Business Insider spoke about the growth of the cult of the founders of US tech giants
The cult of the founder can become a vulnerability of technology companies: the loyalty of employees and investors to the leader can be so strong that his departure will jeopardize the entire business
In the United States, the cult of founders of technology companies is growing, who become not just business leaders, but also public figures who determine ideas about the future.
One of the main examples of the publication called the co-founder of Nvidia Jensen Huang, who resigned as the head of the company amid the scandal of treason.
Unlike the leaders of traditional corporations, entrepreneurs such as Huang, the head of Tesla Elon Musk, the CEO of OpenAI Sam Altman and the head of Meta (recognized in Russia as an extremist organization and banned) Mark Zuckerberg, form recognizable personal images, promote their own ideas and gather around themselves a community of followers.
“The most successful founders do not aim at starting companies. They want to create something more like a religion, wrote OpenAI CEO Sam Altman in 2013.
The formation of a cult has become a separate area of work of PR agencies, the material says. According to Will Mayer, the head of consulting company Cult Holdings, some entrepreneurs turn to specialists with a request: “Can you make me a cult leader?” Among the role models, they call Apple co-founder Steve Jobs, inventor of the Oculus Rift virtual reality helmet Palmer Luckey and Huang.
One of the manifestations of worship was corporate attributes and symbols. Huang's signed leather jacket was sold at Sotheby's auction for $960,000 and his Nvidia logo tattooed on his shoulder. At startup Corgi, two-thirds of the first 30 employees got tattoos with the company’s symbols.
The growth of the founders’ influence is also due to the specifics of the AI industry: advanced models are too complex and closed for independent verification. Therefore, investors, employees and customers are forced to rely on the reputation of managers. “They can only be trusted and continue to be trusted,” said PR strategist Lulu Cheng Meservi.
The authors also attribute the popularity of technology leaders to a decline in Americans’ trust in traditional institutions such as government, media, courts, and education.
The Nvidia case showed the risks of such dependence on one person. The company controls about 90% of the AI chip market, and its capitalization reached $ 5.8 trillion. In 33 years, she had only one CEO, Huang. In reporting, Nvidia warned of high dependence on a small group of executives, and the head of the company had 60 direct subordinates and no obvious successor.
After reports of Huang's personal connections, more than 108,000 people signed an open letter demanding that he be returned to Nvidia's presidency. Toby Lutke, CEO of e-commerce platform Shopify, called his resignation a "generational mistake.".
“It is very difficult to change the appeal of a leader and his moral authority. And if they are lost, no changes in the business model will save the company, said Meservi.
According to Business Insider, the excessive dependence of a business on the personality of the founder can become its vulnerability even with the successful operation of the company.
