YC criticized for backing AI startup that simply cloned another AI startup

Post by dangsux » Tue, Oct 01, 2024, 2:01 PM UTC

kibwen wrote: post #77

CharlieDigital wrote: post #68

I've been in the VC-backed startup space as a lead/principal engineer or technical advisor for the last 4 years. In that time, I've worked at 1 startup that closed a $100m C, one that closed a multi-million B, one that recently closed a $30m C, and one that started with a $8m seed. I've started my own startup and worked with founders of other startups on the side advising on the technical side (and once in a while bu…

The problem here is not that they stole the idea, it's that they literally just took an open-source codebase and filed off the serial numbers to claim it as their own proprietary work, and they did so in the most comically inept way possible. From the OP: PearAI offers an AI coding editor. The startup’s founder Duke Pan has openly said that it’s a cloned copy of another AI editor called Continue, which was covered un…

Post by Roark66 » Tue, Oct 01, 2024, 2:02 PM UTC

Vanclief wrote: post #87

We recently applied to the current YC batch and got rejected. Seeing this just made me die a little inside. We are a small SaaS that has very happy paying customers and a huge market. We solve a boring problem, with boring technologies and we are not the next OpenAI or Stripe. Yet we have easily a 10,000 X potential. I feel like YC now prioritizes funding things that can be hyped more instead of actually funding thin…

Post by tomschwiha » Tue, Oct 01, 2024, 2:03 PM UTC

Vanclief wrote: post #87

We recently applied to the current YC batch and got rejected. Seeing this just made me die a little inside. We are a small SaaS that has very happy paying customers and a huge market. We solve a boring problem, with boring technologies and we are not the next OpenAI or Stripe. Yet we have easily a 10,000 X potential. I feel like YC now prioritizes funding things that can be hyped more instead of actually funding thin…

Post by dvektor » Tue, Oct 01, 2024, 2:05 PM UTC

Post by CharlieDigital » Tue, Oct 01, 2024, 2:06 PM UTC

drawkward wrote: post #141

CharlieDigital wrote: post #124

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Unless, the investor is just trying to fund the most ruthless, least ethical, win-at-all-costs type of people This is exactly what VCs are looking for. They are going to hand you a check worth several hundreds of thousands to millions of dollars. They are not doing this because it's a charity; they are doing this because they are making a bet that they'll get some return on that investment. This is the purpose of a…

Spoken as if there was only one single binary option for investment! The strategy implies that the marginal value of the lack of ethics/the personality type to do that is the thing thats worth investment. If thats true, then venture capitalism and perhaps capitalism itself is super fucked: a machine for developing and rewarding the worst impulses of humanity.