{"id":549389,"date":"2026-03-27T23:49:29","date_gmt":"2026-03-27T23:49:29","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/549389\/"},"modified":"2026-03-27T23:49:29","modified_gmt":"2026-03-27T23:49:29","slug":"30-year-old-ceo-of-11-billion-harvey-earned-the-backing-of-openai-and-sam-altman-he-says-you-have-to-re-earn-your-role-every-6-months","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/549389\/","title":{"rendered":"30-year-old CEO of $11 billion Harvey earned the backing of OpenAI and Sam Altman. He says you have to ‘re-earn’ your role every 6 months"},"content":{"rendered":"

As fears mount over AI replacing jobs\u2014or workers being outpaced by more AI-savvy peers<\/a>\u2014standing still has become a liability. For Winston Weinberg, the CEO of AI legal startup Harvey<\/a>\u2014now valued at $11 billion\u2014that reality isn\u2019t theoretical, it\u2019s how he runs his company.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cYou have to re-earn your position every six months; you need to re-earn your role at Harvey every six months,\u201d Weinberg said on the latest episode of Fortune\u2019s Term Sheet podcast<\/a>. \u201cIt includes me, 100%.\u201d<\/p>\n

The mandate isn\u2019t about churn for the sake of it\u2014it\u2019s about survival in an era where innovation is compounding quickly and falling behind can lead to dire consequences<\/a>. That pressure is especially acute in Silicon Valley, where startups are racing not just against time, but against each other to build the defining AI companies of the next decade. For Harvey, that\u2019s top of mind.<\/p>\n

\u201cIf you don\u2019t reinvent yourself as a company and as a leader, and whatever your role is at a company right now, fast enough, you will lose,\u201d Weinberg added in the interview with Fortune\u2019s Allie Garfinkle<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Weinberg, a lawyer by training, cofounded Harvey in 2022 alongside Gabriel Pereyra, a former Meta<\/a> and Google<\/a> DeepMind<\/a> AI research scientist. In the company\u2019s early days, the pair notably cold-emailed OpenAI CEO Sam Altman<\/a>\u2014an outreach that eventually helped them secure early access to GPT-4 and backing from the OpenAI Startup Fund. Harvey, which builds AI tools for law firms and in-house legal teams, has also attracted investment from Sequoia<\/a> and Kleiner Perkins<\/a>.<\/p>\n

From the beginning, Weinberg said, the company survived depending on more than the technology\u2014it required a culture that could move fast and adapt constantly: \u201cThe thing that I care the most about with our culture is decisiveness,\u201d he said. \u201cI think you have to basically build a company that has a culture of making decisions very quickly and being OK to make mistakes.\u201d<\/p>\n

Adaptability has been critical to Harvey\u2019s $11 billion scale<\/p>\n

That willingness to take risks and learn from them, Weinberg added, has been central to distinguishing Harvey from the influx of AI startups<\/a>\u2014and to helping it scale into a multi-billion-dollar business.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe reality is, the folks that I have found that haven\u2019t scaled\u2014and when I myself think that I\u2019m not scaling\u2014it\u2019s because I haven\u2019t learned enough in the past couple of months,\u201d he added.<\/p>\n

So, when evaluating hires or emerging leaders, Weinberg looks for people who can grow quickly with the company\u2014those who can go from managing no one to leading teams of 20, 50, or even 100.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe main thing I look at is, can they make decisions, own that decision, and then pivot when they make a mistake?\u201d he said. \u201cInstead of penalizing the mistake, penalize not making the decision or not learning from that mistake going forward.\u201d<\/p>\n

A need for constant reinvention and learning is something other top executives have long echoed.<\/p>\n

Accenture<\/a> CEO Julie Sweet<\/a> told Fortune last year that AI is creating a need to fundamentally change business processes.<\/p>\n

\u201cIn order to capture the opportunity with AI, you really have to be willing to rewire your company,\u201d Sweet said on the inaugural episode of the Fortune 500 Titans and Disruptors of Industry podcast<\/a>. \u201cMany times, when clients are saying, \u2019 We\u2019re not getting a lot out of AI, it\u2019s because they\u2019re trying to apply it to how they operate today.\u201d<\/p>\n

Sweet stressed that adapting to AI isn\u2019t a one-time shift; it\u2019s an ongoing process.<\/p>\n

\u201cThis isn\u2019t about using AI on top of what you do today,\u201d Sweet added. \u201cIf you\u2019re not significantly changing the way you operate, then you\u2019re not reinventing, and you\u2019re not going to capture the value.\u201d<\/p>\n

At Amazon<\/a>, CEO Andy Jassy<\/a> has similarly emphasized the importance of continuous learning\u2014especially through experimentation.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe ask why, and why not, constantly,\u201d Jassy wrote last year in a letter to shareholders<\/a>. \u201cIt helps us deconstruct problems, get to root causes, understand blockers, and unlock doors that might have previously seemed impenetrable.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"As fears mount over AI replacing jobs\u2014or workers being outpaced by more AI-savvy peers\u2014standing still has become a…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":549390,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[45],"tags":[182,181,507,525,2536,527,158,12434,6655,1283,7047,98131,528,114925,11460,74],"class_list":["post-549389","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-artificial-intelligence","tag-ai","tag-artificial-intelligence","tag-artificialintelligence","tag-careers","tag-chief-executive-officer-ceo","tag-entrepreneurs","tag-entrepreneurship","tag-founders","tag-legal","tag-openai","tag-sam-altman","tag-sequoia","tag-start-ups","tag-tech-start-ups","tag-tech-workers","tag-technology"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/549389","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=549389"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/549389\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/549390"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=549389"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=549389"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=549389"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}