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Jonathan Ross<\/a>, the founder and former CEO of AI chipmaker Groq, helmed the company for seven years before leaving in December to join Nvidia full-time as a chief software architect. In a recent interview, Ross acknowledged that he made management mistakes earlier in his career that cost Groq years of progress.<\/p>\n \u201cI was a terrible leader. I was one of the world\u2019s worst leaders when I started,\u201d Ross said on an episode of the Founders<\/em> podcast<\/a> released earlier this week. \u201cThe first thing that you have to do as a founder is you have to go from the technical thing that you know how to do and that you can add value with, to learning how to manage people. For me, that probably cost Groq three to four years.\u201d<\/p>\n As CEO of Groq, Ross said he made the mistake of hiring people who needed to be told what to do and then giving them too much responsibility.\u00a0<\/p>\n \u201cWhat ended up happening was things would just grind to a halt because they wouldn\u2019t know what to do, and I wasn\u2019t telling them what to do, and they were used to being told what to do,\u201d Ross said on the podcast.<\/p>\n Ross solved the problem by becoming more selective about hiring. Instead of looking for positive attributes or reasons to hire a person, he switched to looking for negatives or reasons not to hire them. He shifted from \u201ctrying to grow talent\u201d to \u201ctrying to select talent.\u201d<\/p>\n Ross founded Groq a decade ago with the intent of building AI chips called language processing units. The custom chips are in direct competition with Nvidia\u2019s graphics processing units.\u00a0<\/p>\n In December, Nvidia signed a $20 billion<\/a> licensing and talent agreement with Groq that allowed Ross and other key engineers to join Nvidia full-time while allowing Groq to maintain its status as an independent company. Groq\u2019s new CEO is Adam Winter, a former vice president at the firm.\u00a0<\/p>\n Ross isn\u2019t the only leader to own up to management mistakes. On the First Time Founders<\/em><\/a> podcast in December, Dylan Field, cofounder and CEO of design software company Figma, said that it took time for him to learn how to manage people effectively.\u00a0<\/p>\n \u201cManagement and leadership are different,\u201d Field said on the podcast. \u201cYou can be a good leader and a bad manager or vice versa.\u201d<\/p>\n Field said that leadership came naturally to him, so he thought he would be a good manager. Instead, he found that there was a \u201cwhole new skill set around management\u201d that he \u201cdefinitely didn\u2019t know\u201d and had to learn the hard way, through trial and error.\u00a0<\/p>\n Field\u2019s experience is similar to that of Facebook and Asana cofounder Dustin Moskovitz. In an interview in October, Moskovitz said that the CEO role was \u201cexhausting\u201d and didn\u2019t suit his introverted personality. He led Asana for 15 years as CEO before stepping down<\/a> in July 2025.\u00a0<\/p>\n<\/p><\/div>\n Jonathan Ross<\/a>, the founder and former CEO of AI chipmaker Groq, helmed the company for seven years before leaving in December to join Nvidia full-time as a chief software architect. In a recent interview, Ross acknowledged that he made management mistakes earlier in his career that cost Groq years of progress.<\/p>\n \u201cI was a terrible leader. I was one of the world\u2019s worst leaders when I started,\u201d Ross said on an episode of the Founders<\/em> podcast<\/a> released earlier this week. \u201cThe first thing that you have to do as a founder is you have to go from the technical thing that you know how to do and that you can add value with, to learning how to manage people. For me, that probably cost Groq three to four years.\u201d<\/p>\n As CEO of Groq, Ross said he made the mistake of hiring people who needed to be told what to do and then giving them too much responsibility.\u00a0<\/p>\n<\/p><\/div>\n<\/p><\/div>\nGroq signed a $20 billion deal with Nvidia<\/h2>\n
Other leaders have made mistakes too<\/h2>\n
Key Takeaways<\/h2>\n
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