31–40 of 179 posts
If you’re wondering what to take away from this article: the simple take away is that YC has the power to get what it wants, for the companies it wants. If you happen to be in YC’s good graces, they will reward you in ways described in the article. If you’re not, they won’t take the time. I was in YC in 2012 (2 yrs after the founder writing this article, and one of the last years PG was directly involved). By that ti…
Commoncog hits a home run again. This is fascinating. It is more Suits than Suits. Showing how strategy > law when fighting a case. But also the interesting fraternity (not all boys of course) that YC is. Feels like the only other place you would see it is organized crime or corrupt politics where you then owe a favour. But that isn't what it is here. I guess it is about honour.
There’s norms, case history, and the actual written law.
This reads like a violation of social norms where a smaller startup faced retaliation ( repercussions? ), and then had the ability to counter the pressure.
The way YC closed ranks was my favorite anecdote from Chaos Monkey’s. I always find it interesting though YC leaders are extremely against cancel culture, but when it comes to business, its okay to threaten that someone will never work in the valley again if they don’t accede to their demands.
Standing against cancel culture is not the same as standing against social sanctions in any way, shape, or form. The problem with cancel culture is not that it's a social sanction. The problem is it's a particularly dysfunctional sort. "They're against cancel culture... so why didn't they invite me to their house party? What hypocrites!"
Earlier quoted context omitted.
That is the game though. If I bet $100k on each of 10 contestants. That’s $1m total. With odds of 1000:1, a single win pays $100m enough to cover all bets and leave a huge profit.
If the horse race has 10 contestants why would the odds be 1000:1?
In the economy as a whole how many people are even business owners? Most people go to work and price take at their job without negotiating, without even moving area, without even studying, etc.
You also have multi-company-monopoly effects for lack of a better term, e.g. if there are 10 competitors that make semiconductors - _everyone_ needs semiconductors, then if you pick the appropriate balance and don't buy in at an overvalued time you can invest in all ten and still make money because there is a net flow of funds into the system from outside of it.
AI solutions nowadays are working to automate all sorts of services, partly using adversarial interoperability tools built by open source developers to extract functionality from services that have insanely worded TOS/T&Cs. Some of these megacorps are going after the maintainers and not the (potentially funded/protected) consumers with legal threats.
In this case the two parties are within 10's of millions of dollars of net worth, yet still it's not a fair fight when an incumbent tries to strangle a newborn in it's cott. Now think about the insane situation of megacorp vs maintainer with a delta of a few trillion dollars of net worth. I don't know if even a few phone calls would save a yc startup in that case.
The way YC closed ranks was my favorite anecdote from Chaos Monkey’s. I always find it interesting though YC leaders are extremely against cancel culture, but when it comes to business, its okay to threaten that someone will never work in the valley again if they don’t accede to their demands.
Related: https://rationalwiki.org/wiki/If-by-whiskey
> If by [noun], you mean [negative descriptors of noun], then of course [statement of lack of support/belief]. If, however, by [noun], you mean [positive descriptors of noun], then [statement of support/belief].
Their plan was to win by exhausting the funds of the smaller company, not to win on the merits of the case (which was obviously dead in the water in California). But the smaller company was able to prevail because its investor was larger than the company suing them and decided to in turn bully them into dropping the lawsuit. Both startups, to nobody's surprise, ended up failing and the founders of both companies, also to no one's surprise, felt bitter about the whole episode.
Sounds to me like the good guys won here (to the extent that a company with "Ad" in the name can be considered a good guy). Not really sure what I'm supposed to take away from this. Just a typical ego driven business spat where the only winners are the lawyers.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Standing against cancel culture is not the same as standing against social sanctions in any way, shape, or form. The problem with cancel culture is not that it's a social sanction. The problem is it's a particularly dysfunctional sort. "They're against cancel culture... so why didn't they invite me to their house party? What hypocrites!"
I disagree. There's no principle involved. It's all polarized partisan politics. Your "particularly dysfunctional" is extremely in the eye of the beholder. The rich and powerful silicon valley CEO/VC guys tearing the country apart over their woke crusade are just as ideologically irrational as the next twitter blue check.
The way YC closed ranks was my favorite anecdote from Chaos Monkey’s. I always find it interesting though YC leaders are extremely against cancel culture, but when it comes to business, its okay to threaten that someone will never work in the valley again if they don’t accede to their demands.
> I always find it interesting That's not interesting. That's not understanding capitalism. It's all about Incentives. The idea that business leaders can be ever considered genuine political or cultural voice or actor is the problem. Silicon Valley and hacker culture has created an atmosphere of business politicians and for some reason hackers take them seriously and don't laugh at their faces. The talk is just empty…
Earlier quoted context omitted.
> I always find it interesting That's not interesting. That's not understanding capitalism. It's all about Incentives. The idea that business leaders can be ever considered genuine political or cultural voice or actor is the problem. Silicon Valley and hacker culture has created an atmosphere of business politicians and for some reason hackers take them seriously and don't laugh at their faces. The talk is just empty…
> Traditionally business people don't get into discussions of culture or politics directly. Traditionally business people have always done that: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/House_of_Medici
This was about propaganda of painting it as being somehow pro-social and criticism of those who believe it.