One factor sets apart the leaders of the world’s most successful businesses, according to billionaire Scale AI co-founder Alexandr Wang: “They overdo it.”
Successful CEOs, particularly in the tech industry, set a highly ambitious tone for the rest of their company — encouraging the high level of effort needed to get a startup off the ground and build it into a massive success, Wang wrote in an October 2024 blog post titled “DO TOO MUCH: How to be a leader.”
“As a leader, you are the upper bound for how much anyone in your company will care. You need to do more, care more, attempt more than would seem reasonable,” wrote Wang, 29, adding: “It will seem like overkill. But too much is the right amount.”
Wang, 29, studied notable tech CEOs’ track records while working to build his artificial intelligence startup, he wrote — and used what he learned to build a tech unicorn that was most recently valued at $29 billion.
“There is no Apple without [co-founder Steve] Jobs’s ‘obsessive’ attention to detail [and] no SpaceX or Tesla without Elon [Musk’s] ‘maniacal’ drive for execution,” he observed. “I have never seen ordinary effort lead to extraordinary results.”
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In Wang’s case, he noted that Scale AI “would not be the company it is today” had he not decided in 2022 to shift significant resources toward data labelling for the emerging trend of generative AI and large language models, after previously focusing on the autonomous vehicle industry.
“Within six months, Scale shifted the vast majority of our team to working on generating data for scaling LLMs,” wrote Wang, calling the move “drastic and abrupt — some might say jarring or extreme.”
Some observers initially believed Wang was “overreacting,” he wrote. But the business reportedly brought in $870 million in 2024 revenue and is expected to reach $2 billion this year, according to Bloomberg. Meta poached Wang in June as part of a deal that saw the social networking giant invest $14.3 billion in Scale AI, giving the startup its most recent valuation.
Wang now serves as Meta’s chief AI officer, and has an estimated net worth of $3.2 billion, according to Forbes.
Going to extremes, in his estimation, is the bare minimum for business leaders who want to rapidly grow a company. “This is true in big and small ways,” he wrote, adding a bullet-point list of guidelines:
“What people say is overoptimism is just optimism.
“What people say is overcommunicating is just communicating.
“What people say is overdelivering is just delivering.
“What people say is micromanagement is just management.
“What people say is ruthless prioritization is just prioritization.”
To an extent, Wang’s observation is backed up by research: An “obsessive business focus” is one personality trait that’s shared by most of the world’s billionaires, according to a 2015 report from UBS and PwC.
Being an entrepreneur typically requires outsized optimism, because founding a company requires an inherent leap of faith that your idea and execution will succeed despite the fact that so many businesses fail. Plus, confidence can be contagious and extreme optimism — when supported by talent and research — can help inspire resilience in a workforce during difficult patches.
“Optimism is a core principle of good leadership,” Disney CEO Bob Iger told CNBC in 2019. “People just don’t want to follow someone who is a pessimist.”
But blind optimism can also doom you to failure, according to serial entrepreneur Steve Blank, who teaches courses on the subject at Stanford University. When over-optimism causes founders to arrogantly skip necessary planning and research, into markets and clients, it becomes a “fatal mistake” that can topple any business, Blank told CNBC Make It in March.
As for Wang’s claim that most people’s definition of micromanagement is “just management,” leadership experts frequently warn that overbearing bosses can create annoying or even toxic workplaces in the extreme.
Some entrepreneurs, like billionaire Mark Cuban, say that micromanaging might be necessary during a company’s earliest days. But excessive micromanaging, in particular, can burn out leaders quickly while creating a toxic environment that could make it difficult to retain employees, according to bestselling author and NYU Stern School of Business professor Suzy Welch.
More broadly, many founders and CEOs believe strongly that a healthy work-life balance just isn’t possible for anyone building a successful business. Perhaps correspondingly, entrepreneurs have high rates of burnout and mental health issues, research shows.
“Creating something meaningful is a beautiful, and yes, scary and painful thing,” Wang wrote. “And if you’re not overdoing it, you’re underdoing it.”
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