Anthropic co-founder Daniela Amodei
Anthropic co-founder Daniela Amodei has a simple suggestion for entrepreneurs seeking the right business partner. She believes taking a vacation together before starting a company will help entrepreneurs find the most suitable partners for their startup(s). Speaking at the Stanford Graduate School of Business, Amodei said spending extended time together outside work can reveal whether a partnership is likely to survive the pressures of building a start-up.According to a report by Fortune, Amodei said, “Instead of starting a company together, go on vacation together. Share a room with them. Be like, ‘How did that go?’ And if you’re like, ‘Man, all I wanna do is spend more time with you,’ great. If you’re like, ‘Really, I’m gonna need a vacation to recover from my vacation,’ it might be the wrong choice.”Amodei said strong interpersonal relationships played a major role in the founding of Anthropic in 2021. The AI company was launched by Daniela Amodei, her brother and CEO Dario Amodei, and five other co-founders, many of whom had worked together previously at OpenAI. According to Amodei, the group already understood how to communicate, give feedback, and work through disagreements before launching the company.She noted that several of Anthropic’s founders had known each other for more than a decade, while others had previously reported to either her or Dario Amodei at OpenAI. That familiarity, she said, helped the team understand “who we were as people.”
Daniela Amodei on how shared vision matters as much as compatibility
Amodei also stressed that founders need to agree on the business’s long-term direction. She said Anthropic’s founding team was aligned on what they wanted to build after leaving OpenAI, where some members had differing views on the company’s direction.“If you locked yourself and your co-founder in another room, and you wrote down or drew a picture of what it is you’re trying to build, you’re not gonna walk out and one has drawn a unicorn and the other has drawn a platypus. That’s the type of situation where you think you’re doing the same thing, but I think it just doesn’t end well,” she noted.Amodei’s comments echo advice from other start-up founders and investors who have argued that compatibility and trust are often more important than technical skills when selecting a co-founder.
