I think that for this experiment to be valid, only accounts created before today should be allowed to vote (or make a karma threshold for new accounts).
Ask HN: Pick startups for YC to fund
31–40 of 300 posts
Re: Ask HN: Pick startups for YC to fund
#32> Questions or suggestions? Let's discuss and refine this together.
The upvote/commentary is likely going to be highly problematic:
A) I'm pretty sure Dang can't list all 9 accounts I've used on HN over the past few years. I'm also pretty sure 9 accounts in good standing [1500+ karma] would be enough to seed an initial vote if handled carefully. The ones he'd be able to name are the 3 most recent. This being the case...yeah. The danger of sock puppetry is way too high, particularly when combined with strategic downvotes and VPNs.
B) Anyone with control of an existing community/following can use it as a targeted campaign.
C) The reward from bypassing these functions is substantially higher ($20,000 + professional advice from YC) than previously existed for YC.
D) If you want to stick with a vote-based system, I'd offer a larger bounty [say, $50k for manipulating a post to the top of the pile for Apply HN] for finding a way to bypass the vote brigading and other countermeasures. This it is really the only countermeasure I can think of to counter manipulation problems.
E) All the other external factors (time of submission, competition around that time period, repost rules, etc.) are likely to bias the process in unexpected ways but that is probably less problematic than direct manipulation.
> I think we're on the same page to some extent. What I meant by 'ranking by comments' is that we want the ranking to depend on the quality of the discussion. That's the one thing that can't be gamed.
Put a bounty on that to test that theory.
I'm pretty sure someone could create a network of socket puppets that had "quality" discussions between them if the reward was $20k.
Re: Ask HN: Pick startups for YC to fund
#33I'm not sure about considering upvotes. People might send out message to all their friends saying "There's this thing called hackernews, can you sign up and vote for me?". Similar to how someone would launch a kickstarter. I don't think that this will be very common, especially not in the first few batches, but it will become common sense after a few years.
Remember, you're dealing with hackers here. I worked my YC application from every angle and tried to get every possible edge and advantage. Not necessarily because I wanted to game the system, but because I'm a hacker, and it's my nature [1].
On the whole, this is a really good idea. It's kind of mind blowing that YC would seriously try this. The concept itself is a brilliant hack on the idea of startup funding. Maybe they'll find the next AirBnb/Cruise/Dropbox, but probably not. Either way it's a great example of pushing the envelope to find new ideas, which sama has been all about lately.
Re: Ask HN: Pick startups for YC to fund
#34Hey everyone! I manage and run the Fellowship program at YC. I just want to build on top of what Dan wrote about being nice. We’re not asking you to do this because we think it’s good manners. We actually believe it’s the right way to think and act like the best investors. It’s easy to form some really bad habits when you sit in a position of power to judge the potential of a person, a team, an idea and their executi…
Kevin, I really liked this comment because my inherent assumption would be that YC - or VC's in general - would stay away from "shit shows." Is there a method or a signal that YC looks for within a "shit show" that tells you it can be fixed?
You look for grit. What evidence can you find that shows they don't just give up when things get hard?
Thing is we don't find out usually until after we invest what the real problems are...so we optimize for people we want to spend a lot of time with and work on these problems/issues whatever they may be.
Most founders feel imposter syndrome after they're accepted. The great thing about being part of a batch is you realize you're not alone and then learn that shit show is actually a default state. When you learn that, you relax and focus on the resourcefulness you need to solve your problems systematically.
Re: Ask HN: Pick startups for YC to fund
#35Hey everyone! I manage and run the Fellowship program at YC. I just want to build on top of what Dan wrote about being nice. We’re not asking you to do this because we think it’s good manners. We actually believe it’s the right way to think and act like the best investors. It’s easy to form some really bad habits when you sit in a position of power to judge the potential of a person, a team, an idea and their executi…
For the sake of discussion, I'll offer a counterargument. Be Nice is a good goal for Apply HN since it promotes civil discussion and stops the threads from devolving into semantic "lol no https u suck" that some Show HN threads tend to devolve into. Users are not nice . They don't comment on HN or Twitter, they just stop using it without fanfare. And what determine a startup's success in the real world is if people w…
> "Be Nice" may dissuade commenters/potential customers from pointing out legitimate, immediate flaws.
I don't think HN users are going to have trouble doing that, but there are different ways to do it, and the nicer ways have the critical property of opening the discussion further instead of shutting it down.
We HN users are used to thinking of ourselves as the scrappy underdog, calling out incorrectness and badness with pristine honesty and with no particular effect on the situation, except occasionally a righteous one like forcing Google to do customer service. We don't think of ourselves as being in a position of power, but that's actually an illusion, as many who've walked into a wasps' nest of critical comments and come out stung can attest.
To me one interesting social aspect of this experiment, quite separate from who gets funded, is that it unambiguously puts the HN community in a position of power—a perspective that we're not accustomed to, and which requires developing different habits (edit: I mean a higher standard of conduct). Maybe those habits will end up translating to the community as a whole (yay!) Or maybe they won't show up at all (boo!)—but at least we can all keep reminding each other to be nicer in these threads.
Re: Ask HN: Pick startups for YC to fund
#36Will there be a new toplink for "Apply HN" submissions? I think random sorting on that page would be a good idea to encourage all submissions get an opportunity for discussion.
Probably a top link, yes, but in good minimalist form we'll wait until it's clear we need it. (Edit: we need it. In the meantime, please use the Algolia link I included at the top. It's not like we wrote code for this in advance or anything—that would be cheating :)) Random sorting is a good idea. We'll think about that.
at least make a magic url like news.ycombinator.com/applyhn even if there's no toplink yet.
Re: Ask HN: Pick startups for YC to fund
#37Well I for one think this is also a super cool idea. Agree with what many have said re: gaming -- just be particularly aware that people will try to figure out how to game this.
But I'd emphasize the qualitative side of the evaluation process -- it should be based on a somewhat opaque mix of upvotes, thoroughness of discussion, and thoughtfulness of answers.
I'd almost treat the various 'Apply HN' threads as open source interviews. Upvoted and the like should be a ROUGH filter, but I'd hope that the YC partners will look at the answers in the threads as a crowdsourced interview and select on the merits more than anything else.
Anyway, excited to see how this experiment plays out.
Re: Ask HN: Pick startups for YC to fund
#38If it will not bring about complications, can that category of submission be open for say one week.
Then the feedback and comments would be open for say another week.
Putting time restraints would help give applicants approximately the same amount of attention. And also allow members take out time and ask all questions they want.
In addition, can the submission be restricted too so we do not see 400 words submissions? I'll go for a maximum 2 mins video pitch alongside a link to a website.
Finally, great idea!
Re: Ask HN: Pick startups for YC to fund
#39I'm not sure about considering upvotes. People might send out message to all their friends saying "There's this thing called hackernews, can you sign up and vote for me?". Similar to how someone would launch a kickstarter. I don't think that this will be very common, especially not in the first few batches, but it will become common sense after a few years. Remember, you're dealing with hackers here. I worked my YC a…
You may be right, but I'm pretty sure the community would hate it if we didn't consider upvotes at all. The idea is to fit this process in to how HN already works, and see what happens. HN's pretty good for discussing stories about technology and startups, and a lot of those discussions are a kind of vetting of investment decisions and startup pitches anyhow. Why not move that way earlier in the process and see what happens?
In the worst case, we'll at least get a lot more data for the voting ring detector.
Re: Ask HN: Pick startups for YC to fund
#40If I was to guess I'd say HN readers would be more impressed with innovative technology than how the company actually would make money.
I would be wary however of learning very much with a one time experiment with only two funded companies. That would be similar to giving a prospective angel investor the advice to invest in two companies in the next thirty days and then no more.