What defines one as an adult?
Is it age? Is it experience? Is it worldview? Is it conduct?
It’s some combination of all these, yet hard to define objectively. The paradox of startups and organizations that make change in the world is that they are quite often (but not always) driven by young, inexperienced, naive, and maybe not professional people. Non-adults. Because adults know better.
FTX and Alameda had this in spades. SBF purposely kept the employee base very young and put many “smart,” inexperienced, and unqualified (on paper) people in all positions. Some of these people rose to the occasion. Maybe they all did. But there is no doubt, in hindsight, that having zero adults in the room was the third head of Cerberus that led to the downfall.
Nobody ever said to SBF, “No, you can’t do that.” Nor did anybody ever say, “You’re super smart, but you’re not infallible.”
Or if they did, they never said it in a way that he believed or took seriously. They basically operated as a fleet of yes-men to SBF.
Interestingly, a group of adults did actually say “WTF?” to SBF in the very early days of Alameda and prior to the launch of FTX. These were the hard-core effective altruists with whom he first got started. They, like the adults they were, looked at SBF’s operations and said, “Uh, no way. Thanks, but we’re out.” Prophetic.
Combine the lack of adult supervision with SBF’s arrogance, and it led to his inability to see the real-world problems that were coming. Once they did and buried FTX and Alameda up to the neck, they had no ability to stop the avalanche.
Sometimes, you need an adult in the room. Even if they’re the naysayer, the finger-pointer, or the “that’s how they get ya” guy over in the corner.
