Top founders don't aim for a decent exit. They want total market domination, treating competition like warfare. In the AI race between OpenAI and Anthropic, founders operate at 12 out of 10 intensity or get left behind.
Like there is no notion of, oh, I built a pretty good company. There is no notion of, oh, $10 billion is a pretty good outcome. It is, I dominated my category. I was the most important person in the world for the thing I am working on. It is total domination. And it is, and when you get, and they won't, a lot of them won't talk about this publicly, because it's kind of unbecoming. But when you get them one-on-one, when you ask them about competitors, when you ask them about their plans, it feels militaristic. Like you get chills to a degree that you're like, oh, I could see in a different context how you could be on a battlefield. Like there are $40 and $50 billion companies in this cycle where the founders have sold $0 a secondary. That's the kind of person that, and again, like I don't begrudge anybody for wanting to buy a house, but we want that level of like pathological, obsessive, just like come hell or high water, we are winning this category. Because it just seems like right now, if you bring anything less, it's just too hard. It's just everything moves too fast. OpenAI, Anthropic, they'll pay your employees too much. Like, if you are not a 12 of 10 on the intensity scale at this moment, like for building companies right now, it actually feels like you probably can't play.
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