I can't believe I'm about to defend VCs and "senior management" but here goes.
I've worked for two start-ups in my life.
The first start-up had dog-shit technology (initially) and top-notch management. CEO told me early on that VCs invest on the quality of management because they trust good senior executives to hire good researchers and let them pivot into profitable areas (and pivoting is almost always needed).
I thought the CEO was full of shit and simply patting himself on the back. Company pivoted HARD and IPOed around 2006 and now has a MC of ~ $10 billion.
The second start-up I worked with was founded by a Nobel laureate and the tech was based on his research. This time management was dog-shit. Management fumbled the tech and went out of business.
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Not saying Altman deserves uncritical praise. All I'm saying is that I used to diminish the importance of quality senior leadership.
Quality senior leadership is, indeed, very important.
However, far, far too many people see "their company makes a lot of money" or "they are charismatic and talk a good game" and think that means the senior leadership is high-quality.
True quality is much harder to measure, especially in the short term. As you imply, part of it is being able to choose good management—but measuring the quality of management is also hard, and most of the corporate world today has utterly backwards ideas about what actually makes good managers (eg, "willing to abuse employees to force them to work long hours", etc).