About a year ago (I believe), Sam Altman touted his mission to promote safe AI with claims that he has no equity in OpenAI and was never interested in getting any. Look where we are now, well played Sam.
Does that amount to making a false forward-looking financial statement? (Specifically his claim that he wasn’t interested in getting equity in the future.)
This claim he made was likely helpful in ensuring the OpenAI team’s willingness to bring him back after he was temporarily ousted by the board last year for alleged governance issues. (Basically: “don’t worry about me guys, I’m in this for the mission, not personal enrichment”)
Since his claim likely helped him get re-hired, he can’t claim it was immaterial.
I really hope someone from the SEC scrutinizes him someday. The Singularity is too important to let it be run by someone with questionable ethics.
My unprofessional take: The SEC is concerned primarily with protecting investors. If anything, changing to a normal for-profit structure and removing the cap on returns would be viewed as more investor/market-friendly than their current structure, which is partly to blame for what unfolded last year.
I can confirm this is the only way I win at monopoly. My strategy for A$$hole is more devious and involves going from ass to president with a similar strategy to my monopoly strategy then making no one want to play again as president. As a great man, Charles Wopr, once said: the only winning move is not to play.
Stripe was founded when Sam Altman was 25. Loopt, Sam's first company, was founded when Sam was 20, and was Sam's mechanism for meeting Paul Graham, so this story is pretty obviously wrong at some level.
There is a reason middle aged PG got smitten by a teenage Sam and gave him a 4% stake in stripe for like 10k , and the went around telling everyone who would listen that "he knew within 3 mins that sam is next bill gates."
Weridly this is the second time this has been repeated in this thread, but Sam wasn't even a teenager anymore when he met PG the first time (but would have just turned 20), and was 25 when Stripe was founded, so your story is obviously wrong.
> Sam wasn't even a teenager anymore when he met PG the first time (but would have just turned 20),
20 yr age gap in a relationship is still frowned upon in our society unfortunately.
Also I guess you were tracking sam's legal age closer than Sam himself because he mentioned that he was a teenager when he met PG in an interview. SV is creepier than anyone could ever imagine.
I was going based on Wikipedia. Sam was 20 when his YC batch started, and also would have already been 20 for the YC interview. But it was close -- a few months, so it wouldn't surprise me if that gets elided in a dramatic retelling.
I'm not sure how it's relevant that you worked in a donut shop? Surely you're aware that isn't the peak of over-achievement at the age of 20? God, watch the Olympics if you want to see a bunch of very determined young people. Or go to an Open Source conference. Or, as it were, YC. Sam was only slightly younger than normal there. Some 20 year olds have accomplished a lot.
You seem to really want to create a villain out of the situation, which is kind of weird. Mentors and investors are usually older, and 20 years isn't rare. That's hardly Silicon Valley specific.
You also repeated the false thing about him getting a stake in Stripe as a teenager again. Again, Stripe came into existence when Sam was 25. There's just no version of that story that works. I don't know about Sam's Stripe investment, but at that point he was already around YC a lot, even though Loopt was still going. He probably just got in with other angel investors. But at that point he was in his mid-20s and running a Sequoia-backed company, so that's not especially weird.
(There's genuine stuff to be critical of in the trajectory of OpenAI, but this seems like a really weird spot to latch onto.)
> Sam was 20 when his YC batch started, and also would have already been 20 for the YC interview.
PG:
"Sam Altman, the co-founder of Loopt, had just finished his sophomore year when we funded them, and Loopt is probably the most promising of all the startups we've funded so far. But Sam Altman is a very unusual guy. Within about three minutes of meeting him, I remember thinking 'Ah, so this is what Bill Gates must have been like when he was 19.'"
Are you being sarcastic by comparing sam with olympians?
What exactly did Sam accomplish when he met PG to declared as "bill gates" or to get 50 million for his startup within 15 minutes of meeting PG ?
He was practicing being "Michael jordan of listening" ( another PG quote) since he was 5 like olympians ?
You're really just making shit up here. He didn't get $50 million for his startup within 15 minutes of meeting Paul Graham. YC's deal back then was for about $15k per startup for 7%. Loopt didn't even over its several years raise $50 million -- it was around $30 million, and that happened over a space of several rounds over several years.
I was in YC a few batches later and met Paul Graham and Sam in that era. I remember walking around San Fracisco with Sam and him telling me about Loopt. He was a few years younger than me (I was 29, he was 24), and I remember being impressed by him.
And it's possible that Sam listed his age at 19 on his YC application, and that's what PG was going on. He would have probably still been 19 when he filled out the application. Again, this isn't hard to verify -- his birthday is on Wikipedia, and he was in the summer batch of 2005. Interviews are about a month before the batch starts. But there's not really a lot of my point that hinges on if it was a month before or a month after his birthday when they met. More my point was that the stuff about him investing in Stripe as a teenager because PG "gave" it to him is completely bogus.
It really seems like you have an axe to grind here, and I'm not completely sure why. Again, I think some of the stuff that's happened later in OpenAI is worthy of criticism, but that doesn't mean you have to reinterpret everything that happened before that through some bogyman lens.
> It really seems like you have an axe to grind here, and I'm not completely sure why.
Yea because ppl getting unfair leg up because they were chosen as the "next bill gates" by a SV white male because they look like them is merely an "axe to grind".
You still haven't answered why you think he is like an olympian when he met PG other than "He is impressive because he is impressive".
I feel like i am in some kind of weirdo land here with totally ridiculous boasts about someone that no one can name an actual accomplishment
> like an olympian
> michaal jordan of listening
> bill gates at 19
> his brain will be cloned by 2029
You guys need to send this to HBO for next Silicon Valley season.
I wasn't comparing Sam to an Olympian; I was comparing you to one. Just because you were working in a donut shop at that age doesn't mean that that's the benchmark for achievement. Some people go to the Olympics. I honestly don't know enough about Sam's achievements before then to know if he'd done impressive things.
The whole "white man" thing is also a complete straw man. The other two YC-founders-turned YC CEOs of that era were Michael Seibel and Garry Tan, neither of whom are white.
It sounds like what you're offended by is the whole YC process -- that there are quick interviews that (back then) translated to small amounts of funding -- that literally the decision was made in a single interview. But that wasn't anything specific to Sam; that's how it worked for everyone. You can find that stupid if you want to, but then might I suggest this is an odd forum to hang out on if you find that to be offensive?
> I was comparing you to one. Just because you were working in a donut shop at that age doesn't mean that that's the benchmark for achievement. Some people go to the Olympics. I honestly don't know enough about Sam's achievements before then to know if he'd done impressive things.
Exactly. I was comparing myself to him when i mentioned that I worked at a donut shop. At that age I ( and many others) were indistinguishable from him. I went to an ivy league too btw.
Your olympian thing is absurd here because a teenager destined to be an olympian is indeed very distinguishable from his/her peers very easily, ppl can tell why this person is special.
You keep saying Sam was special ( next bill gates) but fail to tell me why. I asked you multiple times too , but instead you keep attacking me instead for not accepting circular "he is impressive because he is impressive" .
> But that wasn't anything specific to Sam; that's how it worked for everyone.
I just told you but you keep ignoring. Did PG mention anyone else was bill gates or Michael Jordan to his VC friends and publicly in interviews. (Ironic, given Michael Jordan is one the most impressive athletes that came from no where ). Or continuously give him leg up despite failed ventures ( loopt or whatever). I cannot think of anyone else who failed upwards like Sam because he had PG to back him with ridiculous and vacuous pumping of Sam's so called genius.
Honestly: it's not worth my time to keep arguing with you. You've not taken any accountability for the several demonstrably false claims you've made here.
I didnot make a "claim" I merely quoted PG and Sam about the age when they met.
You seem to obsessed about him being in early 20s, not sure why thats relevant here or why its so important to you. You should tell that PG to go issue a correction and "take responsibility" about misquoting Sam's age if thats so important to you. I don't have creepy obsession with teenager's ages.
Oh yea you would rather run way and feel smug about some pedantic age thing than substantiate why you think same was "impressive" when he met 20s.
To be fair both of them probably didn't imagine Stripe would be the one today. You can apply the same logic for any successful companies, like the guy who gave up 10% of Apple for some changes.
There is a difference between not imagining it will be valued at 100B and not imagining it will be 1B+ or a 100M exit.
It is quite likely they knew the latter as relatively low risk expected outcome .
Even at 100M exit, which by valley standards (even in 2010s) is not a lot, 1-2% (after further rounds of dilution) would have yielded 1-2M return . A 200x return for very little downside i.e. a gift .
There is a reason why there is FOMO and little due diligence for really hot startups amongst VCs , most times it is about access to the round which is difficult rather than risk of returns, we only read about the spectacular failures like FTX . We don’t hear about the Stripe, AirBnb, or Figma, OpenAI or spaceX funding rounds .
