The President of Anthropic on 40 years of arguments with her brother and the difference between unicorns and platypuses.
If your relationship with your co-founder couldn’t survive a shared hotel room, that’s a problem, says a co-founder of Anthropic.
Daniela Amodei left OpenAI with her brother Dario to found Anthropic. The duo – together with five other co-founders – built one of the most valuable AI companies that investors are racing to get.
In a talk at the Stanford Graduate School of Business, Amodei gave advice on choosing co-founders. Interpersonal relationship dynamics “are much more important than you think,” she said.
Quarrel for 40 years
“Dario and I have been arguing for over forty years – and we always get over it,” she said. “He’s my brother and I used to steal his toys.”
One of Amodei’s tips for finding a good co-founder: “Don’t build a company together first – go on vacation together first.”
Traveling can reveal weaknesses in a relationship, for example when planning stopovers, booking flights or living together. Co-founders should even share a room on vacation, said Amodei.
After the trip you should evaluate the relationship. If entrepreneurs still want to spend time with their co-founders afterward, that’s probably a good sign, Amodei said.
“If you think: I really need a vacation first to recover from my vacationthen it was probably the wrong choice,” she said.
Unicorn or platypus?
It is equally important to be on the same page as your co-founder. Different skills might be helpful – think of the visionary Steve Jobs and the realist Steve Wozniak – but different principles could destroy a company.
Amodei gave the audience a task: imagine that you and your co-founder were locked in separate rooms and asked to draw a picture of what the startup does. It is important that the end result is not completely different images – for example a unicorn and a platypus.
“It’s the kind of situation where you think you’re working on the same thing – but I think it just doesn’t end well,” she said.