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points by kikdij 3 days ago | 0 comments

For those who are not familiar with S-1: this document is incredibly important. this is one of the rare times in the life of a company where it's not allowed, by law, to lie, nor to omit the truth.

[–] sensanaty 3 days ago

Technically true, but they're still fudging their numbers a bit even in the S-1, such as using "adjusted" operating margins to the tune of 10% when their GAAP (which they truly cannot lie about without ending up in deep shit (in theory anyways, I'm doubtful that they couldn't get away with it if they tried with the current administration)) is actually at negative -4%.

[–] rdsubhas 3 days ago

And where else in law is it allowed to lie or omit material facts?

It's a bedrock foundation of the entire financial and legal world. Public and private alike. Refer SEC Rule 10b-5 as well as Private Placement Memorandum (PPM). For example, Theranos never filed an S1 but still was convicted.

[–] reticulates 3 days ago

At the same time, an S-1 does not necessarily represent how the company thinks. Risk factors often get reported as “x thinks that y will happen” but the company is actually just describing things they have an obligation to describe, they’re not the risks they’re worried about internally.

Also this is being released under Trump’s SEC, who knows whether being caught lying in an S-1 matters any more.

[–] hmokiguess 3 days ago

tell us what you're not telling us, what kinds of lies are common practice and accepted outside of this document in the lifetime of a company then?

[–] kikdij 3 days ago

Marketing, press releases, PR, and most of what the general audience will ever hear. Or as judges repeat way too often: "it's not illegal to lie, in most circumstances".

[–] hmokiguess 3 days ago

Funny timing you sharing that and the Elizabeth Holmes movie out there

[–] kikdij 3 days ago

Well, that's kind of the point: she went to prison. :) (and it was "only" private fundraising). Sadly, nobody goes to jail for marketing lies.

[–] anonu 3 days ago

curious on when a company can lie legally? asking for a friend

[–] axegon_ 3 days ago

Anytime, depending on how much money it owes: if it owes a few million, it can't; if it owes a few billion, whenever it feels like it, commonly always.

[–] decisionSniper 3 days ago

ehh, search "GAAP" and see where they deviate from standard accounting measures. There's plenty of spin in here.

[–] BeetleB 3 days ago

Eh? What about quarterly earnings and all the usual SEC filings public companies routinely do?

[–] jdejean 3 days ago

Is it just me or is something wrong with the doc starting at the ToC? Its gets super garbled. Everything before that point is Anthropic branding and a Claude generated multi page wall of text

[–] bjacobel 3 days ago

SpaceX claimed a TAM of $28.5 trillion in their S1, a number picked from a hat larger than the 2023 US GDP. Companies can and do lie in their S1 and there are rarely if ever any consequences for doing so.

[–] aveao 3 days ago

Do you have any other examples than that?

Personally, I do expect SpaceX to face consequences in the years to come.

[–] lbrito 3 days ago

>I do expect SpaceX to face consequences in the years to come.

Why?

[–] nicce 3 days ago

> Personally, I do expect SpaceX to face consequences in the years to come.

Probably only and only when AOC or someone else from Bernie's camp gets to be president. Otherwise, unlikely.

[–] nojvek 3 days ago

Which the corporate overlords are going to spend billions to ensure it doesn't happen. I was quite sad when Bernie lost. He'd have tried to at-least shake the system.

Trump is the swamp.

[–] gunslinger_meta 2 days ago

Did the corporate overlords spend a lot of money on the Democratic party in 2016 so that Bernie gets canned in favour of Hillary?

[–] TheArcane 3 days ago

Oligarchs don't face consequences in an oligarchy silly

[–] vconnor 3 days ago

GP apparently expects the US to return to normality, without ever facing any consequence for these last few years of idiocy and blatant corruption. "Whoopsie, sorry everybody"

[–] njovin 3 days ago

Can't speak for GP, but I hold a similar 'justice doomer' viewpoint for two reasons:

1. The current president has shown no hesitation about pardoning anybody he owes a favor to or feels allegiance from.

2. SCOTUS has give the office of the president basic blanket authority to do anything and everything under the sun for "official acts".

3. Half of our two-party system has abdicated all oversight powers for the current administration.

When you combine those 3 things, it's hard to imagine how somebody like Trump or Elon could possibly face federal consequences. Hell, Trump could say he launched his shitcoin "as an official act to help prop up the failing Biden economy" and I don't imagine SCOTUS or anyone else would push back much.

[–] ribosometronome 3 days ago

There's not much recent history of particular consequence facing for this sort of thing in the United States, financially or politically. It's not like we locked up bankers after the housing bubble collapsed or punished people for lying us into Middle Eastern wars.

[–] 0xDEAFBEAD 3 days ago

Rule-of-law means you only lock people up when you can show a law that they broke, not based on bad vibes or generic poor decisionmaking.

[–] TripolitianFish 3 days ago

I have a hard time pinning down when we stopped handing out actual sentencing for stuff like this. Nixon walked after Watergate, but at least the fall guys get hit with (some) time. Reagan walked after Iran-Contra (grand treason by the way), but his fall guys also walked. Even moving away from unitary executive talking points, like you said nothing really happened to the 07-09 gang, midlevel analysts got pinched for manipulating LIBOR, I'm trying to think about the last time there was proper consequences, IIRC most of the big wigs at Enron pled guilty, and it turned the big five into the big four. Maybe SBF? Even then, that was one guy catching several dozen people's utter carelessness and EA fueled mania.

I really would love to figure out when we phase shifted into this mode, maybe it was always like this, I'm frankly too young to have anything else to compare to.

[–] ActorNightly 3 days ago

Has nothing to do with oligarchy, has more to do with that SpaceX is providing valuable services, the disruption of which can be worse than punishing those in charge.

[–] walthamstow 3 days ago

I think it's bollocks too but I don't think a forecast can be truth or a lie

[–] gist 3 days ago

Saying a market is X is not lying. Saying you have X revenue is lying. Saying you have a contract with XYZ company is lying.

Under the idea that 'you can make numbers say anything you want' you could very easily justify almost any number as a potential market as long as you include the conditions or stated it in a way to be circumspect.

> a hat larger than the 2023 US GDP

Would be more accurate to mention the entire world GDP to support that argument. Then the issue is raised as far as what time period they are referring to. Current year? Future years?

[–] plutomeetsyou 3 days ago

how is that a lie? you don't see Space manufacturing having TAM comparable to that in 30 years?

[–] guywithahat 3 days ago

It wasn't pulled out of a hat, it was the total addressable market for a space, internet, and AI company, excluding markets like Russia and China. All TAM refers to is the total market size, not their market share.

For context SpaceX's TAM is lower than Anthropic's expected TAM

[–] randallsquared 3 days ago

Consider that many do not believe they were lying.

[–] portly 3 days ago

Nothing is respected by this criminal company.