What would you do if the company you led lost $12 billion in a single quarter?
You’d probably make some adjustments.
The financial world was stunned when Microsoft’s earnings report revealed that OpenAI lost $12 billion in a single three-month stretch.
The adjustment: ChatGPT now has ads which Beta testers will pay $200,000 minimum to run.
It’s easy to call this a failure, a setback, or at the very least, a bad sign. Big losses plus a shift toward ads. Who likes ads?
But maybe it’s nothing but ‘the process.’
The reality is setting up data centers, maintaining infrastructure, funding research… it was always going to cost a fortune. They’ve been figuring it out as they go.
Success isn’t a straight line up and to the right. It’s bumpy. Oblique. Less like gliding on an ice rink, more like dragging a 45-pound kettlebell up a hill.
It takes iteration. Not just visioning and imagining but re-visioning and re-imagining.
Jeff Bezos talks about one-way doors and two-way doors. We find them in life and in business.
One-way doors lock behind you, the choice is final. Two-way doors swing both ways. You can walk through, look around, and walk back out.
Launch without ads, costs spike, walk backward and introduce ads.
A lot of organizations treat every decision like a one-way door. They confuse commitment with rigidity.
The companies that survive and live on to play another day are the ones who don’t fear walking backward. They’ve gotten good at knowing which doors swing both ways.
Whether it’s our career, who we choose to love, or our business plan, it helps to remember that we can’t win if we can’t change course.
That’s all there is to it.
