Decision to pursue AGI felt irrational to many: "99% of the world thought we were crazy."
There were no product ideas, no revenue, and limited belief even internally that it could make money.
What they did have: a bold mission and a belief that AGI, if it worked, would be massively important.
Sam emphasized how hard it is to remember what AI felt like 10 years ago: this was pre-GPT, pre-transformers. They were experimenting with robotic hands and video games.
“We were sitting at conference tables and whiteboards just trying to come up with ideas for the game.”
On Attracting Talent
Doing something different (“a one-of-one thing”) attracts uniquely talented people.
If you're chasing the same idea as everyone else, you compete for the same limited pool.
OpenAI’s appeal was that it offered the smartest people a unique mission. There wasn’t anywhere else like it.
Starting Something Big
OpenAI didn’t look like a future giant: “It was 8 people in a room. It was scary. We didn’t know what to do.”
He quoted Vinod Khosla: “there's a big difference between a zero-million-dollar startup and a zero-billion dollar startup” ****but they look identical at the start.
Advice to founders: choose a space where, if it works, it’s big. Then just take it one step at a time.
State of AI Models & Product Gap
Sam points out a growing gap between model capability and real-world products. Even if models didn’t improve at all, we still haven't fully exploited their potential.