VC Max Altman says tech got too focused on mission: ‘We really lost our way for a little bit’

• Max Altman urged tech workers to prioritize joining the fastest-growing companies.
• He criticized tech's past focus on mission over business growth.
• Today's tech companies emphasize efficiency, lean teams, and rapid growth.

Max Altman's career advice: Focus on picking the fastest-growing company.

On an episode of the "20VC" podcast published on Sunday, Altman said that tech once became too focused on prioritizing mission over "winning."

"I say, don't care about the product. Don't care about anything, just go work at the fastest growing company," the venture capitalist said. "Because winning feels great. It feels amazing."

Altman is the cofounder of Saga, a $125 million venture fund that launched last March. Its investments include defense tech startup Anduril, Reddit, and Rippling. He is the younger brother of OpenAI CEO Sam Altman and the older brother of Jack Altman, also a VC.

On Sunday's podcast, Max Altman said that tech lost its way in the last few years before 2020. Before becoming an investor, he worked at Microsoft, Zenefits, and Rippling.

He said that everyone in tech was making their company about their mission and "saving the world."

"We're doing on-demand dry cleaning and on-demand dog walking, but it's gonna help the world this way, and you should feel good about yourself," Altman added.

"I'm like, just go build a great business," he said. "Winning's the most fun thing here. And I think we really lost our way for a little a bit."

In the last two years, tech has largely moved in the direction Altman says he prefers. The industry has been prioritizing growing quickly and doing more with less.

Companies have cut middle-level management in favor of more streamlined teams and fewer tiers of hierarchy, which they say should lead to less bureaucracy.

Across the industry, execs are sharing memos filled with words such as "efficiency" and "scrappiness and frugality."

In April, Intel's CEO Lip-Bu Tan detailed his plan for the company's culture: more time in the office, less admin, and leaner teams.

"The most important KPI for many managers at Intel has been the size of their teams," Tan wrote, referring to key performance indicators. "Going forward, this will not be the case. The best leaders get the most done with the fewest people."

"We want to operate like the world's largest startup," Amazon's Andy Jassy wrote in a September 2024 letter. "That means having a passion for constantly inventing for customers, strong urgency (for most big opportunities, it's a race!), high ownership, fast decision-making, scrappiness and frugality, deeply-connected collaboration."

Late last month, Amazon laid off 14,000 corporate employees, citing AI's rapid advancement.