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Bolt founder on Stripe/YC

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Re: Bolt founder on Stripe/YC

#151

Post by abernard1 »

manquer wrote: post #48

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) ed…

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

Yes, but it would be nice to dispense with the mythology that what is going on is the best technology is winning. YC might as well be the alumni association at Harvard.

The whole culture in SV / YC / HN / FAANG (and I understand the differences between those) is a value capture mechanism. It simply could not exist without extreme VC funding and pushing market entrants out via capitalization and size. Additionally, 20 years of this has proved that only certain types of low-hanging fruit can succeed with that model: (1) low cost-of-capital software industries, with (2) relatively known risks and favorable governance (see SF politics), and (3) an endless supply of knowledge workers who don't need domain experience.

Make the technology physical, requiring real science or engineering experience, have to pay the taxes that every other company in America pays, and not be able to push out market entrants from capitalization, and this whole world would collapse. Personally, I think it's obvious it's collapsing right now.

I have no dog in the Stripe vs Bolt fight, but the idea that this forum and the VC network culture of the Bay Area are talented underdogs as opposed to the extremely privileged is a deliberately concocted fiction.

Re: Bolt founder on Stripe/YC

#152

Post by kodah »

> Both had organically made it up to #1 on Hacker News with 100s of upvotes. Upwards arrow

> Within the hour, Stripe posted, gotten theirs to #1, and ours was gone.

Except they didn't.

The Bolt announcement: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16870692 (April 4, 2018 @ 20:08:08)

The Stripe announcement: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16869290 (April 4, 2018 @ 17:41:37)

Stripe doesn't expose post times and the Bolt announcement appears to be dead. So, Stripe posted before Bolt - at least on HN.

> 1/ Stripe had deliberately taken checks from nearly all the top-tier Silicon Valley investors in order to block new companies

> IN FACT, many of their investors had told me as much, and commented on it as a great strategy!

> The pro-startup payment processor was on a mission to make sure no other payments company would ever be built in Silicon Valley.

I really doubt the investors know the fundraising strategy Stripe was using internally. I doubt this strategy is even legal and is doubly against any good judgement that YC could exercise - profiting off of competitors as an incubator would be fantastic. This statement is as good as speculation and is on the reader to determine Ryan's investors credibility.

> Getting a #1 ranking is INCREDIBLY difficult and generates millions of views.

Millions of views sounds falsey. The most upvoted comment I've ever had here was on a thread about Amazon's relationship with FOSS and still only garnered 500 votes.

This is Ryan talking about Stripe on a green account: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29388310

I'm just really skeptical of everything said in this tweet storm, especially given the things he said under an anonymous account.

Re: Bolt founder on Stripe/YC

#153

Post by 0______0 »

nkotov wrote: post #77

To be honest, this feels like a PR stunt since we all know if you add "YC is bad" and share it on HN, people will look and react. I haven't heard of Bolt, I'm not familiar with the space at all. I use Stripe because the product just works and I can trust my business with it. Seeing a CEO who publicly complains turns me away from even wanting to try the product. On a related note - I helped review a little over 100+ Y…

> Seeing a CEO who publicly complains turns me away from even wanting to try the product.

Really? That turns you off? What a lame argument. Your criteria for using Stripe is that "the product works" but not using Bolt is "CEO who complains".

Re: Bolt founder on Stripe/YC

#154

Post by jiveturkey »

pvg wrote: post #148
jiveturkey wrote: post #144

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have no knowledge except what I read here, but this is obviously false. Or perhaps not obviously but at least suspiciously. As apparent by the "_YC_STARTUP_ is hiring" posts, that don't even take comments, as well as the "work at a startup" (YC's hiring portal) posts, that are commonly on the front page. Without publication of the ranking algorithm, I would be _very_ hard pressed to believe these are organic. I mea…

The specific types of posts that are treated specially are well documented, including in this thread. It's 'suspicious' mostly because you (seemingly) haven't had a chance to look into it.

I didn't mean 'suspicious' with a negative connotation, just to be clear. Indeed, I didn't care enough to look it up, ie I could care less how posts are ranked. That's YC and HN's business. I have nothing at stake.

Given this well documented information, and my basic belief that the principals here aren't sociopaths, I see no reason to believe Stripe posts would be artificially promoted, well normal SEO (done right) aside.

But, even though I don't really "care", I do think it's great that HN has so many defenders of their impartiality. I can't really tell how many are insiders but it feels like most (all but 1 or 2) are just regular users. It speaks highly of HN and is worth defending. HN ain't perfect, that's for sure, but I know I couldn't make it better. [well i would get rid of the newish prev and next links -- they make the byline a bit long on mobile. i prefer folding, so when i free scroll i can see better where i was. that's not the kind of better i am referring to. just a throwaway complaint]

Re: Bolt founder on Stripe/YC

#155

Post by 0______0 »

tptacek wrote: post #39
tempsy wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

just because a startup is doing something payment related does not mean “direct competitor to Stripe” and one of the two I saw hooks into Stripe as part of the service. the other was doing something internationally and also was not directly competitive.

I'm just giving a data point. I don't pretend to know how many "Stripe competitors" YC funds.

Person: How many Stripe competitiors does YC fund?

You: Go here, do this.

Person: That doesn't provide anything meaningful in this context.

You: I don't pretend to know...

Then why present said "data point" at all?

Re: Bolt founder on Stripe/YC

#156

Post by polote »

I call bs on this.

HN #1 don't generate millions of views. You don't need manipulation to get #1 often, OCaml posts do it often even if the language is not used by anybody. Anyone can be rejected from YC. Anyone can struggle to raise funds. There are two many vc to raise from all of them. How could stripe launch and post about a feature in a few hours? Sequoia is not the most powerful vc in the world, it actually doesn't mean anything. Same for YC.

I feel like nothing is true on this thread

Re: Bolt founder on Stripe/YC

#157

Post by [deleted] »

choppaface wrote: post #137
dang wrote: post #88

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My comment wasn't about hundreds of investors -- it was strictly about Y Combinator, which is just one company. I've worked for YC for years and therefore know things about it. Since I don't work on the investment side of the business, there are a lot of details I miss out on, but on the macro level, such as the core patterns by which YC operates, I know quite a bit. Also, part of my job is to be a liaison between HN…

But this poster is also a HN "moderator" and has a very biased perspective in this conversation. Moderators are in place to ensure fairness, to act as a referee and prevent spam. It's PR that does the sort of "correct inaccuracies and misperceptions where possible" stuff of effectively using outsized leverage to control the narrative. It's PR that tries to deny that beliefs that are deemed "incorrect." I'm sure that…

[deleted]

Re: Bolt founder on Stripe/YC

#158

Post by dang »

dotcoma wrote: post #147
dang wrote: post #100

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's bad logic in two ways. First, this is the internet. Smoke goes a lot further than that. Second, to the extent that the claims involve HN, (I'm being careful only to comment on facts I personally know about), they're definitely false [1]. So yes, for sure there can be that much fireless smoke. [1] I haven't had a chance to respond properly about those claims yet. Normally I'd have done it by now, but I'm on my…

dang, imho you’re trying too hard.

Sorry, but if someone makes statements about HN or YC that I know to be false, I believe it's my job to correct them—especially since we can't treat this kind of post in the way we normally moderate HN (https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=false&qu...). What do you think I should do instead?

Re: Bolt founder on Stripe/YC

#159

Post by artellectual »

Generally, in such cases, he may be right / wrong. It doesn't really matter if you ask me. The way I see it he already has a successful business. He doesn't need to pick on stripe / YC.

Building a successful business is difficult. A great idea / execution / being resilient will always get you a good share of the pie. That's the beauty of free market. Just because 1 or 2 people don't like you doesn't mean the whole world doesn't like you.

I think the author is making Stripe / YC much larger / bigger than it is.

If the author is reading this. Just focus on building and shipping the best product. Everything else will work itself out.

Re: Bolt founder on Stripe/YC

#160

Post by dang »

coldtea wrote: post #102
dang wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If that's the main result of the post, then it's a reductio, because YC funds competitors all the time and would never turn down an innovator for anti-competitive reasons—only because they thought it wouldn't be a good investment at that moment. Anything else would both be bad for YC's business and against its principles ( https://www.ycombinator.com/principles/ ). Of course it still happens that YC turns down good c…

> Anything else would both be bad for YC's business and against its principles Well, "bad for business" is arguable, but it's not like "against its principles" has been any big detterent in Google, Apple, Microsoft, and generally coporate behavior...

YC is orders of magnitude smaller. So far, from what I've seen, those principles still carry some weight.

Edit: I think I might have confused things by using the word 'principles'. I'm talking about YC's investment thesis, as explained here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30070101.

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