i called the former head of GTM at OpenAI

and he told me that the way he actually got that job

was by betting it on a poker game

so in 2009, Zack Kass graduated from berkeley and was struggling to find a job. one night, he met the ceo of a startup called CrowdFlower (one of the first machine learning companies) at a poker game

and after some talking, the ceo made him a bet- if you win this game, you win a job at my company

and he did.

so the next day he emailed him, reminding him of the bet. and, as promised, landed an internship at CrowdFlower

and at the start, he was literally just moving boxes. but eventually, he would become VP of revenue

and that role would land him his next job at a company called Lilt (one of the first five ai-enabled service businesses)

now when the time came for OpenAI to build out their GTM, zack was one of the only people who knew how to sell AI tools

and just like that, that was how he joined the early team. (and funnily enough, that ceo from the poker story was the one who actually referred zack to them)

and i've seen this same pattern over and over again (both in other guests and, on a much smaller scale, in my own life)-

that sometimes, you just have to put yourself out there, start doing things, and talk to more people, to increase your surface area for luck

and that, when you look back on your life in the future, some of those smallest decisions end up being the catalyst for everything else you end up creating

(ps this was just one of the stories we talked about, and we recorded it all for The Seen... full ep will be dropping next month)