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Bolt founder on Stripe/YC

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Re: Bolt founder on Stripe/YC

#121

Post by log4shelled »

tptacek wrote: post #76
kaycebasques wrote: post #69

> Stripe and YC effectively co-run the most important media asset in Silicon Valley: Hacker News. A few of my articles [1] have made the front page so I can weigh in on this a (tiny) bit. > The readers know: any time Stripe comes out with a new product, it’s #1 on the site I do believe that "the mods" have the ability to boost articles at their discretion so I would not be surprised if YC companies frequently get a b…

Dan has said repeatedly that YC companies do not get artificial boosts. He's said that on this thread, as well. Ranking is definitely not a strict function of votes; HN does a bunch of stuff to groom the front page. But, according to Dan, none of that involves giving preference to YC companies.

No post body was provided.

Re: Bolt founder on Stripe/YC

#122

Post by enra »

This such a bad take, too many things comment on but one thing to note is that I’m not even sure how much Stripe competes with Bolt. Bolt marketing pages mostly talk about e-commerce checkout. It’s probably something Stripe does as well but the reason Stripe became a SV darling because it was easiest way to integrate payments for your software startup. Probably 95% of YC startups are not e-commerce sites, and have no use what Bolt offers. He mentions Lyft who I don’t think could be their customer either. So SV software companies “collude” by using the platform that offers what they need.

There are dozens of e-commerce payment platforms, often integrated already on the product like Shopify, so probably the investors just weren’t excited about the market and likely though Shopify/PayPal/Stripe will eventually eat that market.

Re: Bolt founder on Stripe/YC

#123

Post by floatingatoll »

anon2020dot00 wrote: post #12

If the premise of the tweets are true, then anything negative about Stripe will be hidden from Hacker News and so following this thread to see if that is the case. There was also a hacker news thread sometime ago about predatory tactics used by Stripe if I'm not mistaken and so there does seem to be an increase in negative sentiment.

The top HN search result for Stripe is, by a considerable margin, the post from two months ago, about Stripe ghosting candidates and retracting offer letters: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29387264

On the first page of top-ranked results for the word “Stripe” I noted two other articles as well that appeared, on the surface, to be critical of Stripe.

I encourage performing your own search and assessment rather than trusting my brief skim, but it’s certainly enough for me to recommend further research along those lines if you’d like to contrast the historical data with moderation concerns.

Re: Bolt founder on Stripe/YC

#124

Post by anonymouse008 »

tzury wrote: post #87

Never herd of Bolt till this post. That made me think, how come I've never heard of bolt up until this moment? Is their marketing so bad? They managed however to get to a poont of a "successful company with 600 employees, billions in GMV, and growing rapidly", right? I visit HN at least 10 times per week. So I decided to check how many posts have they posted on this site since founding the company. I currently see 4…

Every time I see a bolt post from this company, I keep thinking it's Bolt the hardware incubator.

Re: Bolt founder on Stripe/YC

#125

Post by DonHopkins »

pphysch wrote: post #38
tptacek wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Here's a list of the Summer 2021 batch companies. You can just cmd-f "pay". https://techcrunch.com/2021/08/31/here-are-all-the-companies...

> Swipe: A billing and payments solution for Indian small and medium-sized businesses. [...] As my colleague Alex Wilhelm put it, Swipe is Stripe, with a W.

Also: Steal is Steel with an A, Rob is Rub with an O, and ShopLyft is Shoplift with a Y.

Why PayPal for it when you can just Swipe it?

In the same vein, BooKing.com is BooQueen.com with a penis. That kind of majestic insubordination can get you a €400 fine and a few weeks of jail time in the Netherlands where their headquarters are located, but I wonder what problems they had with the harsher Lèse-majesté laws in Thailand because of their name.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/L%C3%A8se-majest%C3%A9#Netherl...

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/L%C3%A8se-majest%C3%A9_in_Thai...

>With penalties ranging from three to fifteen years imprisonment for each count, it has been described as the "world's harshest lèse majesté law" and "possibly the strictest criminal-defamation law anywhere"; its enforcement "has been in the interest of the palace". [...] Even attempting to commit lèse-majesté, making sarcastic comments about the King's pet, and failure to rebuke an offense have been prosecuted as lèse-majesté. [...] The courts seem not to recognise the principle of granting defendants the benefit of the doubt. [...] The longest recorded sentence was in 2021: 87 years imprisonment, reduced to 43 years because the defendant pleaded guilty.

Re: Bolt founder on Stripe/YC

#126

Post by ngngngng »

This might not add much to this discussion in particular, but I find it interesting how much I want the big billion dollar company to be evil. This guys post and the other Stripe hate really draw me in and then of course lots of the arguments fall apart on further inspection. Is that a natural thing? Maybe a sort of robin hood feeling, like we're sticking it to the big bad rich guys?

I do still have some negative feelings towards wealth in general from growing up so poor, even as I pull in a comfy "HN reader" level salary, so that probably doesn't help.

Re: Bolt founder on Stripe/YC

#127

Post by vmception »

sailingparrot wrote: post #110
vmception wrote: post #91

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Can we check internet archive? The database entries could be modified easily Not to entertain the conspiracy, I’ve just done it before so it comes to mind

Can't see the timestamp on wayback archive. But over on Twitter the same is true, with Stripe's annoucement coming a few hours before Bolt's: https://twitter.com/stripe/status/986651162760724480 https://twitter.com/bolt/status/986700626364055552 And anyway Stripe's release was announcing the release of the product on that day, it wasn't just a random marketing filler. There is a just no way a company the size of Stri…

ooooh this is fun, time to archive this CEO's post, doesn't seem like it'll last for long

Re: Bolt founder on Stripe/YC

#128

Post by Manuel_D »

The line between leveraging networks and being a "mob boss" is really more of a matter of perspective.

Say I'm a photographer, and I know a couple good makeup artists. A client is searching for a makeup artist and I refer them to someone I know. Chances are, had I not given this referral some other makeup artist would have been chosen by this client. From the perspective of other makeup artists, I acted like a mob boss. From my perspective, I just made use of my network.

A lot of what's alleged in this thread can be attributed to network effects among YC. Startup gets referred to Stripe because YC knows them. Stripe gets more coverage on HN because YC-backed companies are of more interest to the HN readership.

Ultimately, I can empathize with Ryan's perspective. But I'm not seeing any sort of "mob boss" behavior here.

Re: Bolt founder on Stripe/YC

#129

Post by thedogeye »

ngngngng wrote: post #126

This might not add much to this discussion in particular, but I find it interesting how much I want the big billion dollar company to be evil. This guys post and the other Stripe hate really draw me in and then of course lots of the arguments fall apart on further inspection. Is that a natural thing? Maybe a sort of robin hood feeling, like we're sticking it to the big bad rich guys? I do still have some negative fee…

It's crucial to retrain your brain not to have negative feelings toward those who have a lot of money. Otherwise you will subconsciously undermine yourself to ensure you never get a lot of money.

Re: Bolt founder on Stripe/YC

#130

Post by rlt »

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…

I have to agree, it's suspicious coming a couple weeks after another negative Stripe post that got a lot of attention.

And the timestamps on the HN posts he linked to are pretty damning as well. What's more likely: an established startup scrambling to launch a new product a couple hours after a small startup's blog post, or the smaller startup piggybacking off the more established startup's announcement?

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