The OpenAI Playbook: When Momentum Meets N-of-1 Talent

Hold tight: OpenAI just bought the right to purchase 10% of AMD — a $383B company — for $1.6M instead of $38B in exchange for a 6GW chip order that turns AMD into a real contender against NVIDIA overnight

The pessimists are having a field day. Circular revenue! Peak bubble behavior! And yeah, when you can't tell who's the customer, vendor, or investor anymore, something feels weird.

But pessimists don't build the future. They sound smart pointing out what could go wrong, while the optimists are busy building what could go right. It’s easy to dismiss this deal as bubble nonsense, but we should also study it to see what we can learn from it. 

Through that lens, OpenAI did something brilliant.

They recognized three things. First, they've got ridiculous momentum — and by momentum I mean revenue velocity. They're the fastest company to ever hit $1B, $5B, and $10B. That speed makes people pay attention, and attention creates options. Second, their real bottleneck isn't talent or product. It's compute. They need chips yesterday. Third, everyone's fighting over NVIDIA capacity while AMD sits in distant second, desperate for a marquee win.

Someone at OpenAI connected these dots and structured a deal that broke everyone's brain, turning a vendor relationship into an ownership position at a 99.9% discount.

Every company that changes the world has moments like this. When momentum creates the opening for an unconventional move that locks in dominance. So we studied the pattern to see what those of us building GTM engines can learn from it.

The pattern is everywhere once you look for it. Companies that matter create momentum, and then capitalize on it. Sometimes it's a strategic acquisition. Sometimes a partnership nobody saw coming. The move itself varies. The timing doesn't.

Google had search dominance, but that wasn't enough. They locked down distribution with AOL, Yahoo, and Apple. They also bought the future: YouTube for video, Android for mobile, DoubleClick for ads. 

Microsoft's story is messier but more instructive. They completely whiffed on social and mobile. Billions wasted, years lost. But when Satya took over, they nailed three acquisitions that mattered: GitHub, Linux and LinkedIn.  LinkedIn brought Kevin Scott, who saw the AI wave coming and pushed for the $13B OpenAI bet that nobody understood at the time. 

Then there's the graveyard. Yahoo had the cash and momentum to buy Google for $3B. They passed. Had another shot at Facebook for $1B. Passed again. Blockbuster laughed Netflix out of the room when they offered to sell for $50M. Nokia saw the smartphone revolution coming, tried to partner their way through it, and failed. 

What's the difference?

It's not recognizing momentum - everyone knows when they're hot. The difference is execution and execution comes down to people. 

The wins had what we'd call n-of-1 talent running point. The losses had good-enough people trying to do extraordinary things. Good-enough doesn't cut it when you're attempting the extraordinary. 

This matters right now for GTM teams. We're staring at a platform shift that's going to create massive opportunities and brutal casualties. The companies that win won't be the ones with just momentum. They'll be the ones with momentum AND the people capable of turning it into something more permanent.

Today, momentum — revenue velocity — is harder to generate than ever. You need 1,000 touchpoints to book one meeting. It takes 40 months of revenue to break even on a deal. And AI's about to make it worse. More competitors, more noise, less differentiation.

So when do you actually achieve momentum? When you're one of the few companies actually accelerating? That's when you need to be ruthless about converting it into permanent advantage.

You’ll have numerous options. You could structure a partnership that transforms your distribution overnight. You could finally land that VP Sales who wouldn't return your calls six months ago. You could offer competitors' customers incentives to break their contracts early. 

The moves aren't complicated, but the execution requires n-of-1 talent running point.

Unfortunately, today most GTM organizations are built on compromise. You need to hit a number urgently, so you hire the person who can do today's job well enough. Never mind that their ceiling is next year's floor. You tell yourself you'll upgrade later. 

By the time "later" arrives, that B-player has hired C-players. Your momentum has attracted opportunities you can't execute on. The partnership that could've 10x'd your business gets fumbled. The market window that was wide open starts closing.

We studied dozens of these moments. The companies that converted momentum into dominance had one thing in common: they refused to compromise on talent when everyone else did. Not when they were desperate. Not when the board was breathing down their neck. Not when "good enough" was sitting right there, ready to start Monday.

This sounds obvious. It's not. Even the best GTM leaders have made these compromises.  

In a world where GTM gets harder every quarter and windows close faster than ever, you can't build an organization planning to fix it later. The talent density you accept today determines whether you can capitalize on the options momentum creates or not. 

The OpenAI-AMD deal happened because someone extraordinary was in the room to structure it. Your version of that deal will come, but will you have someone capable of pulling it off?

Last week I was at a Pavilion Gold dinner in New York. Something that's struck me—no matter how much success you experience as a GTM operator, the pressure never abates, and we can never assume anything about someone else's situation. We were going around the table, and there was an incredible moment of honesty when one of the folks in attendance shared that despite all the success they'd experienced, and despite having seen unicorn status repeatedly, they still hadn't had the windfall everyone assumed they'd had.

That's one of the reasons every person reporting to the CEO has it harder than the CEO. The CEO can be in the room, ensuring they get their side allocation secondary; everyone else just has to wait for the CEO to emerge and hear how they did.

Just another reason we all need a community of peers—not just to share best practices but to empower each other at the negotiating table and give each other the confidence to receive what we've fairly earned.

— Sam Jacobs, CEO of Pavilion and Co-Host of Topline Podcast.

Become a Topline insider by joining our Slack channel.

Artwork by Neil Topinka.

We want to hear your feedback! Let us know your thoughts.