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Travis Kalanick on self-driving | SBF and the Bahamas
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Travis Kalanick texts Anthony Levandowski
March 1, 2016
Travis Kalanick
Good hanging ..
Travis Kalanick
1. Burn the village
Anthony Levandowski
Yup
Travis Kalanick
2. Perception vs. reality
Travis Kalanick
3. Keep it unreal
Anthony Levandowski
4. Keep the conservative vibe
Anthony Levandowski
Need to think PR strategy and when to show our cards more
Travis Kalanick
Yeah .. Ties to when we close and when we open kimono
Anthony Levandowski
We need to keep open questions before competition decides to drop $xxB
Anthony Levandowski
I'll push our guys to sign in two weeks
Travis Kalanick
5. Tight messaging for your peeps after close
Anthony Levandowski
Yes need to have the partnership story through through
Anthony Levandowski
Thought through
Travis Kalanick
Random thought .. Bezos gets weird when he hears about uber doing trucks
Anthony Levandowski
Yeah but bezos already knows you're coming for him
Anthony Levandowski
Trucks just makes it more real
Travis Kalanick
Basically got to keep bezos, cook, musk, zuck, page on our minds
Travis Kalanick
That's what I mean
Anthony Levandowski
I get it. Yes, just not sure why zuck. He could be ally against others
Anthony Levandowski
I just see this as a race and we need to win, second place is first looser
Travis Kalanick
Transportation is social graph of physical world
Travis Kalanick
Agreed
Anthony Levandowski
Ok, I get that about FB, but that could be an ally
Anthony Levandowski
Not sure how, but he doesn't like G or Amazon
Travis Kalanick
Not being in this game could get him partnered with a weaker loser
Anthony Levandowski
Yes, I feel we would be able to find a win/win with FB
Anthony Levandowski
Ive spent 0 time thinking about this
Travis Kalanick
They could gobble up a zooks
Anthony Levandowski
Zoox won't sell
Anthony Levandowski
Not for 10B
Travis Kalanick
When they realize they can't win they will
Anthony Levandowski
I get that, but why would FB want a player that can't win, I want to write down all the permutations to see where the big risks are, but FB + zoox when neither has a good chance doesn't scare me nearly as much as G, Apple or tesla. Let's track it nonetheless.
Anthony Levandowski
Amazon will put up a big fight
Anthony Levandowski
We could team up with Walmart against them
[This document is from Waymo v. Uber (2018).]
Further reading: How Uber and Waymo Ended Up Rivals in the Race for Driverless Cars (2017)
Sam Bankman-Fried emails Attorney General of The Bahamas
To: Ryan Pinder
Cc: Joe Bankman; Can Sun; Ryan Salame; constance[REDACTED]; crolle[REDACTED]; allyson[REDACTED]
From: Sam Bankman-Fried
Sent: Thur 11/10/2022 2:27:10 AM (UTC)
Subject: Re: FTX / Binance
Hi all,
I'm really sorry about the delayed responses here -- it's been a hectic week but that's on me. Myself, and Joe (cc'ed), will be responsive going forward.
And I'm also deeply sorry for ending up in this position in the first place.
I'll give the answers I can give right now and try to get to the others ASAP.
1) Right now we are focused on one thing: making customers whole. We are focusing exclusively on doing that this week. We are ceasing all nonessential operations beyond that. I am doing everything I can to try to do right by our customers.
2) I have not briefed the securities commission. I would be more than happy to have a phone call with you, the PM, and the SCB in the next few days to give a thorough overview of the situation.
3) I am cautiously optimistic that we will be able to survive the turmoil and have enough liquidity for all customer withdrawals, and that is my sole focus this week. I will keep you guys updated.
4) We are investigating a more thorough answer to this question; we did not intend to, but are concerned that poor risk management lead to a liquidity issue.
5) As you saw, Binance did not end up following through on their transaction. However, we are in the middle of a separate process to make users whole; we will know within a week if that comes through. So far, we have strong indications of interest that would be more than enough to cover all liquidity needs; we are working on confirming those. I am cautiously optimistic that we will be able to.
6) We are deeply grateful for what The Bahamas has done for us, and deeply committed to it. We are also deeply sorry about this mess.
As part of this: we have segregated funds for all Bahamian customers on FTX. And we would be more than happy to open up withdrawals for all Bahamian customers on FTX, so that they can, tomorrow, fully withdraw all of their assets, making them fully whole. It's your call whether you want us to do this--but we are more than happy to and would consider it the very least of our duty to the country, and could open it up immediately if you reply saying you want us to. If we don't hear back from you, we are going to go ahead and do it tomorrow.
—
Sam Bankman-Fried
[This document is from In re: FTX Trading Ltd., et al. (2022).]
Further reading: Bahamas Told Bankman-Fried to Mint New Crypto as FTX Collapsed, Lawyers Say
Mark Zuckerberg on Tinder
From: Mark Zuckerberg
Sent: Saturday, January 11, 2014 11:54 PM
To: Mike Vernal; Tom Stocky
Subject: Hunch / people recommendations
I've been thinking a lot about Tinder and other people recommendation apps since about 10% of people in many countries are using a Tinder now. People recommendations seems like something that should be right up our alley, but it's currently something we're not very good at. Tinder's growth is especially alarming to me because their product is built completely on Facebook data, and it's much better than anything we've built for recommendations using the same corpus.
We're focusing a lot within search on finding specific people, and we're focusing a lot on mapping out all of the world's media and places for recommendations -- but we haven't focused much on people recommendations at all. If you do a dating or recruiting type query, it really shows. The results just aren't relevant yet. If you do a query once, you won't want to do it again.
I think this is a big and important space and it's something we should have a team working on -- probably to develop people recommendation Hunch sections for now. A group was very excited about building a dating standalone app but I didn't find anything they were doing to be particularly differentiated yet. This team might be a good place to start in building this effort.
Related, I'm also curious to review what sections we're currently developing for Hunch soon. Whenever we discuss this, we always use examples like places and movies, but given our strengths with people it seems like we should have some prominent sections on helping you connect and discover people -- both ones you already know who are nearby, and probably a different module for people you don't know yet but should meet. This could end up being the most valuable section in Hunch for a lot of people.
[This document is from the Six4Three exhibits (2019).]
Previously: Barry Diller: Facebook is trying to "steal" Tinder's cofounder
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