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Wow... Vikram Pandit is in this round. I can't think of a worst person to bring into a financial services startup. I come from the industry, and this to me, is

by antr 12y ago

Wow... Vikram Pandit is in this round. I can't think of a worst person to bring into a financial services startup. I come from the industry, and this to me, is Coinbase's Condoleezza. I don't know how much everybody knows about him (I'm pretty sure his Wikipedia profile won't tell the entire story), but this finance executive has a bad reputation. Pre-financial crisis, he was COO Morgan Stanley, and later went off to create a hedge fund 100% based on hyped market bluffs. He sold the fund to Citigroup ($800m) in 2008* as a condition for him joining as interim CEO of Citigroup... and just a few months later, Citigroup wrote-off the entire fund. As per his role at Citigroup, I'll let you do the research and news digging. I sometimes don't understand the tech's sector hypocrisy: tech wants to become a solution to the problem, and they go on to finance and advice themselves with the problem. I really don't get it. * edit from 2007 to '08

digisth 12y ago
This might be covered by Putt's "Law of Failure": "Innovative organizations abhor little failures but reward big ones" and its corollary "Failure to fail fully is a fool's folly." His point was that innovative orgs will look at someone who "went big" and failed as someone who now knows a problem inside and out, and has walked through the fire so is now better equipped to deal with than anyone else (and so might succeed this time.)
- antr 12y ago
  My comment is not about failure, it's about what is wrong with wall st's crony capitalism. this has nothing to do with failure, but about the lack of values, and the damage this has done to the world economy at so many levels.
  - digisth 12y ago
    Certainly not arguing with any of your points; I'm saying the things that happened could rightly be construed by investors as types of failure (e.g., "Citigroup wrote-off the entire fund") which is one of the reasons the law might apply. I'm talking about perception from a particular perspective, not the ethics.
    - antr 12y ago
      I understand what you mean, and agree to a very large extent with the that line of thought. My concerns with Pandit are not so much on failure, but fraud and mismanagement.
charlesdm 12y ago
His ethical behaviour aside, which is hard to judge if you don't know him personally, given his track record it is likely that he can open many doors to politicians and/or other relevant people in the financial industry. This is something a company like Coinbase desperately needs, if it wants to have a say in future Bitcoin regulation that will inevitably be introduced at some point in the future. I can personally see the value of having someone like that on board.
deleted 12y ago
[deleted]
vectorpush 12y ago
> I sometimes don't understand the tech's sector hypocrisy: tech wants to become a solution to the problem Only if it can be assured to make them money in the process. Besides, you can't paint with such broad strokes, the "tech sector" can't be guilty of hypocrisy, only individuals can, and from where I sit, it's all pretty clearly about money.
3pt14159 12y ago
Imagine this: Thousands of us have a large portion of our networth in Bitcoins even after selling 80% of them off to non-early adopters.

by antr 12y ago

digisth 12y ago

This might be covered by Putt's "Law of Failure": "Innovative organizations abhor little failures but reward big ones" and its corollary "Failure to fail fully is a fool's folly." His point was that innovative orgs will look at someone who "went big" and failed as someone who now knows a problem inside and out, and has walked through the fire so is now better equipped to deal with than anyone else (and so might succeed this time.)

antr 12y ago
My comment is not about failure, it's about what is wrong with wall st's crony capitalism. this has nothing to do with failure, but about the lack of values, and the damage this has done to the world economy at so many levels.
- digisth 12y ago
  Certainly not arguing with any of your points; I'm saying the things that happened could rightly be construed by investors as types of failure (e.g., "Citigroup wrote-off the entire fund") which is one of the reasons the law might apply. I'm talking about perception from a particular perspective, not the ethics.
  - antr 12y ago
    I understand what you mean, and agree to a very large extent with the that line of thought. My concerns with Pandit are not so much on failure, but fraud and mismanagement.

charlesdm 12y ago

His ethical behaviour aside, which is hard to judge if you don't know him personally, given his track record it is likely that he can open many doors to politicians and/or other relevant people in the financial industry. This is something a company like Coinbase desperately needs, if it wants to have a say in future Bitcoin regulation that will inevitably be introduced at some point in the future. I can personally see the value of having someone like that on board.

deleted 12y ago

[deleted]

vectorpush 12y ago

> I sometimes don't understand the tech's sector hypocrisy: tech wants to become a solution to the problem Only if it can be assured to make them money in the process. Besides, you can't paint with such broad strokes, the "tech sector" can't be guilty of hypocrisy, only individuals can, and from where I sit, it's all pretty clearly about money.

3pt14159 12y ago

Imagine this: Thousands of us have a large portion of our networth in Bitcoins even after selling 80% of them off to non-early adopters.