Risks, Rewards, and Building the Unicorn Chip Company Taking on Nvidia

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/⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠