WEBVTT - The Talented Mr. Altman 0:00:02.840 --> 0:00:03.560 Zone Media. 0:00:04.400 --> 0:00:07.560 Hello, and welcome to Better Offline. I'm your host ed Zetron. 0:00:19.760 --> 0:00:22.320 The tech industry has craved a messiah since the death 0:00:22.360 --> 0:00:26.079 of Steve Jobson twenty eleven, but in Open Ay's CEO 0:00:26.200 --> 0:00:28.840 Sam Mortmon, I think they've discovered more of a false profit, 0:00:29.160 --> 0:00:32.360 a seedy little grifter that uses his remarkable ability to 0:00:32.400 --> 0:00:37.160 impress and manipulate people, specifically in Silicon Valley, to mask 0:00:37.200 --> 0:00:40.920 a total lack of technical and business acumen. I realized 0:00:40.920 --> 0:00:44.000 this sounds a little dramatic and definitely a little inflammatory, 0:00:44.040 --> 0:00:47.360 but the air around Sam Mortman has for years been 0:00:47.640 --> 0:00:51.200 that he's somehow a magical, special creature, a man who 0:00:51.240 --> 0:00:54.200 and I quote is wise beyond his years and was 0:00:54.280 --> 0:00:57.080 so at the tender age of nineteen and who to 0:00:57.200 --> 0:01:01.680 quote startup incubator why Combinators Paul Gray could be parachuted 0:01:01.720 --> 0:01:04.399 into an island full of cannibals and come back in 0:01:04.480 --> 0:01:07.760 five years and be king. In the next two episodes, 0:01:08.000 --> 0:01:12.320 I'm going to dig into Sam Moultman's really specious success story, 0:01:12.600 --> 0:01:14.160 and it's one that was built on the back of 0:01:14.240 --> 0:01:16.759 being in the right place at the right time, definitely 0:01:16.800 --> 0:01:21.920 dodging accountability and responsibility and basically every job he's ever had, 0:01:22.040 --> 0:01:24.720 including by the way, the two that he was fired 0:01:24.760 --> 0:01:27.800 from and the feiled startup he had. And I believe 0:01:27.840 --> 0:01:30.920 he's used his political powers leverage to scare away anyone 0:01:30.920 --> 0:01:33.759 who's going to ask any nasty questions or of course, 0:01:34.080 --> 0:01:38.280 dare to stand against him. In a stunning in depth 0:01:38.319 --> 0:01:41.600 piece by Ellen Hewett of Bloomberg, Sam Altman is repeatedly 0:01:41.640 --> 0:01:45.400 framed by his contemporaries as some sort of genius, without 0:01:45.440 --> 0:01:49.520 anyone ever asking why or explaining why, Rather than there's 0:01:49.560 --> 0:01:55.080 this vague sense of intellectual and philosophical superiority with why 0:01:55.120 --> 0:01:58.440 Combinator founder John Cougan claiming that Altman had and I 0:01:58.600 --> 0:02:02.560 quote an uncanny ability to listen intently and diagnose problems, 0:02:02.960 --> 0:02:05.240 and that he was and this is a real quote. 0:02:05.280 --> 0:02:09.560 I'm not kidding the Michael Jordan of listening. Sit with 0:02:09.600 --> 0:02:15.840 that for a moment, Just sit with that. These laughable 0:02:15.840 --> 0:02:19.120 and completely stupid accolades aside, there doesn't actually appear to 0:02:19.160 --> 0:02:21.200 be a single story that I can find of some 0:02:21.360 --> 0:02:25.480 genius moment of clarity ushered in by Sam Altman. There 0:02:25.520 --> 0:02:29.240 are none of these fantastical situations where his remarkable mind 0:02:29.280 --> 0:02:32.760 brilliantly delivers the exact solution to a problem or some 0:02:32.800 --> 0:02:37.920 sort of concrete accomplishment that required these descriptive, pre natural 0:02:38.040 --> 0:02:40.800 levels of vision and clarity. No, I just found this 0:02:40.919 --> 0:02:44.400 torrent of platitudes about this man who always gets what 0:02:44.480 --> 0:02:46.960 he wants, which is, by the way, another quote from 0:02:47.000 --> 0:02:50.280 Ellen Hewitt's story. And he just appears to be this 0:02:50.360 --> 0:02:54.440 unstoppably pushy young man that excelled not necessarily at building things, 0:02:54.520 --> 0:02:58.520 because he really has not built any great companies, nor 0:02:58.600 --> 0:03:02.320 have they done any great things. It's mostly about and 0:03:02.320 --> 0:03:05.880 I quote Allan Hugh again, sam Orman, bending the world 0:03:05.960 --> 0:03:10.280 to his will. If this all sounds familiar, by the way, 0:03:10.280 --> 0:03:14.160 it's because I've really said this before. Many CEOs, especially 0:03:14.200 --> 0:03:17.760 in take, had this amazing ability to make these bold proclamations, 0:03:17.800 --> 0:03:20.800 and that had people pretty much accept them at face value, 0:03:21.080 --> 0:03:23.960 even by the media that's meant to hold them to account. 0:03:24.120 --> 0:03:27.280 With the earliest days of Facebook's metaverse pivot, probably the 0:03:27.280 --> 0:03:29.720 best example I can give you, I really encourage you 0:03:29.800 --> 0:03:31.320 to go back to the rock Com bubble and the 0:03:31.360 --> 0:03:35.080 Facebook episodes to look into it. But even by Mark 0:03:35.200 --> 0:03:39.800 Zuckerbian standards, Zuckerberbian now we'll get to that later. Sam 0:03:39.880 --> 0:03:44.560 Altman exists in his own pantheon of bullshit. There are many, many, 0:03:44.640 --> 0:03:47.680 many examples of him saying open AI, or I should 0:03:47.720 --> 0:03:51.200 be more specific, AI broadly will do something it cannot 0:03:51.240 --> 0:03:54.360 and likely will not do, such as think for itself 0:03:54.480 --> 0:03:58.320 or be that super smart companion I keep quoting, and 0:03:59.080 --> 0:04:02.120 the fourth estate just kind of accepts it without any pushback. 0:04:02.880 --> 0:04:06.240 And this is really Sam Mortman's history being in the 0:04:06.320 --> 0:04:09.480 right place, saying the right thing, and even when the 0:04:09.520 --> 0:04:13.640 thing in question is kind of hollow, people saying, wow, oh, 0:04:13.720 --> 0:04:17.800 this boy is so smart, and there's just no limit. 0:04:18.200 --> 0:04:21.400 It seems to this phenomenon. When Sam Mortman says something 0:04:21.480 --> 0:04:25.520 or does something genuinely truly insane, like how he wants 0:04:25.520 --> 0:04:28.960 to raise seven trillion dollars for futuristic chips, which is 0:04:29.040 --> 0:04:32.159 by the way, they combined GDP of Germany and France, 0:04:32.920 --> 0:04:35.480 or that he needs one hundred billion dollars from Microsoft 0:04:35.480 --> 0:04:40.080 to build a supercomputer for the future of AI, people 0:04:40.160 --> 0:04:43.279 just say, yeah, sounds about right, Yes, classic Sam Mortman's 0:04:43.240 --> 0:04:46.159 stuff is just the smart bloke going. The response is 0:04:46.279 --> 0:04:49.679 never to dismiss it and say this is absolutely bloody 0:04:49.720 --> 0:04:52.560 stupid but to actually discuss it with a level of 0:04:52.640 --> 0:04:56.040 seriousness that just is not warranted for anyone, let alone 0:04:56.120 --> 0:05:00.760 Sam Ortman. And that might be Aortmand's real skill collopsia, 0:05:01.320 --> 0:05:04.599 the appearance of things being more beautiful than they really are, 0:05:04.839 --> 0:05:08.000 hiding the weakness of his arguments, and indeed generative AI 0:05:08.080 --> 0:05:11.600 writ large and beguiling those around him with this nasty 0:05:11.680 --> 0:05:14.120 instinctial ability to tell them exactly what they want to hear, 0:05:14.200 --> 0:05:17.480 giving them the words to tell other people in his name, 0:05:17.839 --> 0:05:20.120 to get in exactly the room he needs to be 0:05:20.160 --> 0:05:22.640 in exactly the right time to connect with exactly the 0:05:22.720 --> 0:05:26.680 right people, or without ever having to actually do anything 0:05:26.760 --> 0:05:30.719 or create anything. Despite the fact that his location based 0:05:30.720 --> 0:05:33.800 social network looped failed to get any traction or build 0:05:34.040 --> 0:05:36.800 any meaningful product, it appears it allowed him to get 0:05:36.800 --> 0:05:41.320 in the Dora famed Silicon Valley Incubator, y Combinator, and Dazzle. 0:05:41.360 --> 0:05:46.200 Poor Graham It's creator who, for reasons I cannot understand, 0:05:46.240 --> 0:05:49.560 I've read so much of poor Graham's stuff now, Paul 0:05:49.560 --> 0:05:52.560 Graham became convinced that Sam Worton was the future, and 0:05:52.640 --> 0:05:55.760 in turn helped Sam Morton get in on these huge 0:05:55.880 --> 0:05:59.400 VC deals in companies like Stripe and Airbnb, making him 0:05:59.520 --> 0:06:03.200 hundreds of millions of dollars. This is, by the way, 0:06:03.760 --> 0:06:06.599 a very Silicon valley problem and a problem with the 0:06:06.640 --> 0:06:09.120 vallee writ large, and a precursor to the growth that 0:06:09.200 --> 0:06:12.360 all costs rot economy that I talk about seemingly every minute. 0:06:12.720 --> 0:06:15.520 When you strip away Sam Morton's ability to convince people 0:06:15.520 --> 0:06:18.400 that he's smart, he doesn't appear to have done anything. 0:06:18.440 --> 0:06:21.160 He's done very, very little. He was a college dropout 0:06:21.200 --> 0:06:25.200 with a failing then failed startup, one where employees tried 0:06:25.240 --> 0:06:29.200 to get him fired twice because he kept diverting resources 0:06:29.240 --> 0:06:32.560 to other places and focusing on his own personal products 0:06:32.760 --> 0:06:34.960 and projects. And the reason they sound so flushed that 0:06:35.120 --> 0:06:40.080 is this is Sam Altman's entire existence. In a podcast 0:06:40.120 --> 0:06:43.679 discovered by Ellen Hewett Bloomberg, Twitch co founder Emmitt Sheer 0:06:43.839 --> 0:06:47.040 appeared from Mortman's y combinator cohort the first one and 0:06:47.160 --> 0:06:51.520 briefly his replacement at CEO of OpenAI, described his surprise 0:06:51.600 --> 0:06:53.719 that Sam Morton was able to close deals with boost 0:06:53.800 --> 0:06:59.200 Mobile without any actual product yet because Altmand fit a template. 0:06:59.400 --> 0:07:02.120 He resembled a kind of guy that got things done. 0:07:02.400 --> 0:07:05.479 Powerful people in Silicon Valley have fallen over themselves to 0:07:05.560 --> 0:07:08.279 give him the opportunities that made him look like a 0:07:08.360 --> 0:07:11.440 king maker. And at some point, the funny thing is 0:07:11.480 --> 0:07:13.840 in the Valley is when you get to the prominence 0:07:13.880 --> 0:07:16.000 where people just feel like you should be in on 0:07:16.080 --> 0:07:20.280 these things, you are. That's why all these guys all 0:07:20.360 --> 0:07:22.520 kind of look and act the same and all get 0:07:22.560 --> 0:07:28.160 in on the same things. And honestly, I think the 0:07:28.240 --> 0:07:32.000 truth might be a little grimmar. Almond was, from a 0:07:32.040 --> 0:07:35.440 relatively early age chosen by Silicon Valley to be their 0:07:35.480 --> 0:07:38.760 next messiah, which allowed him to wield this incredible power 0:07:39.040 --> 0:07:42.920 over the startup ecosystem without really ever meaningfully contributing to it. 0:07:43.520 --> 0:07:45.880 His ascent to the apex of the Valley and the 0:07:45.880 --> 0:07:49.480 budding flowers of a sam Ortman colt, which we see 0:07:49.520 --> 0:07:54.559 today everywhere, feels random and arbitrary, without any real force 0:07:54.640 --> 0:08:00.720 behind it. Aw there's one thing, though, Sam Boulman, he's 0:08:00.720 --> 0:08:04.400 a master manipulator. He's incredibly adept at saying things that 0:08:04.600 --> 0:08:08.240 sound profound, like your rate of learning should always be high, 0:08:08.240 --> 0:08:10.040 and yes that's a quote, as are the rest of these, 0:08:10.360 --> 0:08:12.760 and that each unit of work you do should generate 0:08:12.800 --> 0:08:15.520 more and more results while also knowing that the self 0:08:15.560 --> 0:08:18.440 reinforcing prophecies of the tech industry are what makes someone 0:08:18.520 --> 0:08:23.400 rich and powerful, rather than achievements or founder great companies 0:08:23.520 --> 0:08:27.560 or doing things for people. In essence, his whole vacuous 0:08:27.600 --> 0:08:30.560 platitude buffet, the kind that can be cut into ten 0:08:30.600 --> 0:08:34.600 second clips for TikTok and YouTube and Twitter. They're really 0:08:34.679 --> 0:08:38.719 good ways to feel intelligent when people already want you 0:08:38.840 --> 0:08:45.120 to be, and they're just really useful for tricking extremely 0:08:45.200 --> 0:08:51.160 disconnected and credulous morons. People that don't really participate in 0:08:51.240 --> 0:08:54.920 the grandest scheme of building software and hardware, people like 0:08:55.000 --> 0:08:58.880 Read Hoffman of LinkedIn, of Brian Cheski of Airbnb. People 0:08:58.880 --> 0:09:02.160 that aren't coders or builders or anything. They're just people 0:09:02.200 --> 0:09:06.480 that vaguely fell into success. Perhaps they built useful companies, 0:09:06.480 --> 0:09:08.440 but they didn't really make the companies, and they didn't 0:09:08.480 --> 0:09:12.079 really do the work. Sam Altman is really good at 0:09:12.080 --> 0:09:15.280 saying the things that reinforce their biases, and in the 0:09:15.360 --> 0:09:20.960 process kind of helps them disguise their nepotism and his 0:09:21.120 --> 0:09:24.800 real superpower, which is, by the way, another form of nepotism. 0:09:25.440 --> 0:09:28.480 Sam Moorman didn't find the startups that made him so 0:09:28.720 --> 0:09:31.880 rich and wealthy and influential. He was being shown them 0:09:31.880 --> 0:09:35.440 by other powerful people that wanted him in on these 0:09:35.480 --> 0:09:37.839 deals so that he could give them a vice based 0:09:37.920 --> 0:09:41.520 on the career of specious management bullshit. And because the 0:09:41.600 --> 0:09:44.439 valley liked how he looked and how he acted, how 0:09:44.440 --> 0:09:47.120 he talked, the things he resembled, the things they were 0:09:47.160 --> 0:09:50.880 reminded of when they heard Sam Mormon speak. And it's 0:09:50.880 --> 0:09:53.160 funny because a lot of these people, the Paul Graham's 0:09:53.160 --> 0:09:56.560 of the world especially, they're big time meritocratic people. They 0:09:56.640 --> 0:09:59.679 love the meritocracy. Yet when you look deeper, the people 0:10:00.080 --> 0:10:04.079 seeding and not actually building the things. Ilia Suitzkaeva over 0:10:04.200 --> 0:10:07.840 Open Ai. He is the actual technolog Jesus, He's the 0:10:07.880 --> 0:10:10.280 actual guy that and by the way, no longer Open 0:10:10.320 --> 0:10:14.040 Ai the kind of deserves this. But Sam Alton's the 0:10:14.040 --> 0:10:16.600 one that got invited in early to stripe and Airbnb 0:10:16.720 --> 0:10:19.319 and all these things. And as I'll get into, kind 0:10:19.320 --> 0:10:22.640 of rat fucked his way around a bit. And nowhere 0:10:22.720 --> 0:10:26.319 is this more obvious than in Hydrozene Capital, Aortman's venture 0:10:26.360 --> 0:10:28.680 capital fund that he created with the five million dollars 0:10:28.760 --> 0:10:31.880 he got from selling looped his failed startup by the 0:10:31.880 --> 0:10:36.240 way and backing of course from Peter Teel, Hydrozene invested 0:10:36.320 --> 0:10:39.760 seventy five percent of its funding in y Combinator companies 0:10:39.800 --> 0:10:43.440 including Reddit and instacar, even after Sam Mortman became the 0:10:43.480 --> 0:10:47.280 president of y Combinator, which is weird because the other 0:10:47.360 --> 0:10:50.000 partners at y Combinate, like Gary Tann, they were forbidden 0:10:50.040 --> 0:10:52.880 from managing their own investment funds at the time, according 0:10:52.920 --> 0:10:55.839 to reporting from the Wall Street Journal. But I guess 0:10:55.840 --> 0:10:59.800 Sam Moltman just felt right. It's cool that he gets 0:10:59.880 --> 0:11:02.840 rid right, not to say Gary Tann hasn't, but the 0:11:02.880 --> 0:11:06.200 other people just didn't seem to get these opportunities for 0:11:06.240 --> 0:11:11.760 some reason, could be anything. And he became head of 0:11:11.880 --> 0:11:14.720 why Combinated, by the way, despite being one of the 0:11:14.960 --> 0:11:17.439 he was looped was one of the first companies in 0:11:17.679 --> 0:11:20.440 y Combinator, and they to explain how this works. Why 0:11:20.480 --> 0:11:23.280 Combinate would invest a little in a few early stage 0:11:23.280 --> 0:11:26.160 startups and much larger number these days, and the first 0:11:26.200 --> 0:11:28.880 cohort was one that included Sam Altman's Looped and he 0:11:28.960 --> 0:11:32.680 was made president of y Combinator. Despite the fact that 0:11:32.800 --> 0:11:35.480 luped was terrible. It didn't have a good product, They 0:11:35.520 --> 0:11:38.960 couldn't sell it. He retasked engineers at one point to 0:11:39.040 --> 0:11:41.800 work on a dating app somewhere else. Sam Alton was 0:11:41.840 --> 0:11:47.320 a terrible CEO, But you know what, he's capable of 0:11:47.360 --> 0:11:50.679 saying stupid shit like and I quote, competitors are one 0:11:50.720 --> 0:11:53.080 of the last monsters that haunt your dreams to New 0:11:53.160 --> 0:11:56.760 York Magazine shortly before predicting that there was absolutely no 0:11:56.840 --> 0:12:01.120 reason to believe that we would not have a computer 0:12:01.200 --> 0:12:03.960 by twenty twenty nine that could replicate his brain. You 0:12:04.040 --> 0:12:08.480 know what, though, putting that aside, I do think Sam 0:12:08.480 --> 0:12:10.760 Mormon's right on that one, though, in the sense that 0:12:10.840 --> 0:12:14.839 chat GPT kind of seems capable of producing this kind 0:12:14.840 --> 0:12:20.439 of nonsense too. But again, because Sam Mortman's the affable, friendly, 0:12:20.559 --> 0:12:23.560 amicable white guy who's known by the right people. He 0:12:23.679 --> 0:12:27.640 keeps going, he keeps on trucking, And I think that 0:12:27.720 --> 0:12:30.880 Sam Moltman is on some level, he's a monument to 0:12:30.920 --> 0:12:32.480 the roight at the core of the valley, and he's 0:12:32.520 --> 0:12:35.440 a product of this growing distance between the tech industry 0:12:35.600 --> 0:12:40.120 and actually creating things of value. While why Combinator founder 0:12:40.200 --> 0:12:43.480 Paul Graham may be a decorated and successful computer scientist, 0:12:43.600 --> 0:12:45.640 by the time he made Sam Mortman, president of y 0:12:45.679 --> 0:12:48.400 Combinator in twenty fourteen, he was already more than a 0:12:48.440 --> 0:12:51.760 decade removed from selling his software startup via web to Yahoo. 0:12:52.559 --> 0:12:55.599 As he drifted further away from actually building things on 0:12:55.679 --> 0:12:59.520 the computer, so too did Paul Graham's essays drift away 0:12:59.559 --> 0:13:04.480 from the piosophical measures of software development towards a far 0:13:05.080 --> 0:13:08.160 darker management philosophy, one where he admitted in a blog 0:13:08.200 --> 0:13:11.000 from two thousand and three that intelligence itself is not 0:13:11.040 --> 0:13:14.040 a factor in popularity because smart kids don't want to 0:13:14.080 --> 0:13:18.280 be popular, and that popularity is much more about alliances 0:13:18.600 --> 0:13:23.520 and doing things that bring you closer to other popular people. Humm, 0:13:24.400 --> 0:13:27.920 maybe he did like Sam Wultman for real reasons then. Anyway, 0:13:28.400 --> 0:13:31.280 two years before he made Samultman president, Paul Graham would 0:13:31.280 --> 0:13:34.480 publish a piece called Startup Equal Growth, claiming that growth 0:13:34.600 --> 0:13:37.160 drives everything in this world, and that growth makes the 0:13:37.200 --> 0:13:41.240 successful companies so valuable that the expected value is high 0:13:41.320 --> 0:13:44.560 even though the risk is two. A statement that could 0:13:44.640 --> 0:13:46.840 only make sense if you believed that there will always 0:13:46.880 --> 0:13:49.959 be hyper growth companies, and indeed that the opportunities for 0:13:49.960 --> 0:13:55.120 those high growth companies would keep emerging, say for the 0:13:55.160 --> 0:13:59.120 next forever and these people ever thought about it. It's so 0:13:59.320 --> 0:14:04.240 strange to read this stuff, to go back even five years, 0:14:04.240 --> 0:14:08.800 but especially ten and reading these things and reading these 0:14:08.800 --> 0:14:11.719 people talking about how dogged Sam Morton is and how 0:14:11.760 --> 0:14:14.360 great he is at this, and then reading their other philosophies, 0:14:14.400 --> 0:14:18.520 and it's all stuff like, well, you see, uh, intelligence 0:14:18.520 --> 0:14:21.000 comes from the mind and building businesses. It's all about 0:14:21.000 --> 0:14:25.200 growth and business. And you read them and you're like, huh, 0:14:25.600 --> 0:14:28.400 these people smart or stupid. I can't tell. They're using 0:14:28.480 --> 0:14:33.520 smart people language, but they seem kind of stupid. Maybe 0:14:33.520 --> 0:14:36.760 that's also the problem. Maybe the problem's just a little simpler. 0:14:37.520 --> 0:14:41.960 While Sam Morton's a spacious opportunist and very much a manipulator, 0:14:43.240 --> 0:14:46.040 the time he entered Silicon Valley was this period where 0:14:46.520 --> 0:14:48.800 pretty much all you needed to do was sound smart 0:14:49.200 --> 0:14:52.880 and be in the right rooms. Companies were being created 0:14:53.160 --> 0:14:56.280 that could enter these giant markets and just dominate because 0:14:56.320 --> 0:15:01.360 all they really needed was money and enough handshakes. Oltman 0:15:01.480 --> 0:15:04.840 is adept at using connections to make new connections, in 0:15:04.880 --> 0:15:07.840 finding new ways to make others owe him favors, in 0:15:07.960 --> 0:15:10.840 saying the right thing at the right time when he 0:15:10.920 --> 0:15:13.400 knew that nobody would think about it too hard, something 0:15:13.440 --> 0:15:16.840 he continues to this day. Ortmand was early on Stripe 0:15:16.840 --> 0:15:20.560 and read it in Airbnb, all seemingly brilliant moments of 0:15:20.640 --> 0:15:23.040 investment in the life of a man who has had 0:15:23.200 --> 0:15:25.600 many things handed to him, who knew how to look 0:15:25.680 --> 0:15:27.800 and sound to get put in the room and to 0:15:27.840 --> 0:15:31.680 get the capital to make his next move. It's easy 0:15:31.840 --> 0:15:35.320 to conflay investment returns with intellectual capital, even though the 0:15:35.360 --> 0:15:38.480 truth is that people just liked Sam Wultman enough to 0:15:38.480 --> 0:15:40.520 give him the opportunity to be rich, and he took it. 0:15:40.840 --> 0:15:43.080 And he had the ability to hand them money too. 0:15:43.600 --> 0:15:45.560 In two thousand and nine, when he put fifteen thousand 0:15:45.600 --> 0:15:47.240 dollars into Stripe, which I'll get to it a bit, 0:15:47.720 --> 0:15:49.640 he had fifteen grand he could pull out in the 0:15:49.640 --> 0:15:52.040 middle of founding a start up. He was working on 0:15:52.080 --> 0:15:55.040 Loop for years at this point. Where did he get 0:15:55.040 --> 0:15:57.800 the fifteen grand? I didn't have fifteen grands sitting around then, 0:15:57.920 --> 0:16:01.160 Jesus Christ, he didn't like. This is the thing. No 0:16:01.200 --> 0:16:04.120 one digs deeper into these things. No one asks where 0:16:04.120 --> 0:16:07.360 the privilege truly comes from, and when that happens, guys 0:16:07.440 --> 0:16:11.960 like this get popular. Now, look, those who might defend 0:16:12.000 --> 0:16:14.440 Sam Altman might suggest that he may not have been 0:16:14.440 --> 0:16:17.600 a creator, but he gave his time and his energy 0:16:17.640 --> 0:16:20.360 to those he backed. Maybe he was a value creator. 0:16:20.800 --> 0:16:25.680 Right wrong. According to the Washington Post, sam Aulman's time 0:16:25.680 --> 0:16:28.480 at y Combinat ere it ended because he developed a 0:16:28.520 --> 0:16:33.320 reputation for favoring personal priorities over official duties and for 0:16:33.360 --> 0:16:36.800 an absenteeism that rankled his peers and some of the 0:16:36.840 --> 0:16:40.680 startups he was supposed to nurture, much as he had, 0:16:40.760 --> 0:16:43.800 as I've mentioned, once diverted engineers at lut to work 0:16:43.840 --> 0:16:46.760 on a dating app instead of working on the company 0:16:46.800 --> 0:16:51.320 he was running. To give Sam Altman credit, he really 0:16:51.440 --> 0:16:55.480 is able to talk for hours without saying anything. Just 0:16:55.600 --> 0:16:58.440 ask LinkedIn, co founder of Reied Hoffman, an investor in 0:16:58.480 --> 0:17:01.840 open Ai and early of Sam Mortman, and a man 0:17:01.880 --> 0:17:04.280 who was critical to getting Sam Mortman returned to the 0:17:04.320 --> 0:17:07.920 helm of open Ai when he was fired, who also 0:17:08.040 --> 0:17:10.639 let Sam Mortan ramble for over an hour on his 0:17:10.720 --> 0:17:13.680 podcast Masters of Scale with all one, at one point 0:17:13.760 --> 0:17:16.639 saying that he was and I quote, he was in 0:17:16.680 --> 0:17:20.200 a developing world country shortly after the iPhone came out, 0:17:20.359 --> 0:17:24.560 and despite their poverty, everyone had smartphones. Now, I just 0:17:24.600 --> 0:17:27.159 want to be clear. This is so obviously, completely and 0:17:27.280 --> 0:17:32.320 utterly stupidly false. It made me genuinely angry. Why because 0:17:32.800 --> 0:17:35.560 what so the iPhone comes out? So the rollout of 0:17:35.600 --> 0:17:39.000 smartphones in other countries has been incredibly useful, it's been great. 0:17:39.320 --> 0:17:41.879 It didn't happen in a goddamn year. Sam, you lying 0:17:41.920 --> 0:17:45.200 sack of shit. I'm sorry. I just really hate this stuff. 0:17:46.280 --> 0:17:49.360 I really hate that these people who can go around 0:17:49.400 --> 0:17:52.840 getting money seemingly at will just go on each other's 0:17:52.880 --> 0:17:56.920 podcasts and jack off and wank about this nonsense, who 0:17:57.040 --> 0:18:02.760 say these patently obviously fake things. He probably saying his 0:18:02.840 --> 0:18:04.760 defense by the way, Oh it's four years later, which 0:18:04.840 --> 0:18:07.800 might have made sense. It's always vague with this goddamn guy. 0:18:08.080 --> 0:18:11.280 It's always vague with these goddamn guys. And it's just 0:18:11.400 --> 0:18:16.399 so offensive because regular people do not get these opportunities. 0:18:17.000 --> 0:18:19.840 Regular people don't get put in these rooms. People that 0:18:19.920 --> 0:18:23.959 are undoubtedly smarter and more accomplished and harder working than 0:18:24.040 --> 0:18:27.240 Sam Aortman. But because Sam Altman fits the template, he's 0:18:27.280 --> 0:18:29.600 allowed to go and he's allowed to be rich one 0:18:29.680 --> 0:18:33.960 hundred times over. And it really shouldn't come as a 0:18:33.960 --> 0:18:37.640 surprise that Reid Hoffman of LinkedIn, investor in open ai 0:18:37.800 --> 0:18:41.640 and so much has such affection for Aortman. After all, 0:18:41.800 --> 0:18:45.440 he's the founder of LinkedIn, which is basically the one 0:18:45.480 --> 0:18:47.560 place that you know you can go to read six 0:18:47.640 --> 0:18:52.399 hundred words that mean nothing, these massive, cringe worthy paragraphs 0:18:52.880 --> 0:18:56.000 broken into a Staccato's style that hurts the brain and 0:18:56.040 --> 0:18:58.840 the mind, but makes people who don't really know why 0:18:58.880 --> 0:19:01.640 they're doing their job care about what they're doing very 0:19:01.680 --> 0:19:04.719 happy because it makes it all feel far more important 0:19:04.960 --> 0:19:09.240 than it really is. Moving on through Aortmand's power structures. 0:19:09.400 --> 0:19:13.080 Another of his close friends is Airbnb CEO Brian Chesky, 0:19:13.480 --> 0:19:16.280 who helped, by the way, also get Sam Altman put 0:19:16.320 --> 0:19:19.720 back in open AI, and he's helped Altmand pedal these 0:19:19.840 --> 0:19:23.960 vague rubbish promises about artificial intelligence, at one point, with 0:19:24.040 --> 0:19:27.240 Cheske calling it bigger than the Internet, mobile and cloud 0:19:27.280 --> 0:19:31.120 combined and saying that AI will, by the way, non 0:19:31.160 --> 0:19:35.359 specifically change Airbnb, which is a company that has and 0:19:35.400 --> 0:19:38.439 this is what kills me as well, only got worse 0:19:38.480 --> 0:19:41.520 over time. I think Airbnb really crested about four or 0:19:41.520 --> 0:19:44.000 five years ago, and then it just became the same. 0:19:44.040 --> 0:19:47.200 But worse over time, put my gravances to the side, 0:19:49.560 --> 0:19:51.480 and as you can kind of tell what I'm getting 0:19:51.520 --> 0:19:55.359 at here, Aortmand's used his political maneuver and to become 0:19:55.560 --> 0:19:58.840 super rich. And he's grown, according to the Wall Street Journal, 0:19:58.920 --> 0:20:01.760 a portfolio of more them four hundred companies worth nearly 0:20:01.880 --> 0:20:06.000 three billion dollars. Now what's really worrying is that he's 0:20:06.080 --> 0:20:09.879 partially funded it with hundreds of millions of dollars of 0:20:10.040 --> 0:20:15.640 debt of loans from JP Morgan Chase. Now almost anyone 0:20:15.640 --> 0:20:18.520 can see why this is insane borrowing money from a 0:20:18.560 --> 0:20:21.280 bank and putting it into an industry where the majority 0:20:21.320 --> 0:20:27.080 of companies fail. It's just completely bonkers. I don't understand 0:20:27.119 --> 0:20:29.159 what's going on. Well, I mean I do, which is 0:20:29.880 --> 0:20:32.840 the rich reinforce the rich, and they put money with 0:20:33.040 --> 0:20:38.160 people who don't necessarily qualify for it and aren't necessarily 0:20:38.280 --> 0:20:41.120 smart or good at stuff or have done things. But 0:20:41.119 --> 0:20:44.040 because they're in the right company, it works for them. 0:20:44.359 --> 0:20:46.960 Like a regular person. They can barely get a mortgage, 0:20:47.000 --> 0:20:50.040 let alone. What's likely I'm guessing by the way a 0:20:50.080 --> 0:20:53.240 low interest rate loan to sink hundreds of millions of 0:20:53.280 --> 0:20:57.560 dollars into companies like Helion, which is a nuclear fusion 0:20:57.640 --> 0:21:00.320 company that Sam Moultman put three hundred and seventy five 0:21:00.320 --> 0:21:03.880 million dollars into in twenty twenty one. He serves as 0:21:03.920 --> 0:21:07.159 both the chairman of Helion's board and potentially one of 0:21:07.160 --> 0:21:10.159 its largest customers because open ai is now and just 0:21:10.200 --> 0:21:14.560 announced a deal with Helion, and I quote Matthew Konnittzer 0:21:14.840 --> 0:21:18.760 from the Register here to get access to Helion's not 0:21:18.840 --> 0:21:24.879 yet possible nuclear fusion driven electricity generators. Just it's so 0:21:25.040 --> 0:21:27.560 cool that that, and tons of people reported that without 0:21:28.440 --> 0:21:32.359 Matt's necessary bile there. I love the Register because they're 0:21:32.520 --> 0:21:34.639 willing to say stuff like this nuclear fusion has not 0:21:34.720 --> 0:21:38.080 happened yet. That's that's a sci fi thing that he 0:21:38.119 --> 0:21:40.720 has put all that money into. Nevertheless, plenty of people 0:21:40.800 --> 0:21:43.720 credulously accepted this, and like Sam odd Man, aw they're 0:21:43.760 --> 0:21:47.040 doing a deal open ai, open ai and nuclear Fusion. 0:21:47.440 --> 0:21:50.119 Just to be clear, there's no deal there the nuclear fusion. 0:21:50.280 --> 0:21:54.000 Oh my god. The Wall Street Journal also reported the 0:21:54.040 --> 0:21:56.920 open Ai is happily cutting multiple deals with other things 0:21:56.920 --> 0:22:00.240 that Sam Altman's invested in, including Reddit, which Ortmann owns 0:22:00.359 --> 0:22:02.760 hundreds of millions of dollars were stuck in thanks to 0:22:02.760 --> 0:22:05.680 an investment from hydro Seen Capital when he worked a 0:22:05.840 --> 0:22:09.720 y combat are, along with AI device companies Limitless and Humane, 0:22:09.880 --> 0:22:13.040 the latter of which Ortmand owns a fifteen percent stake in. 0:22:13.160 --> 0:22:17.800 According to the Journal, it's just obvious, naked self dealing, 0:22:17.800 --> 0:22:21.040 the kind of stuff that should be something that disqualifies you, 0:22:21.119 --> 0:22:25.560 that gets critiqued further than of course the journal, and 0:22:25.920 --> 0:22:27.879 I'm not seeing it. I'm not seeing enough of it 0:22:27.960 --> 0:22:31.560 at least, But I wanted to dig further into this 0:22:31.720 --> 0:22:35.119 investment portfolio, so I sat down with Ton Datan of 0:22:35.160 --> 0:22:37.240 the Wall Street Journal to kind of go through it. 0:22:47.160 --> 0:22:49.720 So in your story, you were talking about how Sam 0:22:49.800 --> 0:22:53.119 Ortman had this massive credit line I think from JP Morgan. 0:22:53.600 --> 0:22:57.040 Is this standard for investment? Have you seen this before? 0:22:57.880 --> 0:23:00.600 No, It's incredibly not standard. And in the course of 0:23:00.640 --> 0:23:02.800 reporting out this story with my colleagues, we talk to 0:23:03.359 --> 0:23:06.919 a lot of venture capitalists and investors, other kinds of 0:23:06.920 --> 0:23:12.080 investors and founders in the tech industry, and they either 0:23:12.119 --> 0:23:14.000 had never heard of something like this before or found 0:23:14.040 --> 0:23:17.280 it to be so incredibly risky, not just investing in 0:23:17.320 --> 0:23:21.040 startups off of credit, but using as collateral your holdings 0:23:21.119 --> 0:23:24.200 in privately held tech companies. Both of those things together 0:23:24.280 --> 0:23:27.040 are like not you do not see that very often 0:23:27.040 --> 0:23:28.240 in the tech industry. 0:23:28.680 --> 0:23:31.439 And why don't you? Just to be clear, why is 0:23:31.480 --> 0:23:33.160 this usually a bad idea? 0:23:33.520 --> 0:23:35.879 Because it's incredibly risky. I mean, if you think about 0:23:35.920 --> 0:23:39.959 an investment in a startup, what percentage of startups not 0:23:40.040 --> 0:23:43.080 only don't get acquired or go public, but straight up 0:23:43.160 --> 0:23:46.040