zlacker

>>VirusN+(OP)
He’s just 37 years old, I’d say his accomplishments are pretty impressive for 37!

He dropped out of Stanford in 2005, at 19, to co-found Loopt. Yeah, it ultimately failed, but over 7 years they got 5 million users, raised $30 mil in funding, and were acquihired for $43.4 mil.

He was a YC partner at ~25, YC’s president at ~28, and seemed to do a good job leading it for ~5 years. He’s also been pretty personally successful as an Angel investor.

He was an early investor in OpenAI, left YC a few years ago to become their CEO, and they’ve done extremely well under him.

No, he’s not Steve Jobs, Bill Gates, Zuck, etc., but his accomplishments at 37 are pretty damn good. I’m not really seeing how this is failing upwards?

>>yashap+L7
You are correct, failing upward was the wrong word choice once I realized Loopt didn't crash and burn but actually had a ho hum exit. Definitely not a 'failure'.

If I could, I'd rephrase my question of what makes him stand out from all the other thousands of people who have sold companies for ~10m net? From an outside perspective it looks like the biggest success of his career pre-open AI was getting PaulG to like him a lot.

Hence why I'm asking if others can vouch for him being brilliant or something.

>>VirusN+U8
"Failure" is still a fair description. Companies that raise that much money usually don't collapse outright. Instead the investors engineer an exit, partly because it returns some money but mostly because it looks better and solidifies relationships both with founders and acquirers.

sold companies for ~10m net

We don't know the exact numbers for this particular case, but you can be sure people lost money. Raising $30m doesn't mean the company was valued at $30m; it means the company was valued at much more. For example if you took $30m in a typical Series A round you'd be valued at $150m. If you then sold for a third of that...