Is Y Combinator the next Aum Shinrikyo?

>Simple, dogmatic answers to rhetorical questions?

Yes.

Next up: Is your job the next Aum Shinrikyo?

Zealous focus on charismatic leadership to whom inner-circle members display unquestioning commitment?

"Yes, Mr. CEO, the numbers all add up. I'll have those reports for you in a moment."

Members required to relocate in order to increase dependency on the group?

"No telecommuting for you!"

Preoccupation with bringing in new members?

"We're hiring! Tell all your friends! You get a bonus for bringing in new people!"

Group receives constant messages to let go of material aspirations ("Success is not about the money"), yet the tone of the group overall is a preoccupation with making money?

"Budgets are tight this year, so you won't be getting that raise you thought you would. But don't worry, it's not about the money, and we'll make it up to you at the holiday party! Keep up the good work, and don't let those sales numbers slip."

Questioning, doubt, and dissent are discouraged?

"I can't have you questioning my authority like that..."

Mind-numbing techniques like debilitating work schedules used to suppress functions of pre-frontal cortex in order to decrease cognitive resistance to the group ethos?

"Mandatory overtime for everyone!"

The leadership dictates sometimes in great detail how members should think, act, and feel?

"You! Button that collar, and I want to see cufflinks tomorrow!"

The group is elitist, claiming a special, exalted status for itself, its members, and especially its leader, who is seen as being on some sort of special "mission" which only he and the group see the true significance of?

"We're miles ahead of the competition."

Pervasive and persistent "us-vs.-them" mentality where "them" consists of people who "just don't get it"?

"Bury the competition!"

Leadership leverages shame to induce feelings of guilt and encourages others to do so as well in order to manipulate residual self-images of members?

"Everybody else in the division is counting on you!"

Members' subservience to the group causes them to cut ties with family and friends, and to give up personal goals and activities that were of interest before joining the group?

"Honey, I haven't seen you in weeks! You're spending all day at the office, and then just go to sleep as soon as you come home."

Members must submit their individual schedules to moderated group activities they feel pressure to engange in?

"You must be in by 8:00 AM each day."

Members are strongly encouraged to live and/or socialize mostly/only with other group members, with implication that doing so is an unspoken prerequisite for advancement in group?

"I'd like to see you at our Friday afternoon happy-hour"

Pervasive doomsday scenarios with grave repurcussions for failure to comply with implications?

"If we don't hit the numbers this quarter, management is threatening to kill the whole project."

Leader claims to have contact with superior beings who are inaccessible to "normal" people?

"The other day I called my friends at McKinsey..."

This reminded me of my uncle's dog. You should have seen it chase its tail. when I first saw it, it was very funny. But then it quickly became the saddest thing I ever saw. It would chase its tail for hours till it became exhausted. My uncle explained that it was imagining its tail to be some snake that caught on to it. The dog had imagination, except it was paranoid. It died a few months later exhausted, bitter and lonely.

It is, actually, pretty difficult to judge whether a group is a (destructive) cult or not only by what the leader or its members are saying or how the group is working. The border is pretty blurry. I learned it in hard way (by tring to save a friend from one).

A good test (though not perfect) is to look at the output of the group---is the group producing outcome that contribute to the society at large? Are the people came out of the group taking important roles in the society? Many cults claim they will do that, but fail to deliver that.