"Graham said it was his wife’s doing. “If anyone ‘fired’ Sam, it was Jessica, not me,” he said. “But it would be wrong to use the word ‘fired’ because he agreed immediately.” "
The dirty truth is that the ideal Silicon Valley CEO is whomever can be a perfect sockpuppet for investors and still understand technical velocity.
The more ability you have to be kind of waterproof so to speak - like a duck - because of a mixture of positioning, ruthlessness, access, intelligence, perseverance, etc the better you are. Most importantly you have to regularly show allegiance to specifically investors over all other considerations, and boom you’re perfectly crafted.
Altman has brilliantly positioned himself as that perfect fulcrum between venture and technical skills such that he is (in his own mind and to a tiny subset of incredibly powerful people in SV) indispensable to the silicon valley crowd who doesn’t really know how to navigate the intersection between venture and technical skills.
"“I saw in a 19-year-old Sam Altman the same thing that I see now: an intensely focused and brilliant person whom I was willing to bet big on,” said Chung, now managing general partner of Xfund, a venture-capital firm."
They believe in his focus to get things done, not in his ethics. And with ChatGPT, he got things done. Which means, he connected the right people and raised money so they can work on the important things.
> said Chung, now managing general partner of Xfund, a venture-capital firm.
Emphasis mine. I mean, that's just backs up my original question. These people will say anything to garner favor, perceived or otherwise. I've seen Altman speak. At what point should I expect to see a representative example of this focus and insight?
Lol. I was once at a place of real business and research that hosted some machine learning talk by a guy at Uber. When he walked in, late I might add, to an auditorium full of business casual and suits, he looked like a cartoon character with his spiky hair, jeans, colorful shirt, and all. He also spent every answer to questions making it clear he doesn't work on self-driving cars or call-a-taxis, which was strange given his employer.
But of course, as with these things, nobody needs to admit to anything and any claim can easily be rejected.
The more polarising the figure, the more polarising the assessment of anything concerning them. Disconnecting different facets of a figure is not our strong suite.
It is when your rich spouse asks you to do it and you do it despite attempting to pose as a leader in critical thinking in tech and potential counterbalance to your spouse. It’s an open admission that sama behaved blatantly unethically (perhaps illegally) but also pinned your financial opportunity cost so that you couldn’t play against him. Note that Loopt sold the profiles of poor people to low-income credit predators, and Sama did this to pay for his first pair of matching Mclarens (he literally bought the same car twice). Moreover pg claims he didn’t do it yet apparently flew back to CA from the UK to deal with it.
"Graham said it was his wife’s doing. “If anyone ‘fired’ Sam, it was Jessica, not me,” he said. “But it would be wrong to use the word ‘fired’ because he agreed immediately.” "