🔥 Sam Altman Gets Fired and Re-Hired

The OpenAI Drama: How will this influence the future of the company?                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                 November 23, 2023 | [Read Online]( [fb]( [tw]( [in]( [email](mailto:?subject=Post%20from%20Failory&body=%F0%9F%94%A5%20Sam%20Altman%20Gets%20Fired%20and%20Re-Hired%3A%20The%20OpenAI%20Drama%3A%20How%20will%20this%20influence%20the%20future%20of%20the%20company%3F%0A%0Ahttps%3A%2F%2Fnewsletter.failory.com%2Fp%2Fsam-altman-gets-fired-rehired) Together With Hey — It's Nico. OSlash has failed, as 90% of startups do. Every Thursday, I'll help you prevent your startup from shutting down. Here's what I’ve got today: - 🔗 Weekly Picks - 📰 News: Sam Altman Gets Fired and Re-Hired - 💀 Failed Startup: OSlash Announces Shutdown - 📈 Trend: VC Funding Trending Down - 🧠Framework: Product Prioritization for Pre-PMF Startups This issue is brought to you by [Masterworks](, the platform for buying and selling shares of artworks. 🔗 Weekly Picks A founder’s journey building the “Uber for travel” ([Link]() OpenView Partners’ 2023 SaaS benchmarks report ([Link]() Startups’ mistakes in trying to copy big companies ([Link]() What are startup growth leaders prioritizing in 2024? ([Link]() Airbnb acquires its first startup, Gameplanner.AI, for nearly $200M ([Link]() Why big TAM founders are working on small TAM startups ([Link]() Billionaires wanted it, but 54,578 everyday investors got it first… and profited When incredibly rare and valuable assets come up for sale, it's typically the wealthiest people that end up taking home an amazing investment. But not always… [One platform]( is taking on the billionaires at their own game, buying up and fractionalizing some of history’s most prized blue-chip artworks for its investors. In just the last few years, its investors have realized annualized net returns of 17.8%, 21.5%, 35% and more from these opportunities. It's called Masterworks. Their nearly $1 billion collection includes works by greats like [Banksy, Picasso, and Basquiat](, all of which are collectively owned by everyday investors. When Masterworks sells a painting – like the 16 it's already sold – investors reap their portion of the profits. It's easy to get started but offerings can sell out in minutes. However, as a trusted partner, Growth Memo readers can [skip the waitlist to join with this exclusive link.]( 📰 News: Sam Altman Gets Fired and Re-Hired [tw profile: OpenAI] OpenAI @OpenAI [tw] We have reached an agreement in principle for Sam Altman to return to OpenAI as CEO with a new initial board of Bret Taylor (Chair), Larry Summers, and Adam D'Angelo. We are collaborating to figure out the details. Thank you so much for your patience through this. Nov 22, 2023 67.1K Likes 13.6K Retweets 5.89K Replies Last Thursday night, Sam Altman received a text from Ilya Sutskever, a board member of OpenAI, letting him know he was getting fired by the board on Friday. The reason: “[not being consistently candid in his communications](.” This decision led to a series of quick, cascading events: Mira Murati was appointed Interim CEO, Microsoft was blindsided by the news, and Greg Brockman resigned in solidarity with Altman. The tech world reacted explosively, with OpenAI employees signaling their willingness to follow Altman. By Saturday, rumors of Altman’s return began circulating, further stirred by [Sam’s cryptic tweets](. Yesterday, amidst employee pressure and negotiations led by Microsoft, Altman was re-hired as OpenAI’s CEO. The real reasons why the OpenAI board fired Altman are still unclear. Some journalists claim it was Altman's involvement in ventures that could directly benefit from OpenAI's advancements that raised questions around conflicts of interest. The truth is Altman got caught in his own trap. When starting OpenAI, he decided to give the board the power to fire the CEO if he went off-mission and didn’t prioritize humanity’s benefit over financial gain. The incident raises crucial questions about the role and [management of startup boards](. Boards should provide oversight, guidance, and accountability, balancing the interests of various stakeholders. In OpenAI's case, the board's swift action and subsequent reversal reflect the complex interplay of internal governance, stakeholder influence, and public perception in the startup ecosystem. Altman's journey, akin to the storied comebacks of tech leaders like Steve Jobs, positions him at a pivotal moment. The question remains: how will this influence the future trajectory of OpenAI and Altman's leadership style?​​​ 💀 Failed Startup: OSlash Announces Shutdown Refer Failory to one friend to unlock this weekly section. Here’s your referral link: 💀 Failed Startup: OSlash Announces Shutdown You’re viewing this story because you’ve referred one friend to Failory. Thanks! ​SaaS startup [OSlash has announced that it will be ceasing operations]( by the end of the month. Founded in 2020 and having received $5M in funding from an investment round, OSlash is undergoing a strategic shutdown in order to return remaining investments to its backers. According to a [blog post by OSlash](, the company’s mission was to bring people “the fastest way to find information and get things done at work,” which it aimed to do through OSlash shortcuts and snippets that helped automate repetitive typing. These tools were used by over 3,000 professional teams, including users at Khan Academy and Twitch. Still, the startup was unable to find product-market fit, even after a couple of pivots. It’s likely that OSlash was working on something that people weren’t willing to pay for, showing the importance of validating your startup idea in order to find product-market fit before overcommitting to something that won’t be profitable. Because of OSlash’s failure to achieve commercial success and build a sustainable business model, the company’s leaders made the difficult but dignified decision to shut operations down. Effective immediately, OSlash will no longer accept new registrations. Existing users can continue using their existing shortcuts through an open-source extension that they can download before November 29th. All user data will be deleted from OSlash servers by November 30th. OSlash’s leadership has also stated that, while the decision to shut down was hard, they plan to channel learnings from the startup’s failure into future endeavors to make people’s work lives easier. 📈 Trend: VC Funding Trending Down According to [Carta’s State of Private Markets report for Q3 2023](, venture capital funding continues to trend down, with Q3 being the slowest quarter for venture fundraising activity on Carta since Q1 2018. This past quarter’s declines are part of a two-year trend — overall VC deal count fell by 27% from Q3 2021 to Q3 2022 and fell another 36% over the next year, from Q3 2022 to Q3 2023. For the same periods, the total capital raised fell by 61%, then by another 46%. Additionally, the wait time between funding rounds is lengthening, with the average wait time between Series C and Series B funding rounds being 1,090 days. This means startups are having to make whatever funds they do have stretch farther. While these numbers are certainly discouraging for startups and founders, there were a few encouraging signs as well, including rising early-stage valuations and dilution trending down. 🧠Framework: Product Prioritization for Pre-PMF Startups If you’re working on a pre-PMF startup, traditional product prioritization methods won’t work, [according to an article on product analytics tool June’s blog](. Why? Because pre-PMF startups need to move much faster than late-stage companies when it comes to product prioritization — if they don’t, they may spend way too much time on things that don’t contribute to growth. According to the article by June, these are the six best product-prioritization strategies for pre-PMF startups: 1. Set a single goal Setting one goal allows you to align all your resources and initiatives, increasing your chances of success in the early stages when your resources are most limited. 2. Start with the biggest tasks Resist the temptation to prioritize work on small tasks or low-hanging fruit because they tend to have the least impact on your startup’s early success. Instead, focus on doing the bigger, more difficult tasks, as those are the ones that matter most for driving early-stage growth. 3. Do the work with the highest potential impact Start every week by asking yourself, “What’s the highest impact work we can do this week?” — prioritize whatever the answer to that question is. When you complete high-impact work, it has the potential to disproportionately drive your company forward. 4. Implement the shortest deadlines possible For pre-PMF startups, time is your most valuable resource. As such, you should work with the shortest feasible deadlines in order to get more done in less time. This might mean working in shorter sprints, of one week instead of two. 5. Complete work “Just in Time” “Just in Time” is a concept borrowed from the manufacturing industry that means you’re working to deliver things right before they’re needed, rather than “just in case” they’re needed. In other words, focus on building things you know your product needs right now and delivering them “Just in Time” instead of wasting valuable time developing stuff you may or may not need down the road. 6. Dedicate 10-30% of resources to fixing bugs When you’re working on a startup, there will always be something called “tech debt,” essentially a backlog of bugs and technical issues that need fixing. Many early-stage companies dedicate too much time and other resources to reducing this tech debt, which takes away from new development. To avoid this pitfall, aim to dedicate only 10-30% of your resources to fixing bugs.​​ 📰 Classifieds 💡 Struggling to validate your startup idea? [I've created a course]( on how to use pre-sales to validate it. 📈 Struggling to achieve PMF? I've [written an eBook]( about the exact strategies used by Slack, Intercom, and Airbnb to achieve it. 💰 Struggling to raise funding? I've curated lists of [2,100 accelerators and incubators]( and [1,000 VC firms](. 👂 How Was Today's Newsletter? - [🔥 Great]( - [😒 Meh]( - [👎 Not Interesting]( 📊 Looking to get in front of +40k startup founders? [Sponsor this newsletter](.​ That's all of this week. Cheers, Nico Thanks to Masterworks for sponsoring this issue. Past performance is not indicative of future returns, investing involves risk. See disclosures[masterworks.com/c](d  Update your email preferences or unsubscribe [here]( © 2023 Failory 1309 Coffeen Avenue Ste 1200, Sheridan, Wyoming 82801, United States of America [[beehiiv logo]Powered by beehiiv](