25% of signatories have been accused of financial misconduct, and 10% convicted
That’s really high?? Oh—this is not the giving what we can pledge😅
I estimate that Giving Pledgers are not less likely, and possibly more likely, to commit financial crimes than YCombinator entrepreneurs.
At what stage of YC? I guess that will be answered later. EDIT:
I previously estimated that 1-2% of YCombinator-backed companies with valuations over $100M had serious allegations of fraud.
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Gina and I eventually decided that the data collection process was too time-consuming, and we stopped partway through. The final dataset includes 115 of the 232 signatories.
Random, alphabetical, or date ordered? Not that it will really matter—although I guess I would expect the earlier pledgers to be more altruistic, maybe more risk taking though.
I found that the punishment of the criminals in my data set correlated extremely poorly with my intuition for how immorally they had behaved.
It would be funny if it weren’t sad that one of the longest prison sentences in my data set is from Kjell Inge Røkke, a Norwegian businessman who was convicted of having an illegal license for his yacht.
Ohhh ok 😂😅 Yeah that is funny and sad.
[Milken] was pardoned by Donald Trump in 2020.
😑
While not all Giving Pledge signatories are entrepreneurs, a large fraction are, which makes this a reasonable reference class. (An even better reference class would be “non-signatory billionaires”, of course.)
Agree
Despite this, I can find very little criticism referencing the fact that many of these signatories are criminals.
This is interesting, and is naturally raised by this post (v. interesting by the way). It makes me wonder about their screening practices. I’m guessing a random like me can’t sign up (they check one’s net wealth somehow?) but perhaps that’s all? If any billionaire can sign up, then maybe it’s not really the giving pledge that one should criticize?
Just posting my reactions to reading this:
That’s really high?? Oh—this is not the giving what we can pledge😅
At what stage of YC? I guess that will be answered later. EDIT:
.
Random, alphabetical, or date ordered? Not that it will really matter—although I guess I would expect the earlier pledgers to be more altruistic, maybe more risk taking though.
Ohhh ok 😂😅 Yeah that is funny and sad.
😑
Agree
This is interesting, and is naturally raised by this post (v. interesting by the way). It makes me wonder about their screening practices. I’m guessing a random like me can’t sign up (they check one’s net wealth somehow?) but perhaps that’s all? If any billionaire can sign up, then maybe it’s not really the giving pledge that one should criticize?