Sam Altman went to Peter Thiel, who told him the big ‘Google mistake' he is making

Two months after OpenAI released ChatGPT, Sam Altman consulted with Paypal founder Peter Thiel, who cautioned him about a crucial "Google mistake" the company was making. In an interview on the David Senra podcast, Altman explained that although ChatGPT was experiencing rapid growth, it felt "unstable" as users were drawn to it primarily due to curiosity and experimentation.

Seeking guidance, Altman turned to Thiel, who remarked, "It's an obvious mistake to do anything but this, besides the fact that it's growing, which is rare and great." Thiel further elaborated, "The power of this is the power of the Google text box. It's like a text box you can type anything into and it does the right thing. And the fact that it doesn't match the current Silicon Valley wisdom... you have to have feeds and you have to have a network effect."

Thiel's words resonated with Altman, who stated, "He said, 'People have just been chasing the Google business model for 20 years and this is the first thing that's come up, and clearly the empty text box worked for Google, so why don't you just double down on that? It's growing. It's very flexible and it has all of the signs other than it doesn't fit the current Silicon Valley wisdom.'" Consequently, OpenAI intensified its focus on ChatGPT, which ultimately proved to be a highly successful endeavor.