Groq’s Ross admits leadership mistakes cost years

Groq founder – Groq’s cofounder and former CEO Jonathan Ross says he was “one of the world’s worst leaders” at the start, arguing his management learning curve cost the chipmaker three to four years. The admission comes alongside details of Groq’s early hiring approach—and a

On a podcast episode released Sunday, Jonathan Ross looked back at Groq’s earliest days and didn’t soften the blow.

“I was a terrible leader. I was one of the world’s worst leaders when I started,” Ross said on the “Founders” podcast. He traced the damage not to technology, but to the shift every founder eventually faces: moving from building what you know to learning how to lead people.

“The 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,” Ross said. “For me, that probably cost Groq three to four years.”

Groq was co-founded in 2016 by Ross, a former Google engineer, to build chips the company calls language processing units. Those custom AI inference chips are positioned as an alternative to Nvidia’s graphics processing units. By December, Groq and Nvidia cemented a major partnership: Nvidia struck a roughly $20 billion licensing and talent deal with Groq. The agreement brought Ross. Groq president Sunny Madra. and other key engineers to Nvidia. while still allowing Groq to remain an independent company.

At Nvidia, Ross serves as chief software architect. Groq, in turn, is helmed by Adam Winter, a former vice president at the company.

Ross said his early missteps were rooted in how he handled responsibility inside the company. As a founder, he said he erred in not hiring people who could operate autonomously and then delegating too much responsibility.

“What ended up happening was things would just grind to a halt because they wouldn’t know what to do, and I wasn’t telling them what to do, and they were used to being told what to do,” the founder said.

For Ross, the turning point came when his hiring approach changed. He described moving from searching for “positives” while growing talent—toward a more selective lens focused on “negatives” when trying to select the right talent.

“I went from looking for positives, which is what you do when you’re trying to grow talent, to looking for negatives, which is what you do when you’re trying to select talent,” he said.

Other tech leaders have shared similar early management lessons. On a December podcast. Figma CEO Dylan Field said he confused leadership with management and had to learn basics like holding one-on-one meetings. building relationships. and creating accountability. “Management and leadership are different,” Field said. “You can be a good leader and a bad manager or vice versa.”.

Last May. Duolingo CEO Luis von Ahn said that all founders should be micromanagers until they had 30 employees—but that he took it too far. micromanaging until he had 50. “At this point. I also have learned that most of my job is culture carrier. mascot. and just making some of the kind of tough philosophical decisions. ” von Ahn said.

Between Ross’s admission and the structure of Groq’s subsequent deal with Nvidia. one reality becomes hard to miss: Groq’s technology story and its leadership story collided early. and the learning curve carried a price. Ross says the company paid in time—three to four years—before the hiring and delegation changes he described helped it get unstuck.

Groq Jonathan Ross Nvidia language processing units AI inference chips chief software architect Adam Winter Sunny Madra Founders podcast Figma Dylan Field Duolingo Luis von Ahn leadership management