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ALL OF FOUNDER STORIES

· 9:42 · 12 VIEWS

SAM ALTMAN: FIRED AND REHIRED IN FIVE DAYS

On a Friday in November 2023 the board of OpenAI fired Sam Altman by video call. By the following Tuesday he was back, the board was gone, and more than seven hundred of the company's seven hundred and seventy employees had signed a letter saying they would leave with him. This episode follows the whole road there: the Stanford dropout, the location app that failed respectably, running Y Combinator at twenty eight, founding OpenAI as a charity with Elon Musk, the decision to put a company underneath it, ChatGPT reaching a hundred million users in two months, and the five days that decided who controls the most talked about company in the world. It also covers the five hundred billion dollar valuation, the Stargate announcement, the researchers who left, and the lawsuits. Founder Stories tells the story of one founder per episode, told plainly and in order.

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0:46

ELON MUSK BORROWED RENT MONEY WHILE TESLA AND SPACEX NEARLY DIED.

Both companies survived by a few days. This clip comes from the Founder Stories episode about Elon Musk and Tesla and SpaceX, "Elon Musk: The Christmas Eve That Nearly Ended Tesla and SpaceX". The full episode is at https://youtu.be/eb1Y1gtHh3g.

· 1 VIEWS
9:50

ELON MUSK: THE CHRISTMAS EVE THAT NEARLY ENDED TESLA AND SPACEX

In December 2008 Elon Musk had watched three rockets fail, Tesla had cash until Christmas, and the money from PayPal was almost gone. This episode follows the whole run up: the game he sold at twelve, two days at Stanford, Zip2, being fired from PayPal on his honeymoon, the flight home from Moscow that started SpaceX, the six and a half million dollars that made him Tesla's chairman, the fourth rocket that finally reached orbit, and the two rescues that arrived on the twenty third and twenty fourth of December.

· 1 VIEWS
10:37

5,127 PROTOTYPES: THE JAMES DYSON STORY

James Dyson spent fifteen years getting from a clogged vacuum cleaner in his farmhouse to the first Dyson on sale in Britain. This episode follows the sawmill cyclone that gave him the idea, the five thousand one hundred and twenty seven prototypes built in a coach house on his wife's salary, the manufacturers who turned him down because they made money from bags, the pink G Force that kept him afloat in Japan, and the launch of the DC01 in 1993.

· 17 VIEWS