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by cbtacy 1313 days ago
They had no real board. They had no real governance. What's amazing is that large venture funds would put this much money into this kind of company without any board seats.
2 comments

He simultaneously played League of Legends when pitching to VC on Zoom call. That indicated to VC how serious and responsible he was. They unanimously and immediately signed off funding merely out of awe.
I had to Google this because that is some straight up Silicon Valley show stuff.

https://www.businessinsider.com/ftx-sam-bankman-fried-league...

Ok. I saw this interview months ago and thought something looked off. Now I swear he is playing LoL in this interview: https://youtu.be/xVaSSTEHB0Y
You're almost certainly right!
Really shows how little oversight any of these venture funds have.

They come across more like frat bros with huge pockets casually giving away billions under a pinky promise of eventual returns.

At this point, they are doing the same level of DD as those degens in WSB.

But I guess you don't have much leverage when the fed is printing trillions for years and we end up with dozens of Zuckerberg types, too much power and no oversight to hold them accountable.

It is dangerous to extrapolate from one case (or even a few notable cases in recent years) that venture funds have "little oversight" over portfolio companies. These are the exceptions rather than the rule.

Obviously, some boards are better than others at oversight, but the complete absence of a functioning board, as was the case at FTX, is definitely very, very unusual.

Like you have conceded, there are more than a few notable cases in recent years.

Often hiding their "secret sauce", which often turn out to be lies and deception for a variety of reasons.

It is no longer very very "unusual" when free loans, credit and liquidity has been floating around for years thanks to the money printer.

What's dangerous about that?