Brand strategy
Dario Amodei, CEO of Anthropic, spends forty per cent of his working time on culture. What every entrepreneur can learn from this unusual leadership.
Dario Amodei leadership has one striking characteristic. The co-founder and CEO of Anthropic spends between a third and forty per cent of his working time safeguarding his company's culture. Not on technology or strategy, but on mission, values and mutual challenge. Amodei mentioned it himself in an interview on the Dwarkesh Podcast in 2025, and it has since been picked up by Inc.com and Fortune, amongst others.
That sounds like a footnote in an interview. It's a statement that overturns the entire assumption underlying modern leadership. We've learnt for years that a CEO fills his days with product roadmaps, quarterly figures, investors and strategic plans. The man who helped create Claude, one of the most powerful AI models of the moment, says that safeguarding culture is more important than all those things combined.
It's even forty per cent more important. Forty per cent of his time more important.
In this piece I show how Dario Amodei leadership works, why it works and why it's also relevant for an entrepreneur with three or thirty people round the table.
Amodei (San Francisco, 1983) is co-founder and CEO of Anthropic, the company behind the AI assistant Claude. He founded it in 2021 together with his sister Daniela, who as president leads the commercial side: operations, sales, policy and funding.
Before Anthropic, Dario was VP of Research at OpenAI. He left there because he wanted to take a different path: building AI with safety as the starting point, not an afterthought. That's the core of Anthropic. The company is now one of the most valuable technology companies in the world.
In a conversation on the Dwarkesh Podcast, Amodei said: I probably spend a third, maybe 40 percent, of my time making sure the culture of Anthropic is good. Freely translated: somewhere between a third and forty per cent of his time, by his own estimate, goes to safeguarding culture.
Let that sink in. The CEO of one of the most advanced technology companies in the world doesn't spend the largest part of his time on technology. He spends it on maintaining the values that determine how the company works.
Not via an HR department. Not in a handbook. He does it himself. Every day.
Three pillars that make Dario Amodei leadership concrete.
At Anthropic, everyone, including Amodei, has a public Slack channel: a notebook channel. There, everyone shares ideas, questions, half-formed thoughts. Amol Avasare, head of growth at Anthropic, compared it on Lenny's Podcast to an internal Twitter feed. Every employee can gain insight into the ideas of researchers, product teams and the CEO.
This isn't an open-door policy. This is an open-brain policy.
Amodei adds something that sounds much more inviting than it is in practice: Just argue with me. Contradict me. Anthropic calls itself a high-trust, low-ego organization, an organisation where direct communication is the norm, regardless of rank or title.
Compare that with the average SME. How many employees do you dare to ask to openly contradict you, and how many of them do you really listen to? That's precisely the question that Dario Amodei leadership raises.
How much time does Dario Amodei spend on Anthropic's culture?
Between a third and forty per cent of his working time, by his own account. Amodei mentioned that in 2025 in an interview on the Dwarkesh Podcast, and it's been confirmed by Inc.com and Fortune. It's not about technology or strategy, but about mission, values and actively inviting challenge. For the CEO of one of the most expensive AI companies in the world, that's a striking priority.
The difference between Amodei and most leaders I've guided in my career isn't in the presence of a mission. Everyone has a mission these days. The difference lies in the frequency of maintenance.
Amodei says: Everyone has faith that everyone else there is working for the right reason. Freely translated: everyone trusts that the other is present for the right reason. That doesn't arise spontaneously. That arises because someone keeps that conviction alive daily.
A mission you don't maintain daily isn't a mission. It's a poster on the wall. You get used to a poster. You don't see it anymore.
Anthropic is deliberately built as an organisation where collaboration is the norm, not internal competition. Amodei has suggested that internal rivalry undermines other AI companies. His alternative: shared trust, shared purpose.
That sounds soft. It's the opposite. It requires a leader who sets aside his ego and places the team's success above his own visibility.
I know few entrepreneurs who succeed at that. Nor do I, always.
You don't need to run a billion-pound company to learn something from Dario Amodei leadership. The principles scale down to the team, the network, the family.
A few questions.
Do your clients, your team and your partners know what you're working on and why that matters? Or does everyone work on a need-to-know basis, with you as the only one who sees the whole picture?
Do you have someone in your circle who dares to correct you? Not to please you, but because you benefit from it. And if you have that person: do you actually listen?
When did you last pause to consider your own mission? Not the document, but the question beneath the document: am I still doing this for the right reason?
Do you work with people or do you work alongside people? Is your network a team, or is it an address book you open twice a year?
Anyone who takes these questions seriously eventually arrives at brand strategy: not as a department or poster, but as the daily decision about what you do and with whom.
With brands like BenefitStudio, I see that pattern recurring constantly: the organisations that are most consistent in their communication are precisely the brands where the leadership team makes the values visible daily. As you grow further as an organisation, that consistency also requires a structure: how you consciously anchor your brand across teams and locations.
How do you make the company mission everyday practice?
By giving it attention every day, not by updating the document once a year. At Anthropic, Amodei does this via public Slack channels where everyone can read along and think along, and by actively inviting employees to contradict him: Just argue with me. A mission you don't maintain becomes a poster on the wall: you don't see it anymore.
I work in a network. Not on principle, but out of necessity. Experienced developers, designers, photographers and strategists supplement what I'm not. Since my recovery from a brain incident at the end of 2024, I know more sharply than ever that I'm not a soloist. Rhythm, light and movement in my body are no longer a luxury, but maintenance.
The company is no different. Culture isn't a luxury, it's maintenance.
What I see in Dario Amodei leadership and what I try to apply on my own small scale: culture stands or falls by what the director does with it daily. Not by what he's written about it. And we increasingly need good leadership. That's where the core lies for me.
In a time when the loudest voice often wins and directors shout out their policy in tweets and talk shows, someone like Amodei stands out precisely because of what he doesn't do. No posing, no enemies of the week, no theatrical loyalty tests. But a team that knows its work and knows where it's heading.
That's not a hero's role. It's a craft. And precisely that craft is missing in too many places where people work together, such as at governments and companies that don't realise their culture is already leaking. For entrepreneurs, including me, that's the uncomfortable example: not to copy the man, but the attitude. Ensuring that for you too it's about what you're building and with whom, instead of about how you sound.
The three pillars of Dario Amodei leadership — open communication, mission as daily maintenance and collaboration above competition — seem simple. They're difficult to sustain. What they have in common: they require attention instead of action. Attention to what's already there, instead of building something new.
An entrepreneur who takes his brand seriously also takes his culture seriously. Not as a poster on the wall, but as daily practice. The best leader of 2026 isn't the one who masters the newest technology. It's the one who spends forty per cent of his time on something nobody sees, but everyone feels.
Which forty per cent will you reassess today?
Dwarkesh Podcast – Dario Amodei, We are near the end of the exponential
Lenny's Newsletter – Amol Avasare, Anthropic's $1B to $19B growth run
Inc.com – Anthropic's CEO Spends 40 Percent of His Time on 1 Thing
Fortune – Anthropic's Dario Amodei says he spends up to 40% of his time on company culture
Why does Dario Amodei choose collaboration above internal competition?
Because internal rivalry, according to Amodei, undermines other AI companies and obstructs good decisions. Anthropic calls itself a high-trust, low-ego organization: shared trust and a shared purpose deliver better outcomes than mutual competition. It requires a leader who sets aside his ego and places the team's success above his own visibility.
Written by
Peter van der SteegePeter van der Steege is a brand strategist, designer and AI director. He builds brands for entrepreneurs and writes about what makes brands strong, from strategy to the role of AI and humanity. He lives and works in Groningen.
