Daniel Graetzer

Serial founder, advisor & investor.
20+ angel investments, raised $100M+.
Trying to make the world wonderful through technology and people.
Chess nerd.

[Daniel Graetzer @dangraetzer]

Peak internet rn

[Daniel Graetzer @dangraetzer]

@JosephFordCotto Please! The people deserve better

[Daniel Graetzer @dangraetzer]

It’s ironic that we got through Y2K unscathed, but a Microsoft update has brought the world to its knees.

[Daniel Graetzer @dangraetzer]

@dop_org Binance 🚀🚀🚀

Target: $0.20

[Daniel Graetzer @dangraetzer]

@chessgoals As a neurologist, I can verify that they did the math.

[Daniel Graetzer @dangraetzer]

@Chadwick_Moore A politician repeating catch phrases? Never seen that before…

[Daniel Graetzer @dangraetzer]

@lexi_wrldd streaky with bits that stick out underneath

[Daniel Graetzer @dangraetzer]

@GeneralMCNews What’s the actual reasoning behind the ban?

[Daniel Graetzer @dangraetzer]

@HansMokeNiemann If the chess spoke for itself why do you keep speaking about it?

[Alexandr Wang @alexandr_wang]

Today we’ve formalized an important hiring policy at Scale. We hire for MEI: merit, excellence, and intelligence.

This is the email I’ve shared with our @scale_AI team.

———————————————————

MERITOCRACY AT SCALE

In the wake of our fundraise, I’ve been getting a lot of questions about talent. All of our external success—powering breakthroughs in L4 autonomy, partnering with OpenAI on RLHF going back to GPT-2, supporting the DoD and every major AI lab, and the recent $1bn financing transaction—all of it is downstream from us hiring the best people for the job. Talent is our #1 input metric.

Because of this, I spend a lot of my time on recruiting. I either personally interview every hire or sign off on every candidate packet. It’s the thing I spend the plurality of my time on, easily. But everyone can and should contribute to this effort. There are almost a thousand of us now, and it takes a lot to hire quickly while maintaining, and continuing to raise, our bar for quality.

That’s why this is the time to codify a hiring principle that I consider crucial to our success:
Scale is a meritocracy, and we must always remain one.

Hiring on merit will be a permanent policy at Scale.

It’s a big deal whenever we invite someone to join our mission, and those decisions have never been swayed by orthodoxy or virtue signaling or whatever the current thing is. I think of our guiding principle as MEI: merit, excellence, and intelligence.

That means we hire only the best person for the job, we seek out and demand excellence, and we unapologetically prefer people who are very smart.

We treat everyone as an individual. We do not unfairly stereotype, tokenize, or otherwise treat anyone as a member of a demographic group rather than as an individual.

We believe that people should be judged by the content of their character — and, as colleagues, be additionally judged by their talent, skills, and work ethic.

There is a mistaken belief that meritocracy somehow conflicts with diversity. I strongly disagree. No group has a monopoly on excellence. A hiring process based on merit will naturally yield a variety of backgrounds, perspectives, and ideas. Achieving this requires casting a wide net for talent and then objectively selecting the best, without bias in any direction. We will not pick winners and losers based on someone being the “right” or “wrong” race, gender, and so on. It should be needless to say, and yet it needs saying: doing so would be racist and sexist, not to mention illegal.

Upholding meritocracy is good for business and is the right thing to do. This approach not only results in the strongest possible team, but also ensures we’re treating our colleagues with fairness and respect.

As a result, everyone who joins Scale can be confident that they were chosen for their outstanding talent, not any other reasons.

MEI has gotten us to where we are today. And it’s the same thing that’ll get us where we’re going, as we embark on our next chapter focusing on data abundance, frontier data, and reliable measurement to accelerate the development and adoption of AI models.

Alex

[SayinMinds @SayinMinds]

Wrong.

Tesla Shareholders approved this compensation pkg in 2018 and it wasnt for $55B, it was $2.3B.

In 2018 Elon’s comp pkg gave Elon the option to buy $2.3B of Tesla stock at the 2018 stock price

But before Elon could buy those options he first had to grow the company, he was given a list of crazy ambitious goals he needed to hit, if he didnt hit every goal then he got nothing, not a single dime & he had 10yrs to hit those goals.

No one thought what Elon signed up to was achievable, not Wall St, not the Market, not a single expert, no other CEO wouldve signed that contract, but Elon signed it.

Then to everyone’s astonishment over the following years Elon hit goal after goal, after goal, then 6yrs later he hit the final crazy ambitious goal.

Elon had delivered the impossible and now he could claim his comp pkg.

Then a Delaware judge popped into this picture, she snatched that comp pkg from Elon screaming “NO”!!!

This activist judge refused to allow Tesla’s Board & Shareholders to honour their side of the agreement with Elon.

So the Tesla Board & Shareholders stood up, held another vote and demanded this judge get out of their way, they reapproved the 2018 comp pkg and honoured their contract with Elon.

Now we know Elon’s comp pkg didnt pay him $55B, it simply allowed him to buy $2.3B of Tesla stock at the 2018 stock price….so where’d the $55B emerge from?

Well as Elon hit all those goals, over those 6yrs, Tesla’s SP had climbed and climbed, it’d gone thru the roof, where that $2.3B of stock was now worth $55B,
and every shareholders investment in Tesla had also grown by this same multiple

So Elon’s hard work grew his comp pkg from $2.3B to $55B and one last fact, Elon must buy that $2.3B of Tesla stock, he doesnt get them for free.

[Daniel Graetzer @dangraetzer]

@0xCygaar In the next cycle will we see web3 projects actually adding value to humanity? Or will it continue to be a hype sector where 99% of launches are scams or vaporware.

[Daniel Graetzer @dangraetzer]

@Jason @realDonaldTrump Trump would make a world class haiku poet.

[Daniel Graetzer @dangraetzer]

@GothamChess It took me almost 10 years of living in Spain to succumb to padel, and now I’m an addict!

ps. it’s also the best sport for smack talk

[Daniel Graetzer @dangraetzer]

@DavidHowellGM and I struggle concentrating on a single 15 minute time control game...

[Daniel Graetzer @dangraetzer]

@sjakksnakk @MacronSports @Norselab @VonDoren @shadesofnorway @Fantasy__Chess @Sjakkforbundet Still Askild!

[Daniel Graetzer @dangraetzer]

@sjakksnakk @MacronSports @Norselab @VonDoren @shadesofnorway @Fantasy__Chess @Sjakkforbundet Askild 🙏🏼

[Daniel Graetzer @dangraetzer]

@barkmeta

[Daniel Graetzer @dangraetzer]

@Phillystunna221 @Jason The Zesties! Time for a rebrand

[Daniel Graetzer @dangraetzer]

Business performance is being massively disrupted at the moment. Not only will this crush thousands of start-ups and painful integrations, it gives power into CXOs to 10x their business

and remember that GPT-3 only came out 2 years ago. Imagine where we'll be in 2 more years