aerosmile

It’s amazing that Microsoft - given their focus on AI and decades of experience in spreadsheets - doesn’t offer this type of functionality. Corporate bureaucracy vs startup agility!

Ok, reasonably well articulated argument, which I think says something along the line of "Sam Altman could have achieved his success more easily if he was born rich." I suppose that could be true, although you're certainly introducing new variables here that could also have unpredictable outcomes. For example, a unique Sam Altman quality is that during his time at YC, he used to send more messages per day than any other partner. He was doing that as a person who went from a middle class upbringing to being worth hundreds of millions. Is it safe to assume that the "other" Sam who was raised with a golden spoon would have been equally ambitious and productive? I honestly don't know and doubt that anyone can say with certainty.

The part that I am not following in your argument is why are we even introducing that variable in the first place. I mean, sure, money, beauty, health, IQ, EQ, and so many other factors are helpful and make everything easier. But why is money so intrinsically linked to Sam Altman's specific path to success? He comes from middle class, and all the money he made came after he was validated in his approach, not before. So why bring it up here? And if you're going to bring up money, why not bring up all the other factors I mentioned above?

This might change as the thread matures, but the first 10 comments were all exclusively disagreeing with the premise of the post in ways that made it clear that 1) the commenters didn't read the post, and 2) their arguments were highly generic and didn't make any sense in the context of Sam Altman's life and path to success. So I would add one additional point to Sam's list: try to be a good listener.

The answer lies in the frequency of updates across the org. KRs in most orgs are reviewed on a quarterly basis, whereas marketing spend, conversions and similar need a weekly cadence. We are currently reporting on KRs on a weekly basis, but that requires a lot of indoctrination for new hires.

Any startup that will hire someone focused on resting and vesting hasn't figured out their hiring, which is a 100% indication that the vesting is not going to be valuable.

I can't figure out if you're being sarcastic, because if so, you're nailing it. If not, literally every single argument you brought up is against the consensus in the YC community, which doesn't mean you're wrong, but it still stands out as a massively contrarian position on this site.

Do you share that link with everyone who disagrees with you? It comes across as an overreaction. Another way to deal with critical feedback would be to understand it at a deeper level instead of being reactive.

I’ll help you out. A bunch of us here deal with board members on a daily basis. Some board members are great, others not so much. To hear that there is a board out there that gave voting rights to an employee makes us experience two simultaneous sensations: 1. Hell yeah!, and 2. I wonder if they picked the right employee.

I’ll leave it at that.

Your reasoning in this discussion is unbecoming of a board member. In your activity on that board you’re involved in a lot of open-ended conversations with a lot of ambiguity and high cost of failure. I hope you express yourself in that setting with a bit more humility and introspection.

There are other sources of this exact same info, and this source is far more on the lean side then anything I’ve ever seen. It’s not something I can share because the subscription is not mine, but I am sure others can back me up on this.

This is how fake news happens. I really wish we all took a bit more time to research things before we publish them, because I guarantee you there will be more people today running around and sharing this exact same fake news about founders living in apartments paid for by their startups.

In Clerky, you will find it under the section “Outside Activities.” Custom contracts may have a different name for that clause. 1 out of 10? Maybe if you’re in Hollywood or some other highly specialized vertical. In tech, it will be 99 out of 100.

W-2 “freelance” in addition to W-2 “non-freelance” at the same time? In other words, you violated your employment agreement and got fired. The sad part is you still don’t quite understand the basics of W-2 and why you got fired in the first place.

> Will a CEO work less hard if he (and his peers) can only ever gain $100M in net worth before a wealth tax on assets kicks in?

I empathize with the quick back-of-the-napkin math ("if we could just take Bezos' money and give it to the poor..."). But I think there's an important nuance here.

You're making it sound like the only group of people that would be affected by this are the folks with $0 in net worth, so that the upside is $100m. In reality, anyone who's ever earned the first $100m (not inherited or won in a lottery), only ended up accelerating their ambition and likelihood of doing a lot more. Case in point - all of the Paypal mafia - they are all working their asses off every single day, and none of them would have had the upside that you're talking about.

In short, your proposal would basically mean that you're going to force into retirement anyone who demonstrates to be a 1000x doer. In the worst case scenario, the opportunities those people would have created would be lost for a long amount of time (eg: creating a domestic automaker that turns the ICE industry upside down). At best, you would be expecting from unproven people who have not yet validated their abilities to execute on those opportunities with the same level of success as the 1000x doers.

So it seems to me that the question is not so much "what could we do with Bezos' money," but more "how much of Bezos' money are we comfortable with not being generated at all to ensure that he never has more than $100m."