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The ERic RIES Show
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To foster meaningful conversations, we curate conversations from an ecosystem of leaders, entrepreneurs, and visionaries.
The Eric Ries Show, a podcast produced by LTSE Founder and Executive Chairman Eric Ries, reflects our mission.
The show features thought-provoking conversations with world-class technologists, thought leaders, executives, and others who are working to create a new ecosystem of organizations committed to growth with purpose.
To foster meaningful conversations, we curate conversations from an ecosystem of leaders, entrepreneurs, and visionaries.
The Eric Ries Show, a podcast produced by LTSE Founder and Executive Chairman Eric Ries, reflects our mission.
The show features thought-provoking conversations with world-class technologists, thought leaders, executives, and others who are working to create a new ecosystem of organizations committed to growth with purpose.
Disclaimer: Information contained in this podcast was obtained in part from publicly available sources (including the Eric Ries Show) and not independently verified. The Long-Term Stock Exchange and its affiliated companies do not make any representations or warranties, express or implied, as to the accuracy or completeness of the information and do not sponsor, approve, or endorse any of the content herein, all of which is presented solely for informational and educational purposes. Nothing herein constitutes an offer to sell, a solicitation to buy any security, or a recommendation of any security or trading practice.
Some portions of the podcast may have been edited for the purpose of length or clarity.
From the Eric Ries Show:
Risks, Rewards, and Building the Unicorn Chip Company Taking on Nvidia | Inside Groq with Jonathan Ross
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The story of Groq, a semiconductor startup that makes chips for AI inference and was recently valued at $2.8 billion, is a classic “overnight success that was years in the making” tale. On this episode, I talk with founder and CEO Jonathan Ross.
He began the work that eventually led to Groq as an engineer at Google, where he was a member of the rapid eval team – “the team that comes up with all the crazy ideas at Google X.” For him, the risk involved in leaving to launch Groq in 2016 was far less than the risk of staying in-house and watching the project die.
Groq has had many “near-death” experiences in its eight years of existence, all of which Jonathan believes have ultimately put it in a much stronger position to achieve its mission: preserving human agency in the age of AI.
Groq is committed to giving everyone access to relatively low-cost generative AI compute, driving the price down even as they continue to increase speed. We talked about how the company culture supports that mission, what it feels like to now be on the same playing field as companies like Nvidia, and Jonathan’s belief that true disruption isn’t just doing things other people can’t do or don’t want to do, but doing things other people don’t believe can be done – even when you show them evidence to the contrary.
Other topics we touched on include:
- Why the ability to customize on demand makes generative AI different
- Managing your own and other people’s fear as a founder
- The problems of corporate innovation
- The role of luck in business
- How he thinks about long-term goals and growth
Here are my main takeaways from our conversation:
- Don't raise too much money at first. This leads to what Jonathan calls “rich person's disease” and spending a lot. The strongest companies have been through some financial winters that have taught them how to deal with scarcity so they don't get surprised if the rug gets pulled out from under them at some point.
- Make decisions solely for the good of the company. Your teams won’t like some of them. You won’t even like some of them. But “once you get that alignment, life gets a lot easier”
- Hire for luck. This is all about opportunity. Look for people who pounce on any potential glimmer of good luck like a rabid dog and won't let go of it because they're hungry. They don’t operate as if there’s always another good thing floating by.
- If you're not feeling fear, then you're not doing anything important. All of Groq’s values are based on overcoming a fear, because people don't realize that they're operating out of fear. They back away from ideas because of it, but ultimately, who ever says, “I'm so glad we didn't try all those different things”? There are times where it's really good that you don't do something, but founders tend to have more regrets. And because fear amplifies, all it takes is one person being afraid and then the entire group is afraid
- Don’t focus on control. A lot of founders really want control of the votes, the board and everything else. It’s no protection, as stories like Uber and others show. Instead, Groq has hired independent board members, each of whom would never harm their reputation just for Groq. Board members like that give you license to pick more of them, and you amass really valuable competence.
—
Brought to you by:
Mercury – The art of simplified finances. Learn more.
DigitalOcean – The cloud loved by developers and founders alike. Sign up.
Runway – The finance platform you don’t hate. Learn more.
—
Where to find Jonathan Ross:
• X: https://x.com/JonathanRoss321
• LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/ross-jonathan/
Where to find Eric:
• Newsletter: https://ericries.carrd.co/
• Podcast: https://ericriesshow.com/
• YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@theericriesshow
—
In This Episode We Cover:
(00:00) Welcome to the Eric Ries Show / Introduction to Jonathan and Groq
(04:24) Jonathan’s involvement with the DeepMind Challenge Match between AlphaGo and Lee Sedol
(06:06) How Jonathan’s work Google and how it led him to that moment
(08:46) Why generative AI isn’t just the next internet or mobile
(10:12) The divine move in the DeepMind Challenge Match
(11:56) How Jonathan ended up designing chips without the usual background
(13:11) GPUs vs. TPUs
(14:33) What risk really is
(15:11) Groq’s mind-blowing AI demo.
(16:23) How Jonathan decided to leave Google and start Groq
(17:30) The differences between doing an innovation project at a company and starting a new company
(19:03) Nassim Taleb’s Black Swan theory
(21:02) Groq’s founding story
(24:12) The difference in attitude towards AI now compared to 2016 and how it affected Groq
(25:46) The moment the tide turned with LLMs
(28:28) The week-over-week jump from 8,000 users to 400,000 users
(30:32) How Groq used HBM and what is it (the memory used by GPUs)
(32:33) Jonathan’s approach to disruption
(35:38) Groq’s initial raise and focus on software
(36:13) How struggling to survive made Groq stronger
(37:13) Hiring for return on luck
(40:07) How Jonathan and Groq think about the long-term
(42:25) Founder control issues
(45:31) How Groq thinks about maintaining its mission and trustworthiness
(49:51) Jonathan’s vision for a capital market that would support companies like Groq
(52:13) Incentives and outcomes
(52:58) How Groq manages internal cultural alignment
(55:59) Groq’s mission and to preserve human agency in the age of AI how it approaches achieving it
(59:48) Lightning round, including hiring engineers with empathy and Jonathan’s ideas about sentience and civilization.
Referenced:
“In Two Moves, AlphaGo and Lee Sedol Redefined the Future”, Wired
The Black Swan: The Impact of the Highly Improbable, Nassim Nicholas Taleb
Survivor: Hunter and His Coconut
Return on Luck, Jim Collins
“The Psychology of Human Misjudgment”, Charlie Munger (1995)
—
Production and marketing by https://penname.co/.
Eric may be an investor in the companies discussed.
Show Notes
The story of Groq, a semiconductor startup that makes chips for AI inference and was recently valued at $2.8 billion, is a classic “overnight success that was years in the making” tale. On this episode, I talk with founder and CEO Jonathan Ross.
He began the work that eventually led to Groq as an engineer at Google, where he was a member of the rapid eval team – “the team that comes up with all the crazy ideas at Google X.” For him, the risk involved in leaving to launch Groq in 2016 was far less than the risk of staying in-house and watching the project die.
Groq has had many “near-death” experiences in its eight years of existence, all of which Jonathan believes have ultimately put it in a much stronger position to achieve its mission: preserving human agency in the age of AI.
Groq is committed to giving everyone access to relatively low-cost generative AI compute, driving the price down even as they continue to increase speed. We talked about how the company culture supports that mission, what it feels like to now be on the same playing field as companies like Nvidia, and Jonathan’s belief that true disruption isn’t just doing things other people can’t do or don’t want to do, but doing things other people don’t believe can be done – even when you show them evidence to the contrary.
Other topics we touched on include:
- Why the ability to customize on demand makes generative AI different
- Managing your own and other people’s fear as a founder
- The problems of corporate innovation
- The role of luck in business
- How he thinks about long-term goals and growth
Here are my main takeaways from our conversation:
- Don't raise too much money at first. This leads to what Jonathan calls “rich person's disease” and spending a lot. The strongest companies have been through some financial winters that have taught them how to deal with scarcity so they don't get surprised if the rug gets pulled out from under them at some point.
- Make decisions solely for the good of the company. Your teams won’t like some of them. You won’t even like some of them. But “once you get that alignment, life gets a lot easier”
- Hire for luck. This is all about opportunity. Look for people who pounce on any potential glimmer of good luck like a rabid dog and won't let go of it because they're hungry. They don’t operate as if there’s always another good thing floating by.
- If you're not feeling fear, then you're not doing anything important. All of Groq’s values are based on overcoming a fear, because people don't realize that they're operating out of fear. They back away from ideas because of it, but ultimately, who ever says, “I'm so glad we didn't try all those different things”? There are times where it's really good that you don't do something, but founders tend to have more regrets. And because fear amplifies, all it takes is one person being afraid and then the entire group is afraid
- Don’t focus on control. A lot of founders really want control of the votes, the board and everything else. It’s no protection, as stories like Uber and others show. Instead, Groq has hired independent board members, each of whom would never harm their reputation just for Groq. Board members like that give you license to pick more of them, and you amass really valuable competence.
—
Brought to you by:
Mercury – The art of simplified finances. Learn more.
DigitalOcean – The cloud loved by developers and founders alike. Sign up.
Runway – The finance platform you don’t hate. Learn more.
—
Where to find Jonathan Ross:
• X: https://x.com/JonathanRoss321
• LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/ross-jonathan/
Where to find Eric:
• Newsletter: https://ericries.carrd.co/
• Podcast: https://ericriesshow.com/
• YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@theericriesshow
—
In This Episode We Cover:
(00:00) Welcome to the Eric Ries Show / Introduction to Jonathan and Groq
(04:24) Jonathan’s involvement with the DeepMind Challenge Match between AlphaGo and Lee Sedol
(06:06) How Jonathan’s work Google and how it led him to that moment
(08:46) Why generative AI isn’t just the next internet or mobile
(10:12) The divine move in the DeepMind Challenge Match
(11:56) How Jonathan ended up designing chips without the usual background
(13:11) GPUs vs. TPUs
(14:33) What risk really is
(15:11) Groq’s mind-blowing AI demo.
(16:23) How Jonathan decided to leave Google and start Groq
(17:30) The differences between doing an innovation project at a company and starting a new company
(19:03) Nassim Taleb’s Black Swan theory
(21:02) Groq’s founding story
(24:12) The difference in attitude towards AI now compared to 2016 and how it affected Groq
(25:46) The moment the tide turned with LLMs
(28:28) The week-over-week jump from 8,000 users to 400,000 users
(30:32) How Groq used HBM and what is it (the memory used by GPUs)
(32:33) Jonathan’s approach to disruption
(35:38) Groq’s initial raise and focus on software
(36:13) How struggling to survive made Groq stronger
(37:13) Hiring for return on luck
(40:07) How Jonathan and Groq think about the long-term
(42:25) Founder control issues
(45:31) How Groq thinks about maintaining its mission and trustworthiness
(49:51) Jonathan’s vision for a capital market that would support companies like Groq
(52:13) Incentives and outcomes
(52:58) How Groq manages internal cultural alignment
(55:59) Groq’s mission and to preserve human agency in the age of AI how it approaches achieving it
(59:48) Lightning round, including hiring engineers with empathy and Jonathan’s ideas about sentience and civilization.
Referenced:
“In Two Moves, AlphaGo and Lee Sedol Redefined the Future”, Wired
The Black Swan: The Impact of the Highly Improbable, Nassim Nicholas Taleb
Survivor: Hunter and His Coconut
Return on Luck, Jim Collins
“The Psychology of Human Misjudgment”, Charlie Munger (1995)
—
Production and marketing by https://penname.co/.
Eric may be an investor in the companies discussed.
Disclaimer
The information is provided for informational and educational purposes only, and nothing contained herein should be construed as investment advice, either on behalf of a particular security or an overall investment strategy. Information about the company is provided by the company, or comes from the companies’ public filings and is not independently verified by LTSE. Neither LTSE nor any of its affiliates makes any recommendation to buy or sell any security or any representation about the financial condition of any company. Statements regarding LTSE-listed companies are not guarantees of future performance. Actual results may differ materially from those expressed or implied. Past performance is not indicative of future results. Investors should undertake their own due diligence and carefully evaluate companies before investing. Advice from a securities professional is strongly advised.
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