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Bolt founder on Stripe/YC

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Re: Bolt founder on Stripe/YC

#41

Post by parhamn »

tptacek wrote: post #29
thrwn_frthr_awy wrote: post #25

Fwiw I think HN should be more forthcoming on how the ranking of yc co’s posts are ranked vs other posts. Are the ranked differently? Do the upvotes of yc members affect ranking more than other user’s upvotes?

They're entirely forthcoming about this: except for job and launch posts, YC posts aren't ranked differently, and YC company upvotes are treated no differently than anyone else's. I think it'd be hard to count how often Dan has said this. You can choose, of course, not to believe him about this (I have a hard time thinking of a person in this industry I trust more than Dan), but you can't ask him to be more forthcomi…

Sure, I also, still, feel some of the kinetics need to be explained to avoid confusion.

Like the homepage doesnt make much sense to me after all these years of reading HN. As I write this there are 160 upvotes in one hour on this post and it is still #9, with many weaker posts ahead of it.

Re: Bolt founder on Stripe/YC

#42

Post by tptacek »

dannyw wrote: post #37
tptacek wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They're entirely forthcoming about this: except for job and launch posts, YC posts aren't ranked differently, and YC company upvotes are treated no differently than anyone else's. I think it'd be hard to count how often Dan has said this. You can choose, of course, not to believe him about this (I have a hard time thinking of a person in this industry I trust more than Dan), but you can't ask him to be more forthcomi…

It's been known that HN has applied keyword-based, domain-based, and manual penalties in the past: http://www.righto.com/2013/11/how-hacker-news-ranking-really... While I doubt there is a "non-YC penalty", and I doubt there is collusion on dang's part, it isn't correct to think of HN ranking as a unmoderated scoring function.

I didn't say HN operates on an "unmoderated scoring function"; it most certainly doesn't, as Dan has (again) repeatedly said. I said that YC posts aren't ranked differently, and YC votes don't count differently.

Re: Bolt founder on Stripe/YC

#43

Post by dang »

wmf wrote: post #28
canniballectern wrote: post #9

I don't get it - if "the mafia" wants "7% on your cap table", why would they reject your YC application and backchannel to get VCs to back off?

The theory is that YC would rather support Stripe's "monopoly" than take 7% of a bunch of different payment startups.

YC has funded and continues to fund a lot of payment startups. More generally: YC funds close to a thousand startups a year at present—obviously it's impossible to avoid funding competitors in such a model, nor would that be in keeping with YC"s founding principles, one of which is to try to fund as many good startups as possible (https://www.ycombinator.com/principles/). But you can have good practices around it, such as not playing favorites, not giving inside information about one to another, reminding founders that startups mostly don't die because of competition, big markets are big enough to support multiple players, and so on.

Re: Bolt founder on Stripe/YC

#45

Post by dang »

thrwn_frthr_awy wrote: post #25

Fwiw I think HN should be more forthcoming on how the ranking of yc co’s posts are ranked vs other posts. Are the ranked differently? Do the upvotes of yc members affect ranking more than other user’s upvotes?

They aren't ranked differently and YC alumni votes don't affect ranking any more than other upvotes.

Most importantly, the first principle of HN moderation is that we moderate less, not more, when a YC startup (or YC itself) is involved in a story. That does not mean we don't moderate at all—but we moderate significantly less. I've written about this a ton over the years: https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=false&qu.... Here is a more entertaining subset: https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&que....

p.s. I'm in the middle of traveling somewhere but I'll try to come back to this thread soon and respond to the more specific claims in the OP. The claims in there that I personally have direct knowledge about (at least the ones I've had time to read so far) are false, and I agree with you that forthcomingness would be helpful. Edit: more at https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30070287.

Re: Bolt founder on Stripe/YC

#46

Post by manquer »

canniballectern wrote: post #9

I don't get it - if "the mafia" wants "7% on your cap table", why would they reject your YC application and backchannel to get VCs to back off?

In this scenario (not getting into if its true or not) logically the "mafia" would want to get 7 % in successful companies, and the key to that success is to influence everyone else not invest in anything they reject, which means less competition/resources to their portfolio. This makes life harder if you never applied so you are kind of forced to apply and be forced to pay "protection" even if you may not like it.

More powerful a mafia is, more likely their rejection dooms your venture, making it more likely you would be okay with deal even if terms are not too favorable.

Re: Bolt founder on Stripe/YC

#48

Post by manquer »

Striped of the hyperbole, the underlying premise is why accelerators exist ? YC is just the best at it and more visible ?

Everyone wants the exclusive network that YC founders get access to. The doors that YC stamp can open. The obvious corollary to that is for not YC company it is harder to open those doors and build those connections.

This is central to the model for any exclusive network, tech companies (FAANG) education institutions (Yale/Harvard/Stanford etc) or even schools like Eton all do the same to someone's(or company)'s profile.

It is lot more likely that you will get funding (not just YC) if you studied in best schools, worked at top company or a hot startup all else being same.

It is true of the ex-founder badge as well, second time founders get better chance at fund raise than a first time founder for the same idea.

VCs would say there is strong correlation between such attributes and success, but it really hard to prove (or disprove ) causation for this.

It is quite hard to know how much is such experiences or education a factor of merit or is it only because of the network effect and brand recognition more opportunities open up rather than any real merit to those brands alone.

Re: Bolt founder on Stripe/YC

#49

Post by catsarebetter »

Possible this is just a marketing piece to generate discussion?

Bolt the david vs Stripe/YC the goliath of SV, reconciling traditional startup pains to a monopoly but they made it anyway...

Some interesting points though, particularly the one where stripe took investment from many vcs in order to block other companies... that could've been to get access to existing networks and sell to those companies too. But I could see how that could be a blocker too.

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