OpenAI Chairman Bret Taylor tells the story of saving Sam Altman’s job

Bret Taylorthe new chairman of the board OpenAIsaid he did not plan to serve on the board when the famous artificial intelligence company was on the verge of collapse and called him for help this time last year. “The weekend after the board fired Sam (Altman), I got a call from both the board and Sam saying I could potentially help resolve the situation,” Taylor said during an interview on stage at the TechCrunch Disrupt conference in Sun. Francisco yesterday (October 29).

Taylor joined OpenAI in November 2023 as chairman of the new board after a a dramatic change in leadership which fired and rehired its CEO, Sam Altman, within days. When asked if Altman had called him to ask him to be reinstated, Taylor said the situation was “more nuanced.” “But I think they collectively came to the conclusion that I could help them both navigate the difficult situation that the organization was in at the time,” he said.

Taylor, 44, has held many notable tech titles: He was the former chief technology officer of Facebook (now Goal (GOAL) Platforms). former co-CEO of Salesforce and, briefly, chairman of Twitter (before Elon Musk bought it and renamed it “X”). In addition to being the chairman of OpenAI, Taylor now also runs an AI startup called Sierra, which helps companies build conversational AI to better serve their customers.

Taylor said he started the new company out of a genuine fascination with the current wave of artificial intelligence, which he says was ushered in by OpenAI’s ChatGPT. “I wouldn’t be doing what I’m doing if it wasn’t for OpenAI… ChatGPT was a moment that changed the world’s consciousness around AI,” he said. “I realized that this organization, which had been such a significant part of my history, was potentially about to collapse, and that I was in an amazingly unique position to be able to help.”

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Taylor, who calls himself an entrepreneur by nature, rose to the top positions at these tech giants not by climbing the corporate ladder, but by selling them his own companies. In 2009, he sold a social networking startup called FriendFeed to Facebook for $15 million, then joined the company as CTO. He left in 2012 to found a productivity software company called Quip. In 2016 Salesforce acquired Quip for a whopping $750 million and named Taylor Salesforce the main product office the following year. Together with the founder, he was promoted to co-CEO Marc Benioffin 2021.

It’s rare for a startup founder to thrive under a larger corporate umbrella after being acquired. (Think Instagram’s Kevin Systrom and Mike Krieger, Slack’s Stuart Butterfield, YouTube’s Jaoud Karim, Steve Chen and Chad Gurley, to name a few.) Taylor said he attributes his success to the advice he received from Sheryl Sandbergformer COO of Facebook.

“I had just become the CTO of Facebook and was leading a team bigger than any team I had led before. She gave me some really critical feedback, which basically amounted to, “You need to expect more from your leaders and stop trying to do all the work yourself,” he said.

“I had an image of myself as a technologist and a product thinker, so I tried to make my new team fit my image of myself,” he continued. “But then

I realized that I needed to change my perception of my own identity in order to become a better leader…and asked, “What can I do most effectively to make Facebook a more successful place?” Sometimes it will be technology; some days it would be around recruiting; he would be near our customers for several days.”

The bottom line is that “entrepreneurs go through different stages of their company. When you start out, you need to create something that people want. But at some point you really have to build a company as a CEO,” Taylor said. “If you’re too attached to who you are, you’re not really going to make that transition.”