Brand is just shorthand for trust in their future, managed by a credible team. I.e. relationships.
A lot of OpenAI’s reputation is/was Sam Altman’s reputation.
Altman has proven himself to be exceptional, part of which is (of course) being able to be seen as exceptional.
Just the latter has tremendous relationship power: networking, employee acquisition/retention, and employee vision alignment.
Proof of his internal relationship value: employees quitting to go with him
Proof of his external relationship value: Microsoft willing to hire him and his teammates, with near zero notice, to maintain (or eclipse) his power over the OpenAI relationship.
How can investors ignore a massive move of talent, relationships & leverage from OpenAi to Microsoft?
How do investors ignore the board’s inability to resolve poorly communicated disputes with non-disastrous “solutions”?
Evidence of value moving? Shares of Microsoft rebounded from Friday to a new record high.
There go those wacky investors, re-evaluating “brand” value!
Off-topic and I am not proud to admit it but it took me a remarkably long time to come to realize this as an adult.
But its all par for the course when Hypsters captain the ship and PhDs with zero biz sense try to wrest power.
You might need to include more dimensions if you really want to model the actual impact and respect that Sam Altman has among knowledgeable investors, high talent developers, and ruthless corporations.
It’s so easy to just make things simple, like “it’s all hype”. But you lose touch with reality when you do that.
Also, lots of hype is productive: clear vision, marketing, wowing millions of customers with an actual accessible product of a kind/quality that never existed before and is reshaping the strategies and product plans of the most successful companies in the world.
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Really, resist narrow reductionisms.
I feel like that would be a great addition HN guidelines.
The “it’s all/mostly hype”, “it’s all/mistly bullshit”, “Its not really anything new”, … These comments rarely come with any accuracy or insight.
Apologies to the HN-er I am replying to. I am sure we have all done this.
In the last 20-30 years big money+hypsters have learnt it doesnt matter how bad the quality of their products are if they can capture the market. And thats all they are fit for. Market capture is totally possible if you have enough cash. It allows you to snuff out competition by keeping things free. It allows you to trap the indebted PhDs. Once the hype is high enough corporate customers are easy targets. They are too insecure about competition not to pay up. Its a gigantic waste of time and energy that keeps repeating mindlessly producing billionaires, low quality tech and a large mess everywhere that others have to clean up.
Maybe I’m special or something, but nothing changed to me. I always wonder why people suddenly lose “trust” in a brand, as if it was a concrete of internal relationships or something. Everyone knows that “corporate” is probably a snakepit. When it comes out to public, it’s not a sign of anything, it just came out. Assuming there was nothing like that in all the brands you love is living with your eyes closed and ears cupped. There’s no “trust” in this specific sense, because corporate and ideological conflicts happen all the time. All OAI promises are still there, afaiu. No mission statements were changed. Except Sam trying to ignore these, also afaiu. Not saying the board is politically wise, but they drove the thing all this time and that’s all that matters. Personally I’m happy they aren’t looking like political snakes (at least that is my ignorant impression for the three days I know their names).