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Sam Altman is not on YC's board. So why claim to be its chair?

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Re: Sam Altman is not on YC's board. So why claim to be its chair?

#101

Post by chipdart »

resoluteteeth wrote: post #90

I'm not a Sam Altman fan but this really seems like nothing. If he was personally going around telling people he was YC's chairman that would be quite different, but this is just a few documents that he obviously didn't write himself.

I think you're completely wrong. It's worse than going around saying stuff, it's publishing that statement on official documents for multiple years.

From the article:

> Yet, Altman has been claiming the chairman title for at least three years in securities filings and a website associated with the AltC Acquisition Corp., a special purpose acquisition corporation, or SPAC, that he registered in 2021.

Re: Sam Altman is not on YC's board. So why claim to be its chair?

#102

Post by TheNewsIsHere »

dylan604 wrote: post #95
gigatree wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is the best person for any position (especially one with tremendous implications for the future of humanity) someone with his character?

Does it matter if the person is the best or if people think they are? Even our government is led by people that think the person is the best for the role even if they really are not. Why would anyone care about this particular company when that's their view on the gov't?

I would submit that if we care about outcomes then it matters if someone is the best suited for the role.

There will always be subjectivity, and “the best” is going to be at least partly defined in terms of who is available. Nevertheless we could insist upon certain standards. Not being a pathological liar, a sociopath, deeply conflicted or self-interested, and so on, seem like good starting positions.

I’m not arguing that we live in a reality that reflects this, of course. Just that it would be nice to.

Re: Sam Altman is not on YC's board. So why claim to be its chair?

#103

Post by refulgentis »

jlarocco wrote: post #79
irjustin wrote: post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> And the SPAC is run by… Sam Altman. Yes, but this comes with the assumption that Sam writes and reviews the website copy, PR statements and S1 form submissions, which any organization of significant size, the CEO does not. I could believe Elon does though.

Why do I get the feeling that if it said something bad they would have fixed it before somebody wrote an article about it... And if they can't be trusted to get their own team biographies right, what can they get right? If a run-of-the mill employee were lying about their experience, they'd be fired. But it's okay for the CEO because he's just so busy? What a double standard. Did they use their own product to write t…

I saw the same odd excuse deployed for the aggressive NDAs he was embarrassed to find out happened

I think it's a mix of feels good to feel empathetic and say gee prolly just slipped by him, things slip by me, and then without interlocutors, could we ever have discussion? But it's an odd one

Re: Sam Altman is not on YC's board. So why claim to be its chair?

#104

Post by nobutterbetter »

blast wrote: post #99
pbiggar wrote: post #94

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Lying in an SEC filing is not "just a few documents".

You don't think people make clerical errors in SEC filings? What was Sam supposed to have gained by this? The document was signed by Michael Klein and Jay Taragin (whoever they are), not Sam. But that wouldn't make much of a story, so Sam it is.

[dead]

Re: Sam Altman is not on YC's board. So why claim to be its chair?

#105

Post by wbl »

irjustin wrote: post #75
eduction wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The claim was repeated on the website of the SPAC itself until the story ran. And the SPAC is run by… Sam Altman.

> And the SPAC is run by… Sam Altman. Yes, but this comes with the assumption that Sam writes and reviews the website copy, PR statements and S1 form submissions, which any organization of significant size, the CEO does not. I could believe Elon does though.

You absolutely read the S1 statement. What else would you be reading?

Re: Sam Altman is not on YC's board. So why claim to be its chair?

#106

Post by joe_the_user »

blindriver wrote: post #72

This is really dumb, and I'm not even a fan of sama, I think he's a snake. Sam Altman was CEO and President. The fact he was not Chairman is not material. There's a thousand different explanations how that misstatement could have occurred. Maybe someone wrote that up, and sama didn't review every single line, and other people just assumed it was right. But it's not material. Being being the CEO and President of YC is…

As I read the statement in the article, he didn't claim he was the chairman of Y Combinator at the time he was actually President. He claimed was the chairman at the time of the filing, 2021:

"Mr. Altman is an entrepreneurial and thought leader with a proven track record of growth investing within the technology industry. He is also the co-founder and CEO of OpenAI, a leading AI research and deployment company, and the chairman of Y Combinator"

And as mentioned, "president" and "chairman" aren't fuzzy questions for the law. Saying you're one when you are the other is a lying, not "fudging a bit". Lying in generally, say at cocktail party, isn't against the law. But lying to the SEC is definitely a thing that can have penalties.

And, yes, the article takes an appropriate "why would you even do that?" tone since it seems unlikely he'd get some financial or other payoff for such behavior. The main impression it gives me is of a pathological level of hubris/ego. Like a manager who j-walks in front of cop on company time.

Re: Sam Altman is not on YC's board. So why claim to be its chair?

#107

Post by diziet »

I think these types of posts are extremely nitpicky and not useful. From my experience, these sort of SEC filings are compiled by associates in a biglaw firm under a lot of time pressure, with file names like "version 41.B FINAL EDIT". Things get lost in translation. The signing off parties on the document are not sama: https://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/1849056/000110465921...

I think someone made a mistake. Also, from looking at the sig page the signing parties are others...

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