This was such an instant, overwrought classic of the "journo falls in love with wunderkind subject" genre! It ran just ~7 weeks before the bankruptcy filing! I

This was such an instant, overwrought classic of the "journo falls in love with wunderkind subject" genre! It ran just ~7 weeks before the bankruptcy filing! In retrospect, I have to wonder if the author, Adam Fisher, wasn't himself consciously choosing to play a credulous, campy character who's putty in the hands of his subject – uncritically cheerleading exactly what those who commissioned the work, Seqouia, wanted to read & advertise to others. I kid you not that whenever a serious straight news outlet runs anything even one-quarter as flattering about someone, old journalist hands call the piece a "blowjob" – but often rationalize it as a "source-greaser": giving the subject positive coverage now, on-the-record, for juicy inside access, attributed or not, later. Fisher's website (https://www.adamfisher.org/work/privatehistorian https://www.adamfisher.org/work/privatehistorian) describes himself thusly: > Adam is an acknowledged expert at the genre of literary non-fiction known to the trade as “oral history.” As a genre, oral history is closest to documentary film: It has the same kind of immediacy — the same punch — but with the heft and gravitas of a book. It’s a type of narrative that Adam fell in love with as a magazine editor because it hands the authorial voice to the subjects themselves, allowing them to — in effect — tell their own story. Adam continues to champion the genre, believing that stories are told best by the people who lived them. He has worked with both private individuals and corporations and is always eager to discuss new projects. It's a provocatively interesting choice of style/perspective – and plausibly fair, as long as readers understand the impressionistic 'all criticism off' viewpoint. As such, this "literary non-fiction" is probably best shunted towards 'glossy magazine' and PR-involvement-disclosed venues, like corporate or investor websites as here, rather than straight news pages. (Or, ghostwritten in name of subject. Or, bylined 'as told to'.) And I wonder to what extent Michael Lewis, whose warm parroting of SBF's thinking in his recent 'Going Infinite' has drawn criticism, sees himself as practicing the same fuzzy oral genre. Lewis's defensiveness in interviews suggests not, but that might just be a crafty long-form "process journalism" performance: you report what you think gets-at-the-truth, eventually, including with the stories triggered by your initial half-truths, such as your own 'mea culpa' followups & corrections. It might be entertaining to check out Fisher's 2018 book, "Valley of Genius: The Uncensored History of Silicon Valley (As Told by the Hackers, Founders, and Freaks Who Made It Boom)", to see if it's got similar narrative plumage: https://www.adamfisher.org/work/author https://www.adamfisher.org/work/author