> i dont want to sell anything. i just want to build things.
These are incompatible. If you start a company, whether you're CTO or CEO, you'll need to sell things. Both founders have to focus on the product, since it's being sold to people. And people refuse what they don't like. Which means your most valuable feedback mechanism comes from trying to sell something and then doing something different in response, until people buy it.
> could i just pull up with a list of my research interests, convince people its a sellable product, and score funding?
You can, but your company will eventually die because you won't be able to raise more money. VCs want signs that a company is growing. So if you raise money and then ask for more without strong sales, they won't give you more.
> then pitch myself to vcs with hope of funding whatever topics im interested and have my company function like a research group except instead of publishing papers we build products? like no profit no big deal, i never intended to profit. which, is this not what openai is doing?
That's not what OpenAI is doing. They're so focused on selling that they were even willing to sacrifice some of their research culture just to get everyone on the same page of "we have to make money, otherwise research can't happen." Sam explained to everyone that money comes from sales, not research, and money is a requirement for research. Thus they had to focus on selling.