Sam Altman on the leading causes of conflict in a founding team

The two times you get conflict in a startup, when is when people want different things for the company and when they want the same things for themselves. Those are the two areas where we see the most conflict among the founding team. So, you know, if you have like, you can have two people that are very like, you know, like a hard charger and sort of like a softer person, and you have conflict about the kind of company you want to build, or you can have like, like two people that have exactly the same background, they grew up in the same environment, and they both want to be the CEO and they both want their face on the magazine cover. That conflict is actually the worst one that gets really nasty. So both of those things are bad. What you really want are complementary teams where the people have the same vision for what kind of company they want to build and how they want to get there. And they bring very different skills to the table. So for a long time, the classic co founding team was one very strong business person and one very strong tech person. And that worked really well. A lot of times now it's shifted more towards two really strong tech people. That works a lot of the times. It really does. I think that may be better overall. But when those people want exactly the same thing, then there's a lot of internal conflict. But again, diversity of skill sets, diversity of background is great. And I think that's worked a lot of times. Like Steve Jobs and Steve Wozniak. It's true they're both white guys, but like within the realm of white guys, Very diverse people.

Within the realm of white guys. And that's right. I mean, I think it's interesting to think about co founders. Like a lot of times what I'll see is two technical people, but one decides to be the product owner and one decides to be the technology owner. And that works out fine too. It's just, I think understanding what you each like and what you're good at is.