Tom Brown was one of the first 20 employees at OpenAI and later co-founded Anthropic. He self-studied AI for six months before pitching himself to AI roles, then used networking and mentorship to break into the field. Brown worked at multiple startups, many backed by Y Combinator, and held an early job at Grouper that led to a connection with Greg Brockman at OpenAI. Brown emphasizes surrounding oneself with people to emulate, learning alongside mentors and peers, and persistent networking. Brown also noted early doubts about needing to be a top superstar to contribute to AI.
"He had a phase at Stripe where he would post in their thing, 'I'm going on Grouper, who's going?' for a whole year," Brown said. "I ended up being close with Greg, which ended up being my connection at OpenAI."
"Surround yourself with people you want to be like," Brown wrote. "You'll become more similar to them over time."
"When learning, it's much easier if you have a mentor or two and a group of friends learning alongside you," Brown wrote.
"It seemed at the time that you needed to be top superstar to try to help out at all,"
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