[HN Gopher] StabilityAI cofounder says CEO tricked him into sell... ___________________________________________________________________ StabilityAI cofounder says CEO tricked him into selling stake for $100 Author : bhouston Score : 147 points Date : 2023-07-13 19:37 UTC (3 hours ago) (HTM) web link (www.forbes.com) (TXT) w3m dump (www.forbes.com) | SV_BubbleTime wrote: | https://archive.is/Sl3XS | | (Also, I didn't research this author, but a reminder that for | $500 or so, you too can become a writer for Forbes. They have a | massive credibility issue and I suspect are cashing out what | little name they have left) | ada1981 wrote: | Where do I sign up for $500? | epolanski wrote: | May I just say, that the most ridiculous thing in this news | really is selling a 15% stake in a company for $100? | | I'm no way rich, but I would not even bother taking the time to | go to a lawyer or whatever and do all this kind of paperwork for | such a ridiculous amount of money, I'd just ride it however it | goes and not care. | sigstoat wrote: | > May I just say, that the most ridiculous thing in this news | really is selling a 15% stake in a company for $100? | | no kidding. i wouldn't sell a 15% stake in a lemonade stand for | $100. that doesn't even cover the hassle of reviewing the | contract and signing a bunch of notarized paperwork | wongarsu wrote: | Owning a 15% stake in a company also generates paperwork. Long- | term, getting rid of it should be less paperwork overall. | Michelangelo11 wrote: | Right? Like ... what happened in that transaction? | | My feeling is that the guy also got some favors or something | under the table, and the $100 was purely nominal. If that's the | case, it could be that whatever he was promised didn't actually | pan out, and now he's suing in retaliation. | | In any case, "$100 for a 15% stake" simply cannot be the whole | story. | andrewstuart wrote: | So many people don't do the right thing. | kkielhofner wrote: | One of the biggest warnings with "equity" in a startup: | | Even if you know what you're doing and you watch it like a hawk | it's pretty easy for other parties to pull any number of shady | but technically legal moves to significantly devalue yours/others | while protecting their own. | | If this proves to have merit it's one of the more shocking (yet | straightforward) instances of this kind of unfortunately routine | behavior. | | That said it's a little hard to believe anyone would take $100 | instead of holding on to it to see what happens. Depending on | personal circumstances I can see how $100k or more could be | tempting but $100 is ridiculous. | varelse wrote: | [dead] | jujube3 wrote: | Maybe he used one of those super-persuasive AIs I keep hearing | about. | qiaoliang89 wrote: | epic cover photo... | system2 wrote: | I ate dinner last night and cost me $100. What kind of weirdness | is this? | Dreako wrote: | [flagged] | dustingetz wrote: | VCs don't like dead equity, they will have pressed for this. | Nonetheless you cannot lie and this could have been resolved with | integrity. | andrewstuart wrote: | >> VCs don't like dead equity | | Isn't a VC investment dead equity? | bloudermilk wrote: | How could you say that? VCs are there to go to bat for you, | make connections that change the trajectory of your business, | and support you however they can. /s | zeroCalories wrote: | Yeah, that's why they pay a lot of money to get in. Would you | give your buddy joe that doesn't do any work 10% for fun? | dpiers wrote: | I had a former employer call once and ask me to sign a form | confirming that I had opted not to exercise the stock options | worth 0.125% of the company when I left. | | They were raising a new round and my old grant was a sticking | point because the new investors weren't content with the | company not having a record of my exercise. | | I signed because it helped them out, cost me nothing and seemed | like the right thing to do. Just think it was funny that a VC | was so averse to dead equity that they made the company make | sure someone who wasn't on the cap table agreed that they | weren't on the cap table. | khazhoux wrote: | Odd story. The point at which you're selling your stake for $100, | you've basically decided to give it away. Which raises the | question: if he was just going to get $100 and nothing more, why | not just hang on to it? | quadrature wrote: | Only thing I can think of is that it might have been the | symbolism of the cheque rather than the value. | throw03172019 wrote: | And it was in a few transactions? That's even more odd like the | CEO couldn't afford $100 in a lump sum. | sidewndr46 wrote: | Yeah, I had a similar conversation with a founder a while back. | Company he had founded was getting acquired. He was a minority | stakeholder at this point. No ability to oppose the | acquisition. Acquiring company wanted him to sign docs saying | "I relinquish all my interest for no compensation". His answer | was basically something like "I think you can spare $10000 if | this is that important" | gamblor956 wrote: | Doesn't make sense without additional facts. | | Such an agreement would not be valid in court as there | wouldn't be an exchange of consideration. | bartread wrote: | My immediate thought exactly. You'd have to be absolutely flat | broke for this to make any sense whatsoever. Why sell it at | all? And, if it's so worthless, wouldn't you be more than a bit | suspicious if the CEO were so keen to buy it off you? Something | here smells off to me. | londons_explore wrote: | I assume the deal was for something else... Eg. "Sign this | deal for 100 bucks and we'll have a shorter list of people to | consult at every shareholders meeting. In return, we'll | consider you for investment opportunities for your next | startup " | cabaalis wrote: | Hanging onto stock from a company I co-founded a few years ago | has caused me tons of stress because that company constantly | files for tax extensions forcing me to do so as well. | | I have other financial processes which rely upon timely | processing of my completed tax filing, and every year it causes | me trouble. So if something is thought to be worthless and | about to fold, "just hang onto it" could cause a non-zero | amount of headaches. | bloudermilk wrote: | Guessing you're a member of an LLC or shareholder of an | S-Corp with pass-through taxation. Can't agree more what a | pain it is to wait on your old partners to do their taxes | every year before you can do your own. | | If you're just holding shares/options in a corporation that | isn't going through ownership changes, that problem doesn't | exist. | | That said, there are still valid reasons to cut ties with | past partners/employers. | oldtownroad wrote: | The lawsuit accuses the CEO of being a shady person in general. | I think it's plausible that the co-founder was surrendering | equity he thought worthless (to move on from working with the | shady person) and perhaps the CEO was advised by someone that a | transaction without consideration can be challenging to defend | (since he allegedly knew he was lying to the co-founder) so he | convinced the co-founder that "for tax purposes, if I pay you | $100 for the equity, it'll be better for you as you can write | the loss off" or something along those lines, something that | wouldn't stand up to scrutiny now but is enough to bamboozle | someone into agreeing at the time. | | Edit: no theory needed. The lawsuit goes on to say the $100 is | the price the co-founder originally paid for the shares when | the company was formed. | tpmoney wrote: | The CEO might have been shady as all heck but the lawsuit | really feels like it's all over the place in terms of claims. | It starts by going on about how important the co-founder was | to the company and to teaching the CEO almost everything | about AI and like the co-founder was the brains behind the | technical achievements, but then pivots into talking about | how the CEO was responsible for all the code and the actual | implementation and the co-founder was just a public face and | deals maker who had no involvement in the actual development, | and then pivots back to complaints about the CEO fraudulently | claiming credit for "being instrumental" or "leading" the | efforts to build the stuff. | | The complaint simultaneously tries to paint the co-founder as | absolutely vital to the success and creation of everything | the company did, while at the same time only taking 15% of | the company (the CEO started with 70%) and completely unaware | of anything regarding the company's assets, income, or | valuation, despite apparently negotiating multiple hundred | thousand dollar funding campaigns and contributing $15k of | his own money. Is it common when you're in the "getting | grants from NGO's, before even seed VC funding" part of | starting a company for one of three founders to be | negotiating these $100k+ funding deals without any access to | the company finances? | | Didn't follow any public statement of the CEO, didn't have an | insight or access to the books despite apparently multiple | times running into funders complaining that the company | appeared to be mis-managing funds, and apparently didn't even | blink an eye (other than to note it I guess) that the deal | that he thought was selling his shares back to the company | was instead written to sell it to the CEO personally. | | CEO may have been crooked as any man could be, but the co- | founders own complaint really makes it seem like he walked | through his entire run there with his eyes tightly shut. | slashdev wrote: | It's obviously not for the $100, that's just a small, round | value to make it legal (some money has to change hands, even if | just $1.) | | Likely the CEO explains that it's worth nothing, they're re- | organizing things for such and such a purpose, and the 15% | stake in the cap tables is an inconvenience preventing a | possible deal. Please could you do us a favor and help us clear | that from the cap table. | | I'm the kind of person that would fall for that. | quickthrower2 wrote: | If you want to know, watch Dr Phil interviewing people getting | conned or Unusual Suspects where a "best friend" murders him to | avoid getting caught in a Ponzi/fraud. Human nature is to trust | on face value. | | I assume I can be fooled. | | I for many people including me, defence against dog eating dog | business has to be learned. | anotheryou wrote: | Not that I could judge for either side here, but I feel we are | missing part of the story. | | Who would sell anything like that for 100 dollars in 2 | transactions? If it really was worth nearly nothing I'd probably | not ask my cofounder to pay me 100 bucks for it either. | andrewstuart wrote: | Isn't this essentially what Zuckerberg did to his cofounder? | | Or some variant of the same recipe..., | rexreed wrote: | Not quite -- Eduardo Saverin has had a pretty good life after | he was diluted out. "Eduardo Luiz Saverin is a Brazilian | billionaire entrepreneur and angel investor based in Singapore. | Saverin is one of the co-founders of Facebook. In 2012, he | owned 53 million Facebook shares (approximately 2% of all | outstanding shares), valued at approximately $2 billion at the | time" | | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eduardo_Saverin | | I'd say nothing like giving up a stake for $100 | JustLurking2022 wrote: | He had to go through a lawsuit to get them... kinda like the | story. | jononomo wrote: | Saverin had to sue Zuckerberg to get the money though, which | is what the guy in this story is also doing. | ansk wrote: | This dude very well may be better off with the 100 bucks at this | point. The company is bleeding money at a ridiculous rate, so | they're going to need to fundraise shortly. Given how little they | have to show for their initial funding, they're going to struggle | to attract any further investments. The initial investors already | look like absolute clowns for giving a $1B valuation to a company | whose primary selling points were 1) a model which was state-of- | the-art for maybe a month 2) a github repo with a lot of stars | and 3) a loose association to some mediocre researchers. Unless | they can find someone to hold the bag in the very near future, | their equity is going to be just about worthless. | Filligree wrote: | Let's be nice; they've released Stable Diffusion and now SDXL | for free, which has completely changed the landscape on what | can practically be done by individuals. | | Having an open foundation model for image-generation is a | service to the world. It just isn't exactly obvious how it | could possibly lead to profit. | skeaker wrote: | Maybe this is callous, but this kind of sounds like a win win. | Investors who are responsible for enshittifying all my favorite | stuff finally get screwed for once, AI gets democratized | instead of being solely in the hands of OpenAI/Google/etc in | the process. Nice. | ivalm wrote: | The loose association was with decent researchers, no need to | bring them down. I do agree about the rest. | ansk wrote: | Mediocre in regard to the standard set by other research | teams pulling $1B+ valuations. The OpenAI founding team and | the recently announced team at xAI are what I would consider | to be exceptionally strong groups. Adept, Anthropic, | Inflection, and character.ai are also strong. Look at the | track records and accolades of researchers at these groups. | Ilya Sutskever alone has more research experience than the | combined team of phd students Emad was working with (and | eventually hired). | iambateman wrote: | I was part of a group which ceded managerial control of a small | business (think 100-500k/year) to a minority shareholder. This | person was paid a professional salary to maintain the business, | while we kept majority voting rights. | | We still had majority ownership until he decided he didn't give a | ** about our ownership claims and openly did his own thing. | | The problem is, no lawyer is going to take the case because the | $$ is too small and we would be risking our own capital vs the | company capital. | | The worst part...it's an LLC and the manager remains kind enough | to send the tax statement each year, so I pay for the privilege | of having a company stolen from me. | | Choose your business partners carefully. :( | fallingknife wrote: | You had majority voting, right. Why not just fire him. | codethief wrote: | I don't understand. You have majority ownership and you can't | fire the manager of your own company? | icedchai wrote: | The company is yours. Why can't you use its capital? Do you no | longer have access to the bank accounts? | cj wrote: | I was chatting with a company who sold a large minority stake in | their company to a well known private equity group (think 49%) | with the explicit purpose of retaining control. | | Soon after the transaction closed, the PE firm was able to | covertly buy another 2% of voting shares from a pre-existing | investor in the company, which resulted in the PE firm gaining | full majority control over the company, kicked out the CEO, | replaced the board of directors, the whole works. | | The unfortunate part about these kinds of things is that 1) they | happen all the time, and 2) founders rarely talk about it because | doing so can so often destroy your ability to get funding for | future endevors, etc. | | I really wish there were an anonymous but vetted "yelp" type of | site for people/firms who do bad business. So much business is | done in bad faith and the people on the losing end rarely have | the ability to warn others of their experience without killing | their own reputation. | hammock wrote: | What was the name of the PE firm? | JohnFen wrote: | They call it "swimming with the sharks" for a reason. | [deleted] | lotsofpulp wrote: | The above situation seems like swimming with goldfish. If you | have less than 50% yourself, why would you bank on someone | else not being able to get more than 50%? | [deleted] | JohnFen wrote: | It was misplaced trust. That's a really easy mistake to | make until you've been burned by it. I'll bet that person | won't make that mistake a second time. | | But better is to avoid swimming with the sharks at all. I | have a wonderful horror story about a business deal I made | where I was cheated out of about $5 mil. I didn't trust the | party I was doing the deal with, so the contract | negotiations took most of a year and the contract ended up | being very thick as my attorney and I tried to anticipate | and block every possible way that I could get screwed. | | But we missed one rather obscure method. | | That's what happens when you swim with sharks. | | (Don't shed tears for me, though. I did very well through | that deal -- just not as well as I should have.) | takinola wrote: | I feel like the story of the scorpion and the frog | applies here. My solution is to try very, very hard not | to engage with people I do not trust. | | My mantra is "good people do good things, bad people do | bad things". If you don't want bad things to happen to | you, stay away from people you know to be bad regardless | of how tempting it may be to associate with them. | JohnFen wrote: | Indeed. It was poor decisionmaking on my part. I was | blinded by the $$. My attorney tried to warn me off of | doing the deal at all. He had done his due diligence and | looked into the company, and told me outright that the | company was shady. | | That was another thing I learned: if you respect | someone's expertise enough to pay them for it, you should | probably take what they have to say very seriously. | nickfromseattle wrote: | > But we missed one rather obscure method. | | Please share. | JohnFen wrote: | It was related to international distribution. I had | negotiated royalties for international sales, but had | neglected to cover the sale of the _rights_ to sell | internationally. So the company just sold the rights, of | which I didn 't get a piece, and the companies that | bought the rights had no obligation to pay me anything. | supportengineer wrote: | In the 1980s I had a babysitter who watched the TV show | _Guiding Light_ and I am pretty sure this exact scenario | happened to one of the characters. | ttymck wrote: | I'm not trying to be harsh but this seems like business 101? Is | this really that common? If you can't retain control of your | company are you truly fit to run it? | | > with the explicit purpose of retaining control | | Why wasn't the other party contractually prohibited from | obtaining control? | DANmode wrote: | Meanwhile, the inbound investors I've taken calls from aren't | interested at less than 51%. | | Where's the disconnect? | redbell wrote: | I don't know exactly how the CEO got kicked out but I know that | Zuckerberg owns just about 13% of Meta and not only they cannot | replace him but he still have superior power in decision making | over the board of directors. | wongarsu wrote: | Zuckerberg (and a small group of other Meta shareholders) | hold shares that have 10x as much voting power as normal | shares. He has about 90% of those special shares, giving him | a solid majority in most matters. | | Some other companies like Lyft or Alphabet has similar | structures, but overall this is very unusual. | Spivak wrote: | I'm actually surprised it's not more common. If I buy meta | stock I have zero expectation of being able to sway company | decisions. I just care that if they make money I make | money. | [deleted] | TrackerFF wrote: | Small story on these kind of takeovers, but on a MUCH, MUCH | smaller scale: | | Back home we have this small newspaper that's been going on for | 25 years. It's just a small 3 man operation, and it's just a | weekly paper that covers local stuff in our small county. Most | of their customers are expats and older folks. | | When they started out 25 years ago, they raised funds by | selling private stocks. All in all, there are maybe 100 owners, | many whom probably don't even remember that they own the stock | (but you can easily find them, as we have pretty transparent | laws when it comes to company ownership). | | But here comes the fun part: A couple of years ago some of the | leading media companies in our country (Norway) started | consolidating "power" by acquiring small local newspapers all | over the country. Eventually they came to our local newspaper, | and they started cold-calling all the listed owners, asking if | they could purchase their stocks - warning that the newspaper | was on the brink of bankruptcy, and that they would buy it and | restructure it into a profitable paper. Some owners, thinking | the stock was going to be worthless anyway, sold them their | shares. | | They, of course, never told the majority owners any of this. | The majority owner (the workers of the newspaper) started | getting worried calls from senior/old readers if the newspaper | was going to close, because some investors had been calling | them with bad news about an impeding bankruptcy? | | The paper printed a story about this attempted takeover and the | fake news regarding any potential bankruptcy, and people | stopped selling their stocks. | anyoneamous wrote: | > started cold-calling all the listed owners, asking if they | could purchase their stocks - warning that the newspaper was | on the brink of bankruptcy | | In a sane world, this kind of behaviour would be identified | as fraudulent and the party responsible would lose their | shirt. | woleium wrote: | never pick a fight with someone who buys ink by the barrel | quickthrower2 wrote: | In this case, the fight picker buys ink by the FCL though. | | I think in this case: don't pick a fight in the back yard | of a small town where community still exists and everyone | sticks up for each other. | Simon_O_Rourke wrote: | From a control point of view, and maybe a salary or job | viewpoint, this isn't too good. | | But enlighten me how a 40% odd share distribution of a now PE- | owned and operated company would be a bad thing? Surely they're | going to try and increase the company's value for their own | self interest? | cj wrote: | PE and Founder interests are not as aligned as many would | assume at face value. | | Founders often care about doing good by their customers, | vendors, employees... while the average PE firm will happily | screw everyone over the moment there's a monetary incentive | to do so. | | If a founder has the same time horizon for an exit as the | PE/VC and if the founder is emotionally detached from the | business/product/customers/employees, then all incentives are | aligned. But that's usually not the case which is why you | often see CEO's ousted and replaced by a "professional CEO" | to "take the company to the next level". In reality founder- | CEOs are ousted most often because their passion for the | business gets in the way of maximizing profit. | nobrains wrote: | There seem to be 2 problems here: | | 1. Giving another party 49% doesn't guarantee you will have | retaining control. You having 51% shares does guarantee that. | So, their strategy was flawed. | | 2. Not sure if regulations allow this, but to make it bullet | proof they should have made a contract that the PR group will | not go beyond 49%. | | Without either of the above, the company just did not do good | diligence. | Cpoll wrote: | > Not sure if regulations allow this, but to make it bullet | proof they should have made a contract that the PR group will | not go beyond 49%. | | Can this ever work? The PR group can control the 2% without | nominally owning it. | RandomBK wrote: | The extreme case of this would be Poison Pills, so if _that | 's_ allowed then I suspect you can contract for this as | well. | | Having said that this is the type of thing that is likely | to get dragged in front of a judge, so the more foolproof | way would be to retain 51% control or dual-class shares. | Once you give up majority control to third parties, you | can't really prevent everyone else ganging up on you and | outvoting you. | scrollaway wrote: | They don't need to own the shares, they just need the | shares to vote their way. | arcticbull wrote: | I believe the usual path in this type of situation is to | dual-class shares, so you can retain voting control while | selling beneficial ownership to others. I suspect the PE | group would have, you know, rejected this arrangement given | their plan. | mlyle wrote: | > I really wish there were an anonymous but vetted "yelp" type | of site for people/firms who do bad business. So much business | is done in bad faith and the people on the losing end rarely | have the ability to warn others of their experience without | killing their own reputation. | | If you credibly report your experience, they will know who did | it, anonymous or not. | | "The Funded" was an attempt to do this for VCs a decade ago. | But it was astroturfed in practice. | mediaman wrote: | Stories like this are bizarre. There are a million ways to | ensure rights for a founder-owner that do not depend on 51% | ownership, such as requiring supermajority votes for replacing | the CEO, or right of first refusals granted to the founder- | owner for share transfers. If they throw a fit about those | terms, then don't do the deal! | | If you are selling shares to a PE firm with the explicit goal | of retaining control, and you have less than 50% of shares, why | would you make it so easy for them to get control? | wmf wrote: | People just don't know about this stuff. It was even worse | decades ago when there wasn't so much startup content online. | i_am_jl wrote: | Lawyers have always known about this kind of stuff. Blows | my mind that business owners are negotiating contracts like | "I know what all these words mean, why would I need a | lawyer to review this?". | [deleted] | piecerough wrote: | This. Always get a lawyer. | jrumbut wrote: | As the sibling comment points out, it's not like you can | hire any lawyer off Craigslist and expect to be | bulletproof. | | Lawyers can be an expensive rubber stamp on a deal that | is absolutely not in your interest or be a chaos agent | that makes you impossible to do business with. They can | also make executing complex deals very simple (for you) | or ward off sophisticated scammers. At least in my | experience, it can be very hard to know which is which | before it's too late. | code_biologist wrote: | My company has spent six figures with two different blue | chip startup law firms. Our board specified the firms. | Those in the VC scene would recognize them. The quality | of the work has varied from "decent if eye wateringly | expensive" to "subpar", seemingly dependent on the | associate that worked on it and if there was any other | industry-wide phenomena occupying the firm's attention. | | I'd still suggest a lawyer for sure, but I wish I had | counsel I liked. | wmf wrote: | Be sure to use a startup lawyer not a general small | business lawyer or you might end up incorporated in | Florida with no founder vesting or shotgun clause. | talldatethrow wrote: | You don't need to "know" anything to understand it was | potentially possibly. And if you didn't, imo you're sorta | braindead and that might explain why they wanted to out you | in the first place. | ada1981 wrote: | Exactly. If you do a deal like this, it seems ideal someone | more savvy come in and run your company for you. | cj wrote: | Simple answer: | | A successful founder will sell 1 (maybe 2) companies in their | lifetime, while PE/VC firms do these deals every day of the | week. | | It's like entering the ring with a pro MMA fighter and | expecting to have a fair fight. You have a massive | disadvantage that can't be overcome. The best you can do is | take precautions and "do your best" but "your best" and | "precautions" still isn't good enough if your opponent really | wants to screw you over. Unfortunately this happens all the | time in VC, and especially in PE. | | As an example, when you sign a term sheet to sell a company, | most founders assume the deal will go through at the price | that was agreed. In reality, deals almost never close at the | originally agreed upon price. The buyer usually waits until | the very last minute, then drops the bomb on the seller "Btw, | we can't do the deal anymore at this price, but we can sign | tomorrow for 30% less". The sad part is it's such a common | tactic and PE firms will do things like encourage founders to | get their whole team excited about the transaction -before- | dropping the bomb / new deal terms. At which point the | founder is basically trapped with their whole team excited | about an exit, which PE then exploits. | | All of the lawyers in the world won't help if the PE/VC firm | has the ability to spread the word "Don't do business with | John Appleseed" effectively shadow-banning you from future | funding from anyone. PE/VC world is very small and they have | a lot of political leverage, which almost always trumps any | legal leverage a founder might have. | | The best defense is to have another VC/PE on your side. | | That also puts bootsrapped companies at a severe disadvantage | (no VC fighting on their side for the best outcome). There | literally are PE firms who specialize in buying "family run | bootstrapped businesses". Why? Because they're the easiest to | screw over and exploit. | preommr wrote: | > while PE/VC firms do these deals every day of the week | | That's why you hire a lawyer that also does this stuff | everyday of the week. | cj wrote: | Absolutely, but still not bullet proof. | | It's not all that rare for a large law firm to be | "auditioning" for a VC/PE's business, while also | representing clients who are selling or receiving | investments from said VC/PE firms on the other end of the | transaction. That can create perverse incentives that you | the founder may never become aware of. Lawyers are smart | enough to know how to walk the line without creating | blatant conflict of interest. | | Good lawyers care more about their own reputation than | they do any 1 transaction. Each transaction is an | opportunity for the lawyer to gain or spend political | capital with the opposing counsel. This is less of an | issue with smaller/boutique firms, more of an issue at | large well known firms. Counter-intuitively, it can be | better to work with a 2nd tier law firm than the #1 top | rated law firm. | kmeisthax wrote: | One other advantage of buying family run bootstrapped | businesses is that they're too small to trip antitrust | scrutiny. There are entire industries whose driving | consolidation force is a handful of PE firms buying up old | family businesses and running them into the ground. Things | like funeral homes, dental offices, and the like. | | Yes, I did learn about this from Cory Doctorow, why do you | ask? | Infernal wrote: | Links? I'd love to read more. | mousetree wrote: | > You have a massive disadvantage that can't be overcome. | | You hire a law firm to advise you on the deal. | dpiers wrote: | This story by itself might sound like sour grapes, but in | combination with other reports about the CEO(1), I suspect bad | news ahead for Stability's investors. | | It seems like a narcissist with a very 'dynamic' relationship | with the truth chased the AI hype train and ended up with a bunch | of money and attention due to a stupid VC. He pissed off the | teams that invented Latent Diffusion and his partners at RunwayML | in the process, and now it seems like his cofounder as well. What | value is there in a company that's only famous because they spent | $600k in VC money training an open source model on AWS? | | 1: https://www.forbes.com/sites/kenrickcai/2023/06/04/stable- | di... | kristopolous wrote: | The finance side of the AI boom is just the crypto bros chasing | a new hustle. | | Before that they were the Uber for x/y as a service people. | | It's a shame we can't get things financed without these PT | Barnum clown cars ___________________________________________________________________ (page generated 2023-07-13 23:00 UTC)