There’s a famous NFL quote from a former general manager of the Arizona Cardinals that goes, “If Hannibal Lecter ran a 4.3 (40-yard dash) we'd probably diagnose it as an eating disorder.”

I'll argue in this day and age, that any founder/C-level person who has "created" billions in value, no matter how much of a paper tiger it is, will almost always get another shot. If SBF or Elizabeth Holmes weren't physically in prison, I bet they'd be able to get investment for whatever their next idea is.

This comparison makes no sense. Hannibal Lecter would be helping the team by being able to run fast.

Neumann and Holmes and SBF lost their benefactors money.

The point of comparison in the analogy is "founder/C-level person who has "created" billions in value, no matter how much of a paper tiger it is."

The claim is that investors are interested in executives who they perceive to have created billions in value, and that's analogous to how NFL teams are interested in people who run fast.

Investors are not interested in executives that “create” billions, they are interested in investors that create billions.

NFL teams are interested in players that can actually run fast, not players that can say they do, but are found to be lying and it turns out they cannot run fast causing the team to lose.

> Investors are not interested in executives that “create” billions, they are interested in investors that create billions.

Investors are interested in people they can use to make money. The latter are easier to use, but the former will suffice. It just depends on when you sell.

Would you say the same thing for Enron execs? For Bernie Madoff?

I think the business of running a scam or a fraudulent company is quite different to an actual business.

Look at the comment two levels above about Adam Neumann.

Adam Neumann is not a good example. While he has proven good at raising money he has not been proven at running a business or even finding successful ones. My comment was exactly about that difference.

I completely agree with your assessment of Adam Neumann.

AND ... post the WeWork debacle, Neumann has once again succeeded in raising a massive investment.

20 years ago? No for either.

Now? Yes for Kenneth Lay (assuming he was still alive and/or not hiding on a desert island under a new identity if I put on my tin foil hat)... Madoff, probably not.

Why a yes for Kenneth Lay? Do you think the experience of running a scam is transferable to a real business? Or do you not consider enron a scam? Or do you think the line between scams and businesses is so blurred that the skill doing them is the same?

I would say yes for madoff . Lots of people made a ton of money of him for decades , and losses were not as bad as originally thought.

There is bound to be a few people who have a soft spot and will give him money again .

A better job than CEO of a company that has a chance to be the dominant company of our generation? I doubt that.

His next CEO gig might come with equity...

> Adam Neumann, who started then destroyed WeWork, already raised $350 million from Andreessen Horowitz for another real estate company called Flow.

Well, he did get a few billion dollars of lesson on how to not run such a company, making him quite uniquely qualified for this position.

Adam also managed to get almost half a billy worth of money out from Softbank as a corporate loan for himself

https://finance.yahoo.com/news/softbank-takes-14b-hit-wework...

Adam is good making people rich, but those people are not his investors.

I assume he has trademarked the word "Flow" and is licensing it to the company for a few million dollars.

I like how CEO performance has no null hypothesis

> upward to a better job

Not a whole lot of up to go from CEO of OpenAI right now...

except founding a new startup with a bunch of top level players who recently left top level companies.

Are you seriously comparing OpenAI to WeWork? I'm not particularly bullish on AI but you have to give OpenAI credit for what they've accomplished under Altman.

Comparing two things is not the same as saying they're the same in all respects.

He said they both involved failing upwards...

OpenAI is not a failure.

Nobody said that.

> He will fall upward to a better job someplace else if he chooses.

I take "fall upward" to be a typo of "fail upward".

The next sentence explicitly compares the situation to WeWork.

My interpretation is correct, it's a bizarre post, I'm done with this thread, have a good day.

The first word there, "he" will fall upward.

Not OpenAI will fall upward. Sam Altman is not OpenAI, especially after this latest announcement.

The next sentence compares him to the WeWork CEO.

It's not OpenAI is like WeWork. It's the disgraced CEO of OpenAI is like the disgraced CEO of WeWork.

With a16z's crypto ventures, scams on top scams is not surprising

Fall upwards to a better job than CEO of OpenAI circa 2023? What job is that?

> You misunderstand how these corporate situations work. He will fall upward to a better job someplace else if he chooses.

I have no doubt that Altman is deeply embedded in the techbro good old boys network to get another job, but that doesn't change the fact his (now previous) employer released a blog post saying he LIED TO THE BOARD about something severe enough that they had to insta-sack him.

Lied to the board and they _rushed_ to oust him.

No clear transition plan. In what situations world a board fire the ceo from the worlds greatest tech sensation since who knows when, in a matter of hours ?