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> "If there's something so fundamentally wrong with him, why does he have such broad support?"

Stock options and a carefully built cult of personality, my friend


Altman is a classic sociopath, tread carefully.


Exactly.


"Firing Sam is absolutely one of the dumbest things a BOD has ever done in history."

You sure about that? This take is going to age like milk once facts come out.


The wonderful thing about these predictions is nobody cares how many times you are wrong.


Kara is an access journalist who has been holding Altman up as the "next Jobs" for a while now. She has no credibility as anything other than an opinionated "journalist" and it would not be surprising if her "sources" are none other than Altman himself.


> She has no credibility as anything other than an opinionated "journalist"

Oh come on, Swisher has been a tech journalist for 20 years. She has actual documented credibility. Now whether or not she holds up Altman as the next Jobs or SBF, yeah who fucking knows. But to dismiss her integrity as a journo is going to require some evidence.


On this kind of story, where access is going to give you some insights, I'm happy enough to see her reporting. But yeah, absolutely spot on about Swisher in general. She has no technical chops to tell when someone is bullshitting her and egregiously pulls her punches, until you piss her off individually (see her falling out with Musk)


But Altman would be a good source. I don't like Kara Swisher, but Altman seems like a credible source here (if that is her source). He surely knows high up people at OpenAI and may have talked to them.


"But Altman would be a good source."

No he wouldn't. This is the definition of a biased source. I am sure he would provide a totally unbiased view of why his own Board found it necessary to suddenly take him out completely of his own company when he is THE public face of a massively growing industry.

This space is so incestuous and protecting of its own at its own expense. Good grief.


Unbiased? That's such a ridiculous thing to type. You think someone intimately involved and leaking information to the press is going to be unbiased? Crazy.

Swisher is reporting what her sources say - not writing an encyclopedia article. Sam would've been a good source - even if a biased one. Looks like it was true by the way, even if Sam was her source.

Still very confused as to how you could think "unbiased" would even be a possible qualification for a source here much less a necessary one. Just curious - do you think news articles are unbiased too?


Did the sentence "He surely knows high up people at OpenAI and may have talked to them." not clue you into the joke?


It did not.


He has every reason to claim that "top folks" were on his side regardless of whether it's true, and nothing to lose if it's false.


But have you seen her in those sunglasses! She's so cool!


This. SNAP has been a publicly traded company for 6 years, one cannot just ignore and hand wave away this expense, especially given how much growth prospects have deteriorated.


Ranking top 20 of free apps in US is hardly a barometer of future potential of a company that has never exhibited an ability to return steady profit to shareholders, and hardly bodes well for their future growth prospects.


That has nothing to do with the question “Who uses Snap?”


This thread is about SNAP's financial results, and SNAP's valuation has long been dependent on future growth prospects. Ranking within the top 20 is not a good sign to that end, especially given how SNAP managed to lose $1.5B in the last year and has not put forward any credible plan on how they might make a sustainable return for shareholders.


No, the thread you replied to started with the question I quoted.


Is there anything funnier than money incinerating "tech" companies' non-GAAP EBITDA? "Hey, sure we may have lost $1.5B, but look if we ignore over $1.3B of stock based compensation and a few other very real expenses, we actually made money!"


The stock-based compensation numbers are truly staggering. EBITDA/FCF measures tend to completely ignore it, making actual profitability significantly worse than non-GAAP measures imply

SNAP:

Revenue: $1.3B and projected to decline

Stock based comp: $446M


EBITDA doesn’t ignore stock-based compensation. Adjusted EBITDA typically does so though - just like adjusted EPS.


Community adjusted EBITDA


Earnings before interest, taxes, payroll, depreciation, losses, dividends, and expenses.


OTOH, there are few companies on this planet that can boast 375 Million DAU


There are even fewer than can have that many and yet still lose $1.5B.


That’s a tautology since you described a subset.


Fintechs are just neo banks, but with far worse customer service, far less supervision, and tech company valuations. BNPL companies are especially in for a reckoning as sanity slowly returns to markets.


It was named after Margaret Hamilton, not Alexander


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