Sam Bankman-Fried: I hope to make money to pay people back
god, this man is spinning so hard, his next venture should be a Beyblade[1] competitor.<p>A digression: In tech, it&#x27;s really really hard to separate spin from reality. I remember reading HN as a high schooler, and then as a college kid, being astounded by personalities like Elon Musk, Zuckerberg, and Steve Jobs.<p>Now I&#x27;m an adult, and I can totally see people like SBF (pre-collapse) and Musk (still!) capturing the imagination of younger coders. If you&#x27;re a younger reader reading this, please note my words:<p>People like this might (might!) know how to write software, but this is not what makes them exceptional. You could be a brilliant engineer with a world-changing idea and you would never get to the scale these guys are at.<p>Precisely two things make someone like SBF exceptional:<p>1: Spin. From Crypto, to Effective Altruism, to &quot;I&#x27;m so sorry,&quot; to this latest pitch, he pivots from concept to concept and tests his theses against the market of journalists. When something resonates, he doubles down and scales, seemingly whipping immense conviction out of nowhere. You can also see this with Musk, whose primary creative contribution to Twitter so far has been to imbue it with the same  &quot;we need to work extremely hard to change the world&quot; narrative he has seen succeed at his other companies. Musk is a marketing guy, not an engineer. SBF &quot;never opened the code for FTX.&quot; These guys are great at making you think they&#x27;re hands-on wonks who can relate to you - that is their principal talent.<p>2: Privilege. Spin is a very powerful tool all on its own, but you&#x27;re never going to develop that kind of unshatterable confidence if you exaggerate too much as a youngster and get hurt because of it. Growing up with a lot of wealth and&#x2F;or influence puts you in a situation where you can spin, spin, spin, and never face consequences. In essence, it primes the minds of people who can genuinely believe that they&#x27;re helping the world while making risky bets with billions in other people&#x27;s money - FTX only got as big as it did because SBF&#x27;s initial bets succeeded, and he was only willing to take on that early risk because his upbringing made him feel like he had something to fall back on.<p>Don&#x27;t try to be like these people if you don&#x27;t have the same set of skills. Look at your background and your skills, and figure out how you can be maximally effective&#x2F;influential&#x2F;happy&#x2F;whatever based on what YOU bring to the table.<p>[1] <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.youtube.com&#x2F;watch?v=pE4xP59fOC8&amp;t=30s" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.youtube.com&#x2F;watch?v=pE4xP59fOC8&amp;t=30s</a>