First, thank you for probably being the first person to recognize in print that it wasn’t easy to stand up to these folks in public, plenty have said things like “you’re fighting the good fight” in private, but I think you’re the first person to in any sense second the motion in my personal case, so big ups on having the guts to say it too.
I’ve never been a YC-funded founder myself, but I’ve had multiple roommates who were, and a few girlfriends who were on the bubble of like, founder and early employee, and I’ve just generally been swimming in that pool to one degree or another for coming up on 20 years (I always forget my join date but it’s on the order of like, 17 years or something).
So when a few dozen people you trust tell you the same thing, you tend to buy it even if you’re not quite ready to print the worst hearsay (and I’ve heard things about Altman that I believe but still wouldn’t print without proof, dark shit).
As the litany of scandals mounted (Green Dot, zero-rated pre-IPO portfolio stock with like, his brother involved, Socialcam, the list just goes on), and at some point real journalists start doing pieces (New Yorker, etc.).
And while some of my friends and former colleagues (well maybe former friends now) who joined are both eminently qualified and as ethical as this business lets anyone be, there was a skew there too, it skewed “opportunist, fails up”.
So it’s a growing preponderance of evidence starting in about 2009 and being just “published by credible journalists”starting about five years later, at some point I’m like “if even 5% of this is even a little true, this is beyond the pale”.
It’s been a gradual thing, and people giving the benefit of the doubt up until the November stuff are maybe just really charitable, at this point it’s like, only a jury can take the next steps trivially indicated.