What makes you think he has no technical ability?

It seems more likely to me, given his background (programming from 8, accepted to Stanford CS) that he has technical aptitude, but he has even more dealmaking ability.

https://www.quora.com/Is-Sam-Altman-highly-technical-Has-he-... - Patrick Collison says he had technical conversations on Lisp machine implementations and iframe security policies, which to me is a measure of some depth.

And on hype, I think the carefully staged GPT PR over the years had an element of controlled hype. I remember them talking about how they couldn't release it because of how e.g. spammers could use it - https://www.theverge.com/2019/2/14/18224704/ai-machine-learn...

(They weren't entirely wrong, there's a flood of junk text out there now. Twitter popular posts have their replies flooded by AI-generated "on topic" responses by bots. Content mills are switching to AI.)

It's funny, but I adopted a similar approach, and it's amazing how the tides turn in your favor when your name is on everyone's lips. I'm nothing special, but I have an eye for quality people and a great reputation (thanks to it), so I'm the one who keeps getting the calls.

Also, some people would rather be shot than talk in front of a crowd or get up in front an audience. I used to have panic attacks during introductions in small meetings, and now I'm the one who spots the nervous professionals and helps them feel that they belong.

Anyway, that's all to say there's value in it. I don't personally enrich myself off of it, but if I could offer a correction to your dim view of the imperfect, the world isn't actually run by intimidatingly charismatic, beautiful geniuses, and I have found that helping people that have the simple capacity for success connect and communicate isn't a worthless skill.

It’s actually much less confusing than that. It’s clear he has a knack for becoming a favorite son of billionaire oligarchs who see him as useful.

Which, assuming he’s like everyone else who’s done that, was accomplished by a combination of flattery and willingness to operate on behalf of the ruling class totally untethered from any principles whatsoever.

> mildly surly sloth

I had to read that twice, but it was well worth it.

I have only interacted briefly with Sam but I found him to be one of the smartest YC folks. But I will let a Paul Graham essay speak [1]:

Honestly, Sam is, along with Steve Jobs, the founder I refer to most when I'm advising startups. On questions of design, I ask "What would Steve do?" but on questions of strategy or ambition I ask "What would Sama do?"

What I learned from meeting Sama is that the doctrine of the elect applies to startups. It applies way less than most people think: startup investing does not consist of trying to pick winners the way you might in a horse race. But there are a few people with such force of will that they're going to get whatever they want.

[1] http://www.paulgraham.com/5founders.html