From GE to FTX, beware the Icarus complex
It is hard to think of two more different firms than GE, a once-exalted symbol of American inventiveness, and FTX, a Bahamas-based fly-by-night crypto exchange. Besides high-pitched voices, it is hard to think of two people with less in common than the late Jack Welch, GE’s legendary former CEO, and Sam Bankman-Fried, FTX’s disgraced founder. The former, son of working-class parents, was fiendishly competitive about profits, had a frat-boy approach to life, and was as much at home on a golf course as he was on the factory floor. The latter, son of Stanford law professors, is scruffy, nerdy, a player of “League of Legends”, and claims to be motivated to make money only so that he can give it away.
This article appeared in the Business section of the print edition under the headline “League of ex-legends”
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