‘If you’re not overdoing it, you’re underdoing it’: World’s youngest self-made billionaire Alexandr Wang on what sets successful CEOs apart from most people

In an October 2024 Substack blog post titled "Do too much," Wang shared that as a founder, he had often reflected on how notable CEOs become successful leaders. And the answer he arrived at? "They overdo it."

"As a leader, you are the upper bound for how much anyone in your company will care. You need to do more, care more, attempt more than would seem reasonable," he says. "It will seem like overkill. But too much is the right amount."

Alexandr Wang, Chief Executive Officer, Scale AI, appears before a House Committee on Armed Services | Subcommittee on Cyber, Information Technologies, and Innovation hearing "Man and Machine: Artificial Intelligence on the Battlefield" in the Rayburn House Office Building in Washington, DC, Tuesday, July 18, 2023. Photo by Sipa USA via Reuters

To illustrate his point, Wang cited visionary figures like Steve Jobs and Elon Musk.

"There is no Apple without Jobs’s ‘obsessive’ attention to detail. There is no SpaceX or Tesla without Elon’s ‘maniacal’ drive for execution. I have never seen ordinary effort lead to extraordinary results," he says.

He then turned to his own company as an example. Founded in 2016 by Wang and Lucy Guo, Scale has grown into a US$29 billion firm following a deal in June that saw Meta take a 49% stake in the firm, according to Bloomberg.

Wang said Scale’s growth was the result of what he called a "culture of overdoing." When generative AI began to take off in 2022, the company quickly redirected most of its workforce to developing data for large language models. The drastic shift took just six months while many firms would have spent quarters bogged down in planning and bureaucracy.

Scale acted immediately, a move some might have viewed as extreme, but that was key to its success, Wang noted.

The firm’s rapid rise has landed both of its co-founders on Forbes’ list of the world’s wealthiest this year, with Wang recognized as the youngest self-made billionaire and Guo the youngest self-made woman billionaire. Wang’s net worth is currently estimated at US$3.2 billion.

Wang said Scale’s reaction to the AI boom, while reasonably deemed by many at the time as "overreacting," was just "reacting," and it paved the firm’s way forward.

He went on to suggest that for truly effective leaders, what others call "overdelivering" is merely "delivering," "micromanagement is just management," and "ruthless prioritization is just prioritization."

Wang’s belief that great leaders "overdo it" echoes the mindset of other successful founders, including his Scale co-founder.

Commenting on the 996 schedule, which requires working from 9 a.m. to 9 p.m. six days a week, Guo said in a late August CNBC interview: "In general, when you're first starting your company, it's near impossible to do it without doing that [996], like you're going to need to work like 90-hour work weeks to get things off the ground."

LinkedIn’s Reid Hoffman has also remarked that work-life balance is often not an option for businesspeople who are striving to outperform their rivals.

"If I ever hear a founder talking about, ‘this is how I have a balanced life’—they’re not committed to winning," Fortune quoted Hoffman as saying in a 2014 Stanford University class. "The only really great founders are [the one’s who are] like, ‘I am going to put literally everything into doing this.’"

Research supports Wang’s view to some extent. A 2015 UBS and PwC report found that most billionaires share an "obsessive business focus." Entrepreneurs often need such single-minded optimism to take the leap of faith required to build a company — and when grounded in skill, it can inspire teams through tough times.

However, entrepreneur and Stanford educator Steve Blank warns that blind optimism can lead to failure. Suzy Welch, a professor at New York University’s Stern School of Business, notes that excessive micromanagement can burn out both leaders and employees.

"Creating something meaningful is a beautiful, and yes, scary and painful thing," Wang ended his post. "And if you’re not overdoing it, you’re underdoing it."