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

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101–110 of 196 posts

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

#101
post #94
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…

There are so many red flags in that article, and that article is coming from Sequoia Capital itself. I can't understand how anyone would have invested anything at all in FTX, let alone an astonishing $1.3 billion in Series B and Series C. Does no-one at these VCs do any form of due diligence (e.g. reading the articles on their own web sites), or are they unfathomably incompetent, or living in some alternate reality f…

No post body was provided.

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

#103
post #94
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…

There are so many red flags in that article, and that article is coming from Sequoia Capital itself. I can't understand how anyone would have invested anything at all in FTX, let alone an astonishing $1.3 billion in Series B and Series C. Does no-one at these VCs do any form of due diligence (e.g. reading the articles on their own web sites), or are they unfathomably incompetent, or living in some alternate reality f…

A decade of money printing left investors with more money than they knew what to do with, so they threw it at anything related to current thing chasing the next FANG (which by the way, hasn't really happened since the last crash...probably because the startup market is saturated). It was a good thing after the 2008 crash and we needed to revive the economy, but it went on for far far too long and now we have a bunch of overvalued/unprofitable/scam companies.

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

#105
For anyone who wants a deeper understanding of the atmosphere, it's good to know that in the series B round, they raised $420.69m from 69 investors. https://blockworks.co/news/sam-bankman-frieds-ftx-raises-pre...

I don't know what those numbers mean, but those investors probably thought it was the funniest thing on earth, and they created history.

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

#107
post #3

Earlier quoted context omitted.

IANAL. What's his defense?

I worked for an investment company that lost a lot of money once. The first thing we did was go visit the lawyer, who provided great relief for my boss. Basically as long as you haven't broken the law or the contracts, you're ok. It's no different from "I bought some stuff that lost money". That's the defense. I don't know anything about that rather large caveat in this case, but for that old boss it was clear since…

They almost certainly broke the contracts at a bare minimum.

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

#108
post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They were all inexperienced is maybe the most plausible explanation. There was reported to be no board of directors and the CEO of the related proprietary trading firm Alameda was only a couple years out of school with one prior year of work experience as an entry level employee at Jane Street.

This is Alameda's CEO. https://youtu.be/aW6SqLXw944 Un fucking believable.

[deleted]

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

#109
post #103
post #94

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There are so many red flags in that article, and that article is coming from Sequoia Capital itself. I can't understand how anyone would have invested anything at all in FTX, let alone an astonishing $1.3 billion in Series B and Series C. Does no-one at these VCs do any form of due diligence (e.g. reading the articles on their own web sites), or are they unfathomably incompetent, or living in some alternate reality f…

A decade of money printing left investors with more money than they knew what to do with, so they threw it at anything related to current thing chasing the next FANG (which by the way, hasn't really happened since the last crash...probably because the startup market is saturated). It was a good thing after the 2008 crash and we needed to revive the economy, but it went on for far far too long and now we have a bunch…

The corollary to this is that the average citizen is likely to believe that the average billionaire cheated their way into money. The recently passed prop 1 in MA is likely just the start of efforts to tax/regulate the activities of wealthy individuals.

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

#110
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... that is a shocking level of philistinism given his parentage. His own mum wrote a seemingly well-received book, and Will MacAskill, who he claims is his moral hero, has written three books.

Hardcore gamers don’t have the time to read books. Besides, books have no points, no special effects, other players and so on. There you have it, the philistines time has come. Let’s hope it won’t last too long
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