Week In Review: Thoughts on OpenAI, Morning Rituals, and Momentum

What's up, everyone? Welcome back to another episode of Founders Journal, my personal diary made public for the world. I'm your host, Alex Lieberman, co-founder and executive chairman of Morning Brew. And today I'm doing a little week in review. No notes, just reflecting on some of the more interesting things that happened this week as an entrepreneur and a content creator. I want this episode to feel like, you know, you're my family member or close friend who I'm calling, you know, afternoon on a Friday, just updating them on my week. That's how this should feel to you, which means there's no script, there's no notes. It's just coming from the top of my head, and hopefully I say something intelligent. So let's hop into the episode. First up, I would be remiss to not talk about OpenAI. Obviously, I already spoke about kind of everything that's happened in different ways. The last Founders Journal episode— or actually, sorry, 2 Founders Journal episodes ago, I interviewed Brett Adcock, the current CEO of Figure, about his view on boards and how entrepreneurs should be thinking about building boards that help your company versus hurt your company. He talked about 4 different things that every founder should think about. So make sure to listen to that episode if you're interested in board strategy and board construction. But now that the saga at least seems complete for now, where Sam Altman, Greg Brockman, a lot of the leaders at OpenAI who had left the company originally to go to Microsoft, they're back at OpenAI now. The only real difference is that the composition of the board has changed. I believe all of the board members are out except for the CEO of Quora. So I've spent time reflecting on this saga, and I think there are just some interesting takeaways for every entrepreneur, even if you weren't interested in what was happening with OpenAI and Sam Altman. So let me just run through the list. The first is that transparency is a superpower and opaqueness is a massive weakness. We saw transparency in Greg Brockman, the president of OpenAI. We also saw transparency from Sam Altman. They were basically in some ways like live tweeting what was happening to them as they were going through this experience and trying to figure out what had happened. Why was Sam kicked out? Why did the board make this decision? And I would say in general, entrepreneurial or the tech community and really just like everyone, even like the news media rallied behind Sam and Greg and other senior leaders at OpenAI. On the other hand, you have a board that, you know, made one of the probably biggest personnel decisions that one could make in private companies right now. OpenAI is, you know, considered number 1, 2, or 3 of the most important companies of our generation at the moment, led by top 5 most important entrepreneur of our generation, and seemingly did not have a clear reason for kicking Sam off of the board other than a vague blog post that said that he was not communicating clearly or consistently with the board. But I think you see the danger of opaqueness. The board basically didn't share for the entirety of this saga What had happened? Why was Sam kicked off the board? What was the rationale? And what you're left with is people not only distrusting the individual members of OpenAI's board, but also now having a general distrust of boards in general. And now, like, a lot of people are calling for investigations and lawsuits of the board. So I think to the best of your ability, when you can be transparent in a way that the risks don't outweigh the reward, which I would say is in most cases more transparent is generally better than less transparent. And obviously I'm talking about it right now in the context of a board of advisors, but really I am talking about it for any business you run. Like I generally opt to be overly transparent. The only time I'm not transparent with people is around personnel issues, as in like the reasons that someone was fired specifically or pay, anything that someone would want to keep private, where anytime I'm not infringing on someone's like personal freedoms, that's where I think it is okay to be transparent. And so I would just say like transparency is generally a good rule of thumb, and I think it's really helpful so that you control the narrative and you control the story versus when you're opaque, people don't have the true story, but our brains are great at making up stories. We want stories, and so we end up creating stories that oftentimes end up being kind of caricatures of what reality is. The second one is that trust and reputation creates incredible leverage. I mean, what's fascinating to me about this whole thing is, you know, there's all these— there's governance around companies like the board has the ability to get rid of the CEO. Like governance is considered to be this really powerful thing. But after watching this, this whole kerfuffle, to me, what's more powerful than governance is trust is Loyalty. It's in a way fandom from your people because of OpenAI's 750 employees. The fact that I think almost all of them signed a petition for the board to step down, otherwise they would quit the company. First of all, I think it is the best demonstration of a CEO who has the trust of its people. Like, I, I can't— I can't think of any other CEO who, if they were kicked out by their board, would have their entire company write a letter for the board to step down or else they're leaving their jobs. Right? This included employees who are on work visas in the U.S., and they were risking their work visas and having to go back to their countries in order to protect this entrepreneur that they trusted so much. And obviously, having a mission-driven company, I would say, adds to the level of trust they have. And so, yeah, I mean, when people talk about businesses really being a collection of people and the importance of focusing on people, I think very quickly The importance of that gets abstracted because things like processes and KPIs are way more tangible. But I don't think there's anything more tangible than what we witnessed, which is a person kicked out of their company, but then that person somehow having more leverage than the company because the people that the company is made up of having so much trust that they would be willing to give up their livelihood for that person rather than the company. And so I think it's remarkable just to think about the time you invest in building trust, reputation, and true relationships with your people. Like, this to me is Exhibit A of why it's so important. Next one, humans are addicted to drama. I want to preface this by saying that I don't think drama is a good thing. I think drama is actually a net bad thing. But over the last 72 hours, right, I've watched Twitter basically be taken over by this singular story of the OpenAI saga. And I think obviously it was taken over because it's such a high-profile company, such a high-profile leader. So many people have relationships with or experiences with that leader. But I really think at the end of the day, whether it's the OpenAI saga on Twitter or whether it's Bachelor in Paradise on TV, we as people love drama. And I think there's 2 reasons we love drama. Yeah. One is we as people love novelty. It's easier for us to feel excited by and filled by experiences that feel new to us. And obviously one of the kind of great tricks in life is how do you become present to and enjoy the mundane things, the things that happen over and over? Because if you can start to enjoy those and feel gratitude for those, then novelty is just the cherry on top. But you don't need novelty. So I think drama is really a production of novelty, and it's also a production of a shared story and context. So the fact that people felt like they could go on Twitter, see what was happening with Sam Altman, they could engage in the Twitter discussion, or they could message their family group chat about it and have discussion about what do you think is going to happen? Is Sam going to end up at OpenAI or is he going to end up at Microsoft? What do you think Satya Nadella's whole plan is here? Do you see Marc Benioff getting involved? People enjoy shared stories because shared stories have shared language. Shared language leads to discussion, uh, and connection. And at the end of the day, we are social beings and drama allows us to be social versus to be isolated. So, you know, my whole thing is, um, I actually think the lessons from drama can be a powerful thing to think about. How do you leverage novelty and the attraction people have to shared stories as you think about building business and brand and community? But on the other end, I think what, what you also have to think about is within companies, it is very easy for drama to form because I think in some ways for a lot of people, that is their natural bias, is to get involved in drama versus be driven away from drama. And so I think you actually have to be very intentional about how to remove drama from a company. If you're not intentional about it, I think you can assume it will actually form. And then the other big takeaway from the OpenAI saga is that unemotional decision-making looks like magic. What I mean by that is people kind of look at the way that Sam Altman and Satya Nadella went about this entire process, seemingly very cool, levelheaded, not vindictive, not trying to get revenge on the board, just trying to get to a place where they can work on the mission that is to build AI and ultimately AGI That helps humanity. And I think it looked like magic to everyone, right? People were like, how are they so calm? How are they not angry? How are they not going right after the board? And I think there's 2 things that come to mind. One is, I do believe when you are intrinsically driven by a mission, it is easy, or it is easier to not be extrinsically driven by things like fear and revenge. But I think the other piece to it is that the, these 2 people I just named, but a lot of great leaders are really good at Not avoiding emotions. I am sure that Sam Altman, behind closed doors, felt anger towards the board, felt betrayal. I wouldn't even be surprised if he had thoughts of revenge against certain people on the board who did him wrong. But I also think these people understand the importance of separating feeling and emotion from actually the behavior or action that they decide to do. And when you create that separation, you look like a true magician. Because I would say the vast majority of people, knowingly or unknowingly, mostly unknowingly, behave in ways that are entirely dictated by fear-based emotions. So those are my takeaways from the OpenAI saga. Next up, saving time and not looking dumb is a powerful value add. Here's what I mean by that. I wrote a long tweet/LinkedIn post a day or two ago that basically summarized everything that had happened in the OpenAI saga up to the point in time at which I wrote this thing. And I also recorded a video of it. And on Twitter, that post ended up getting 1 million views, I think like 2,000 likes, and it did well on other platforms as well. And I think it's instructive of a larger lesson, which is why did people find value in basically me summarizing everything that had happened with OpenAI and recording a video around it? I think it kind of goes into my broader thesis, which is, There is more noise on the internet than ever before. That noise is going to continue to increase as more people become connected to the internet, and there are more free or low-cost tools than ever before, uh, that allow you to create content. And also you have platforms that allow people to see your content. And so if you can do the job of saving people the time to look for all of the pieces of content to then figure out for themselves what is their takeaway from that content, people will find it valuable and they will follow you, right? So it's like if you think about the alternative to my post, you would have basically had to scour through Twitter, maybe looking up certain people who have been covering the OpenAI story to try and piece together everything that has happened since Friday when Sam Altman was fired from the business. Or instead, you get my one post where in 60 seconds you know exactly what happened. And it makes me think back to like, again, the value of Morning Brew and why I think Morning Brew as a product was so valuable to people in the early days. Of course, there was a component to it, which was the voice and the conversational tone. But I think the bigger piece of it was we We would curate the internet for you such that you don't have to go read 5 different news sources. So we are saving you the time that would've been spent searching the internet. So we decrease search cost. And then the other thing is we are your insurance policy to not look dumb at work. So Morning Brew, you would read it because then when you go to work, if your boss starts talking to you about a story, you know what's happening. And I think in the same way that the tweet I wrote, which I'll link to in the show notes around the OpenAI saga, you now know what happened with OpenAI in a way where any of your coworkers or friends are talking about it. You know how to have an intelligent conversation with that without being caught off guard. And so I think just a value add to think about, whether it's building product, whether it's you building your own personal brand online, creating content of every type. I think there are different types of value adds you can have with content. On the information side of creating content, right, which is like adding clear value to an audience, I think that saving people time and making them appear smart to their peers is a huge value add. And so that was just something that made me think back to the early days of Morning Brew of why I think it provided value for people. Next thing up is I started doing a morning ritual with my coach and I've noticed I've had less self-deprecating thoughts. So quick story here, and maybe I'll do an entire podcast episode about this, but I had a coaching session in the last 5 days with my executive coach. And the first thing I brought up with him, because I try to be as transparent with him as possible, is I said, One of the things that I'm thinking about most is how much you cost and how uncomfortable that feels to me. And I'm, I'm not gonna share how much the executive coach costs, but what I shared with him is every day I have some amount of anxiety or thought that is dedicated to feeling like it is painful for me how much I am paying you for your service. And I, and that, and I said to him, I, this doesn't feel good to me because I know you don't want to be measured by me on an ROI basis where like you feel like every conversation we're having, I'm judging how valuable that conversation is. And I don't want to be going through coaching that way either, going through every session, basically asking myself, was this worth X dollars to justify my payment for coaching? And what we ended up talking about was like, and this is the more interesting thing to me, and it's why I brought it up in the first place. It's like, why is this something that makes me feel so uncomfortable? Right? There's 2 possible reasons. One is like a rational reason that like this is something I can't afford. The second reason is that there's a deeper story that I have that this provokes. So we first talked about the first story, which is like, can I afford this? And the answer was yes. So we moved on to the second story. What we tried to understand is like, what is it that is making me fearful of paying a large sum of money each month to my coach, even if I know it's going to provide me a lot of value and help me grow as a person? And where we ended up getting with this is that I have a very simple story. My story is that I was lucky in my success with Morning Brew. We sold our business. I had a really fortunate financial outcome. And now my story is, is that I'm not going to have another outcome like that, which means it is my responsibility to defend the money that I made from my business at all costs because it will be the only money that I ever make. So I need to hoard it and save it for the rest of my life. And we talked about, you know, why, how that is like, you know, such a a sad story because, you know, I have so much of my life ahead of me. It's such a limiting story. And what I also shared with him is like, this is probably a story I've had in my head for a very long time, right? Like since the early days of Morning Brew. And so one of the things that we are doing to work on this story is actually to acknowledge that stories are stories. They're not facts, they're not our reality, and that we have the ability to change our stories. And then we have the ability to repeat are changed stories. And by repeating them, as much as old Alex would've been like, this is woo-woo bullshit, the idea of manifesting things, I really actually do believe the stories we repeat to ourselves do actually inform who we become. And actually, it is best to repeat those stories out loud because then you actually are consciously aware of your stories versus not having awareness around the stories that hold you back. And so every day since we had that meeting, I wrote a script that I repeat every morning. It's my morning ritual, and it sounds ridiculous, but I also do the morning ritual with the same song that I play every day while doing push-ups. The reason I do that is because my coach asked me, like, when are the times in your day where you feel like most powerful and like most pumped up? And I said, when I'm in the gym, when I'm like doing bench press and listening to this pump-up song. He's like, I want you to do that as you say the script. And so Every day for the last five days, I repeat the same script, which is I have the power, the abilities, and the skills to create anything I want in this world. And I repeat that over and over as the song plays. The song is Remember the Name by Fort Minor as I crank out push-ups. And it's funny, like there's a part of me when I started doing this that felt so cringy about doing it. But I have sincerely noticed in the last five days that the amount of self-deprecating thoughts I've had—the thoughts of Alex, you're distracted. Alex, you're not focused. Alex, don't keep your commitments to yourself, Alex. You are not going to be able to build anything great because you are too distractible and too easily excited. Those thoughts, while not completely gone, have started to melt away. And so my commitment to myself is to continue doing this ritual for 30 days and see where we're at after a month of doing it. The last thing I want to share is momentum. One of the most underrated things, probably because it's least tangible, you know, similar to like the tangibility of building up trust and reputation as a founder or CEO, is this concept of momentum. I realized this in the early days of Morning Brew, and it's just been reiterated time after time in Morning Brew, but it's been reiterated with my content, like when Founders Journal is going well or 60-Second Startup is going well. It's been reiterated with StoryArb. This concept of momentum— momentum, I believe, is the most important thing in business. Momentum is the best creator of good culture in a company. When there is a lot of momentum, people feel great. People are working hard towards a mission. Momentum really is like the lifeblood, especially of early-stage businesses. When you have momentum in a company, you need to do everything possible not just to capture it, but to keep it, to keep finding examples of momentum, to keep the snowball rolling down the hill. When you don't have momentum, You need to fight to get it back, and it is going to feel like a fight to get it back because it's going to feel like the difference of if you have a huge boulder at the top of a hill and you need to push the boulder 10 yards before it starts rolling down the hill. When you don't have momentum, it feels like those first 10 yards that you have to push the boulder before it hits the hill and just starts rolling on its own. Once momentum has built up, those 10 yards are going to feel excruciating. But you need to do everything possible to refine momentum in a business because Momentum is this really contagious thing. It is a feeling that is addictive, that makes you want to keep working in a way that creates more momentum. And it does the same exact thing for the people that work with you in your company. And what had me think about that today is Morning Brew YouTube and Morning Brew Multimedia in general. We've been working basically for 3 years straight to try to make video, social media, and podcasts at Morning Brew work really well. And for the first 2 of those years, it was a complete failure for many different reasons. We had no momentum, and at times we had so little momentum that we literally would think about, do we just cut all this and do we just go back to newsletters? Because that's the only thing we've proved to ourselves that we can do. In the last 3 to 6 months, we have really hit stride with Morning Brew Multimedia. And as of today, Morning Brew's main YouTube channel had a video that hit 1 million views for the first time. That video hit 1 million views in 6 days. And the amount of momentum that I have noticed on social media, in Morning Brew's internal Slack channels, it is contagious. Like there's— there— it is not a coincidence that more and more things have been mentioned to be going well after that video that hit 1 million views was also mentioned. And so, you know, my final thought, it's like if you take one thing from this episode, When you are building a business, go out of your way to find examples of momentum. Go out of your way to celebrate small things because those are the kind of the best ways to jumpstart momentum and do everything possible to keep it. And when you lose momentum, it is going to feel like a grind, but you have to keep grinding to get it back because once you have it, you feel like this immovable force that is going to continue to push forward. Well, that is my reflection on the week. And as you can tell, I have a very unique brain that fires in a million directions. But this is how I would talk through my week to my wife, my mom, my sister, any of my good friends. So I hope you enjoyed this conversation. I hope you enjoyed Founders Journal, and I hope you have a great long Thanksgiving weekend. If you want to say what's up to me or you have any ideas for the show or any episode, ideas that you want me to either talk about personally or to get a guest for, shoot me an email to alex@morningbrew.com and I will talk to you all very soon.