OpenAI co-founder Greg Brockman announced that he’s quitting just hours after CEO Sam Altman was fired. OpenAI chief technology officer Mira Murati is taking over as interim CEO.
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Seen this story time and time again. “Founder of company kicked out of own business they created”. Why does this happen so often?
Generally the type of people who make good founders have to be dreamers to believe that their crazy idea not only can work but can change the world.
These people do not make good leaders as the company matures, as it now needs certainty for investors and detailed plans and structure instead of moonshot fantasies.
The same traits that make them good founders also make it difficult for them to let go of their position, or recognize that they should transition control to a better suited candidate, so often they must be removed by the board.
Source: Software Engineer in a tech startup
it now needs certainty for investors and detailed plans and structure instead of moonshot fantasies.
So after the company becomes successful, they need to stop coming up with new ideas? A tech company? Like, I get it but I don’t get it. Why do investors want that? Why would anyone want that? You can filter their creative input without indulging their every whim.
It’s like the bands that create amazing and unique music and become super popular based on said music, then their next album sounds like every other “pop” band in existence. Like what are people even buying at that point?
I’m by no means saying that they have no further role in the company, and you are absolutely correct that these companies need to continue to innovate. This is why I mentioned transitioning control to a better candidate, because the role of the CEO changes as the company matures.
Smart founders should find a way to continue to play into their strengths instead of clinging to the highest title, otherwise they will always need to be removed.
Basically why Larry Page and Sergey Brin had Eric Schmidt become their CEO. He could do all the business stuff while they focused on doing whatever moonshots they wanted
Erin Schmidt is the one who turned Google into the shitty company that had to remove their “Don’t be evil” policy.
I remember when this scandal came out: https://www.wired.com/2012/05/google-wifi-fcc-investigation/
I watched the press event when Larry Page (obviously not knowing what was going on) promised that they will immediately delete all the sniffed data, then Eric came, took the mic and corrected: “We will delete the data once we receive the court order that forces us to do”.
Once you structure your business so that you have a board of directors, who is the boss is not your decision anymore, as they “work” for the shareholders. In OpenAI’s case, the CEO lied to the board so they fired him, and Greg left on his own.
That’s why one of the first things Musk did as the majority shareholder was to dissolve the board of directors of Twitter.
In another example, the Zuck maneuvered so that he always kept a majority holding of Facebook which means nobody can kick him out.
I didn’t ask “how”, I asked “why?” does it happen so often. I understand how BOD works.
I didn’t want that answer, I wanted a different answer.
Yes, that’s correct, I wanted the answer that I asked for. Thanks for the helpful clarification.
Seems you’ve gotten quite a few answers for the “why this happens” and don’t like it.
Risk taking is necessary for a startup to reach success but once success is reached that needs to be tempered. Founders that are good at the vision part often aren’t that great at leading an already successful company but don’t have the introspection necessary to recognize that and try to hold onto their position beyond what’s healthy rather than pivot to a more suitable role in their company and letting someone who knows how to run a successful business take over.
There’s also a greed aspect for many companies that go public and become beholden to increasing shareholder value above all else. Even a good founder who’s also a good long term leader will be forced to do things that maximize quarter over quarter profit at the cost of long term goals, and if they refuse insisting on looking at the long term goals they’ll be fired because the shareholders have rights and can force the company to change. For a good example of this, look at Dell: Michael Dell brought the company public, the shareholders forced the company to prioritize quarterly profit growth which hurt the quality of the product, which was detrimental to the long term goals, so Michael Dell bought out the shares to bring it private again and focus on the long term. Something he couldn’t do as long as there are shareholders who aren’t on board with that vision and just want their return on their investment.
So, your “why” is not really one single reason:
For some, it’s the founder not having the skills to manage an established and successful business even though they’re the ones who got them to that point, but their ego won’t let them see that and they have to be forced out
For others it’s shareholder greed
And I’m sure there are several more reasons why companies do this
If these reasons don’t seem to make sense… Well, humans often don’t make sense and frequently make decisions detrimental to themselves. Our decisions often don’t make sense from the perspective of what’s the most sensible or logical course. If you’re asking why they do something, there’s a decent chance the answer isn’t going to make as much sense as you’d like, because humans frequently just don’t make sense.
And companies are run by these humans.
OpenAI isn’t public. They aren’t answering to shareholders.
“Stakeholders” then, the same thing just not publicly traded. OpenAI is owned 49% by microsoft and the rest by other companies and people. The point is the founders or CEO etc aren’t the owners or hold a majority so they don’t actually have a say in how the company is run and can be booted off by the board.
Maybe they’re going to start there own AI in their garages.
How did a CEO get fired? Shareholders?
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OpenAI also has extremely good options for replacements. Andrej Karpathy is back at OpenAI after leading Tesla’s autonomous driving, Ilya Sutskever is highly respected, etc. The perception I had of Sam Altman was that he was more so business side and not research side, (previous YC president, had a crypto startup on the side, raising VC funds, etc) so a move to a more research oriented C-Suite might also seem like a really good option to their board.
The board controls a non profit so they don’t actually have any shareholders.
They have a board and they fired him.
Best time for Apple and Google to poach some talent.
This is the best summary I could come up with:
Sam Altman isn’t the only major OpenAI executive leaving the company on Friday.
Hours after Altman was fired, with the board saying it “no longer has confidence in his ability to continue leading OpenAI,” co-founder and former board chair Greg Brockman revealed on X that he is also quitting.
When OpenAI announced the “leadership transition” and that CTO Mira Murati would take over as interim CEO, it said that Brockman would step down as chairman but remain in his role at the company, reporting to the CEO.
In the post on X (formerly Twitter), Brockman said he sent the following message to OpenAI staffers:
OpenAI unexpectedly announced that it had fired Altman earlier on Friday.
The company arguably kicked off tech’s current infatuation with artificial intelligence following the explosive popularity of ChatGPT.
The original article contains 140 words, the summary contains 131 words. Saved 6%. I’m a bot and I’m open source!
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lol how does your troll account fit in with agreeing with OpenAI’s board being more ethical
