Lewis also soft-sells the polyamorous relationships and complications that caused around SBF's relationship with Caroline Ellison. Caroline wants to go public, and why that would be a much bigger deal in the polyamorous world they were living in.
It's similar in many of Lewis's other analysis of SBF's relationships. Lewis avoids context that makes SBF look much worse.
I'm not familiar with the book but this doesn't sound like it pattern matches with any of the poly I've experienced. Going public is a big deal in poly in particular? Since when? What kind of self respecting tech bro group house doesn't have a graph of all the poly on their whiteboard?
If it wasn't a big deal, SBF would have been OK with Ellison going public with it. But he wasn't, and held out against it. Lewis spends not a single word digging into SBF's motivations around that.
Worse, he spends barely a chapter on how the polyamory which pervaded the highest levels of both Alameda and FTX might have clouded everyone's judgement and ability to say no. Mostly just limiting himself to: "It was a bunch of young adults all living together and who slept with whom changed rather fluidly. It wasn't a sex or orgy den, and the lurid tales about sex parties and all that aren't accurate."
Which I guess is probably true as far as it goes.
But not spending any time at all about how those relationships may have affected the corporate governance shows a strange lack of curiosity and unwillingness to think about conflicts of interest any relationship between business partners creates.
[I have no problem with polyamory itself--as long as everyone is consenting it's not really any of my business.]
I love salacious details like everyone else, but it sounds like you're looking for data where none exists. Why would those relationships affect the company, and who is going to consent to an interview about it? What exactly are you expecting Lewis to do?
The problem as I see it is not polyamory, it is casual sexual relationships between coworkers. It is kind of like why officers are not supposed to have relationships with their subordinates -- it subverts the authority that must exist in a structure where people are held accountable for decisions. By adding polyamory into the mixed it just made it worse since it increased the incidents exponentially.
Small beans compared to stealing billions of dollars. It's astonishing how the actual crime that SBF committed is almost invisible in much of this discussion.
YC is a success, PG/JL's relationship survived, and nobody got indicted. They're role models. If YC failed or PG got divorced, people might view it differently.
I guess what I'm saying is... I wouldn't read too much into SBF's sex life, and I wouldn't berate Lewis for not prying, especially with uncooperative subjects.
FTX had a 32--billion dollar valuation by that point, with over one-million users. Alameda was well over one billion and doing very sophisticated financial transactions.
That's not a tiny little startup hoping to make it big. Your investors and board want you to follow proper corporate governance, especially around conflicts of interest. Your users would like you to follow proper corporate governance rules so they don't lose their money. And do little things like following the express rules you told them you would follow (like FTX not loaning customer deposits to Alameda).
Playing fast and loose with the rules is what got him into trouble. The fact that Lewis doesn't pursue this angle just shows how big the pass Lewis gave him. It didn't have to be all about the lurid details, but the lack of best practices here was pretty bad.
By what point? The SBF/Ellison relationship predated FTX by years.
SBF lost+stole billions and you are angry with Lewis because he didn't pry into the guy's sex life? Which might not even be all that interesting, we're just assuming it. I like a good tabloid story too but come on.
I’m not angry about his sex life as such. Good grief. If it was exactly the same only with a bunch of people he didn’t employ and wasn’t committing fraud with I wouldn’t care at all.
Romantic relationships within a business, especially within the executive suite, cause conflicts of interest. Webs of romantic relationships create webs of conflicts of interest. If the executive suite commits a multi billion dollar fraud, not inquiring into what role the conflicts of interest played in that fraud ignores an important piece of the story.
The conflicts of interest almost certainly made the financial crimes much worse in the form of less oversight and less ability to look at what and was doing objectively.
It's similar in many of Lewis's other analysis of SBF's relationships. Lewis avoids context that makes SBF look much worse.