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Comment by blindriver | Hacker News Reader

This is really dumb, and I'm not even a fan of sama, I think he's a snake.

Sam Altman was CEO and President. The fact he was not Chairman is not material. There's a thousand different explanations how that misstatement could have occurred. Maybe someone wrote that up, and sama didn't review every single line, and other people just assumed it was right. But it's not material. Being being the CEO and President of YC is much, much more important and more material than Chairman of the board, which is largely a figurehead position.

No one is going to care and this is extreme nitpicking. They should fix the misstatement, but to claim some sort of conspiracy around this is stupid.

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As I read the statement in the article, he didn't claim he was the chairman of Y Combinator at the time he was actually President. He claimed was the chairman at the time of the filing, 2021:

"Mr. Altman is an entrepreneurial and thought leader with a proven track record of growth investing within the technology industry. He is also the co-founder and CEO of OpenAI, a leading AI research and deployment company, and the chairman of Y Combinator"

And as mentioned, "president" and "chairman" aren't fuzzy questions for the law. Saying you're one when you are the other is a lying, not "fudging a bit". Lying in generally, say at cocktail party, isn't against the law. But lying to the SEC is definitely a thing that can have penalties.

And, yes, the article takes an appropriate "why would you even do that?" tone since it seems unlikely he'd get some financial or other payoff for such behavior. The main impression it gives me is of a pathological level of hubris/ego. Like a manager who j-walks in front of cop on company time.

Lying is a very difficult burden to prove and requires meeting several criteria:

1. Intent to deceive, so it can't just be that the statement is false but that it was intentionally false as opposed to what is likely a mistake made by a third party. As was noted elsewhere, Sam was positioned to be Chairman of Y Combinator after stepping down as President, but that never happened. It's entirely possible that whoever wrote this did not become aware of that change in circumstances.

2. Reliance and harm. The false statement must be something that was or can be relied upon by potential investors that could cause them harm. It's possible an investor can rely on this fact but it would be very hard to demonstrate harm from it.

3. Materiality. The statement must be significant in that the information could sway a potential investor towards the investment. I'd say misstating credentials is material and so this element does count.

Taken altogether however, this does seem like a whole lot of nothing.

100% what I was going to say.

This is a just a misstatement. There's plenty of valid things to critique sama on, but this isn't one of them.

It’s a misstatement and most probably an oversight at worst. It’s only material if it affects people’s decisions in investing. Theres no material amount of prestige associated with a board position over an actual working position like ceo or president.

It can have penalties but most like not for a disclosures bio page of a spac.

>But it's not material.

the corporation President, VP, Secretary, Treasurer, and Board of Directors and Chairman are legally defined titles, they are material titles, they imply fiduciary duty, loyalty, etc. (CEO isn't really a thing, it was made up to point out whether the President or Chairman wielded the ultimate power in situations where the largest shareholder might be more active than passive)

Materiality depend on the question at hand.

SEC filings would be enough for materiality one would assume.

Not an S1 and especially for a SPAC. Nothing is truly material until an acquisition is made.

You would not be correct. If It has to influence something. Being chairman of the board is much less prestigious or important than CEO or president which is actually doing work. Chairman of a board is a figurehead position.

For what question? What is it evidence of exactly?

E.g. It doesn’t tell you what sama had for breakfast.

If I claim in a job application that I have worked several years for, let's say, Google, and it later turns out that that was a "mistake" (I was only promised a job, but never got it), I could definitely get fired. Why should Altman expect to face no consequences whatsoever from such a "misstatement"?

Not really a fair comparison... how about if you _did_ work for Google, your role was Principal Engineer on Google Buzz and you were the tech lead for the team working on it. On the Google Buzz landing page it says rob74, Director of Google Buzz, led the project

And btw, there was noone with a Director title working on the project, you were in fact the main project lead

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