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FTX investor Sequoia removed its glowing profile of Sam Bankman-Fried

businessinsider.com

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Re: FTX investor Sequoia removed its glowing profile of Sam Bankman-Fried

#81

Post by Scoundreller »

lordnacho wrote: post #72
stephc_int13 wrote: post #52

What is striking about the Sam Bankman-Fried case is that for a long time he was considered to be one of the few who really knew what he was doing and also an advocate for more regulation. It appears to have been a smoke screen, given the financial fragility of his multiple companies, he could not have been looking for more scrutiny and regulation, he was playing Poker with politicians and his competitors. Same with…

Unfortunately I think the biggest red flag is one that doesn't become widely publicized, and I don't know if it happened in this case: a well-respected senior hire comes into the firm and leaves quickly, after discovering the mess. Excuses are made if it does become public, but most people brush it off as not clicking with the culture. Someone I know joined a rather large investment firm and this happened. I only kne…

Or a sudden change of course of the business and simultaneous departures. Obviously not everyone was on-board.

When the RIAA went started suing mp3 downloaders, the CEO left for “family reasons”, but a few decades later it came out that they saw downloading music off the internet as their future business model. Napster was a representation of her vision of a virtual jukebox that could play any song ever made.

(Can’t remember for the life of me which documentary she was filmed describing that)

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hilary_Rosen

Re: FTX investor Sequoia removed its glowing profile of Sam Bankman-Fried

#82

Post by jgalt212 »

300bps wrote: post #76
ZeljkoS wrote: post #61

There are some golden statements in the original Sequoia article: https://web.archive.org/web/20221027181005/https://www.sequo... For example, Sam's opinion on books: “Oh, yeah?” says SBF. “I would never read a book.” I’m not sure what to say. I’ve read a book a week for my entire adult life and have written three of my own. “I’m very skeptical of books. I don’t want to say no book is ever worth reading, but I actual…

I guess that explains a lot No explanation necessary. Anyone paying attention knew this was a scam. SBF used his well connected parents to start a scam company. He created back doors in his accounting software to hide money flows. He hired his girlfriend (Harry Potter fan in her 20s) to be CEO of Alameda trading and transferred $10 billion in client funds for her to trade like it was their own money. Declared bankrup…

This is interview with Alameda CEO (Caroline Ellisaon) is bonkers. I would not trust her with $10 of my money at the dog track, much less $10B of mis-used client funds.

https://www.reddit.com/r/wallstreetbets/comments/ys4lmo/she_...

Re: FTX investor Sequoia removed its glowing profile of Sam Bankman-Fried

#83

Post by ahelwer »

lordnacho wrote: post #75
ZeljkoS wrote: post #61

There are some golden statements in the original Sequoia article: https://web.archive.org/web/20221027181005/https://www.sequo... For example, Sam's opinion on books: “Oh, yeah?” says SBF. “I would never read a book.” I’m not sure what to say. I’ve read a book a week for my entire adult life and have written three of my own. “I’m very skeptical of books. I don’t want to say no book is ever worth reading, but I actual…

Wow, I'm really surprised. Of all the people who could make anti-intellectual statements, I really thought SBF was one of the last. I get that many books these days are long winded (looking at you Nassim Taleb) ways to make a point, but someone absolutely needs to document all the thinking somewhere. Whether you read the whole book in detail is also optional. But to generalize this much about all books is astonishing…

Being an effective altruist doesn't make someone an intellectual. They teach the boy-in-pond thought experiment the first week of any college elective ethics class. They hand out The Life You Could Save to all harvard undergrads in the first week. Locking yourself into a myopic utilitarianism that avoids all structural critiques seems roughly the opposite of an open intellectual perspective.

Re: FTX investor Sequoia removed its glowing profile of Sam Bankman-Fried

#84

Post by acdha »

300bps wrote: post #76
ZeljkoS wrote: post #61

There are some golden statements in the original Sequoia article: https://web.archive.org/web/20221027181005/https://www.sequo... For example, Sam's opinion on books: “Oh, yeah?” says SBF. “I would never read a book.” I’m not sure what to say. I’ve read a book a week for my entire adult life and have written three of my own. “I’m very skeptical of books. I don’t want to say no book is ever worth reading, but I actual…

I guess that explains a lot No explanation necessary. Anyone paying attention knew this was a scam. SBF used his well connected parents to start a scam company. He created back doors in his accounting software to hide money flows. He hired his girlfriend (Harry Potter fan in her 20s) to be CEO of Alameda trading and transferred $10 billion in client funds for her to trade like it was their own money. Declared bankrup…

Wouldn’t the Alameda CEO’s experience as a Jane Street trader be more relevant than the fiction she likes?

That doesn’t change the larger story of inexperienced people being given money far beyond their demonstrated ability to manage it, but not listing it makes your comment read as if you’re attacking her for some other reason than her professional choices — like describing Vitaly Buterin parenthetically as a former Workd of Warcraft player.

Re: FTX investor Sequoia removed its glowing profile of Sam Bankman-Fried

#85

Post by jgalt212 »

stephc_int13 wrote: post #52

What is striking about the Sam Bankman-Fried case is that for a long time he was considered to be one of the few who really knew what he was doing and also an advocate for more regulation. It appears to have been a smoke screen, given the financial fragility of his multiple companies, he could not have been looking for more scrutiny and regulation, he was playing Poker with politicians and his competitors. Same with…

> an advocate for more regulation.

Perhaps he was envisioning a GFC style bailout in case one of his martingale bets increased beyond the size of M2.

Re: FTX investor Sequoia removed its glowing profile of Sam Bankman-Fried

#86

Post by snapcaster »

enkid wrote: post #77
300bps wrote: post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I guess that explains a lot No explanation necessary. Anyone paying attention knew this was a scam. SBF used his well connected parents to start a scam company. He created back doors in his accounting software to hide money flows. He hired his girlfriend (Harry Potter fan in her 20s) to be CEO of Alameda trading and transferred $10 billion in client funds for her to trade like it was their own money. Declared bankrup…

Why is being a Harry Potter fan a pertinent detail? Plenty of people still like things they picked up when they were kids.

No post body was provided.

Re: FTX investor Sequoia removed its glowing profile of Sam Bankman-Fried

#87

Post by Hamuko »

ZeljkoS wrote: post #61

There are some golden statements in the original Sequoia article: https://web.archive.org/web/20221027181005/https://www.sequo... For example, Sam's opinion on books: “Oh, yeah?” says SBF. “I would never read a book.” I’m not sure what to say. I’ve read a book a week for my entire adult life and have written three of my own. “I’m very skeptical of books. I don’t want to say no book is ever worth reading, but I actual…

>I think, if you wrote a book, you fucked up, and it should have been a six-paragraph blog post.

Either his three books are really short, or they're one of his several fuck ups.

Re: FTX investor Sequoia removed its glowing profile of Sam Bankman-Fried

#89

Post by stephc_int13 »

jgalt212 wrote: post #85
stephc_int13 wrote: post #52

What is striking about the Sam Bankman-Fried case is that for a long time he was considered to be one of the few who really knew what he was doing and also an advocate for more regulation. It appears to have been a smoke screen, given the financial fragility of his multiple companies, he could not have been looking for more scrutiny and regulation, he was playing Poker with politicians and his competitors. Same with…

> an advocate for more regulation. Perhaps he was envisioning a GFC style bailout in case one of his martingale bets increased beyond the size of M2.

He knew that playing friends with people in power was good insurance policy and that he could trick them.

Re: FTX investor Sequoia removed its glowing profile of Sam Bankman-Fried

#90

Post by chucksmash »

belter wrote: post #60
sam345 wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'll answer. It sucks. But they had a leg tingle during the SBFs presentation when he said that his vision was for FTX app to buy bananas. So they bought in. Now to be fair all facts are in so maybe it went bad after so maybe controls were more of a factor than due diligence.

Are these the same VC's that, would grill, up and down, eventual founders on: - The minute details of a startup 5 year out business plan, cash-flow previsions, the impact of currency fluctuations of their profitable horizon...but ... - Would allow him to get his girlfriend as the CEO?

> Would allow him to get his girlfriend as the CEO?

Ellison was CEO of the hedge fund, Alameda Research, not FTX.

Also, while the descriptions of her in this and other threads as a "Harry Potter fan" and "his girlfriend" dovetail with the erstwhile HN tendency toward "it's so simple, everybody is an idiot except for me," I don't think their relationship was public knowledge until quite recently and until that point she was probably more likely viewed through the lens of "Jane Street alum and Stanford grad."

Which is not that different from SBF's VC friendly pedigree of "Jane Street alum and MIT grad," so given their relationship wasn't public, it's a bit unreasonable to claim she should have been the red flag.

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