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Y Combinator Traded Prestige for Growth

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Re: Y Combinator Traded Prestige for Growth

#31

Post by karaterobot »

jmull wrote: post #14
ToucanLoucan wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"What we're doing isn't technically illegal so stop talking about it" isn't generally a phrase used by what I'd call good people, but we'll agree to disagree.

I don't get the objection here. Forking is part of how open source is supposed to work.

I think the assumption people are making is that the YC selection team are dumb idiots, and don't understand that all the founders of that project did was fork an open source project and ask them for some money.

(I'm not saying this is what happened; I know nothing about this project. I am saying this seems like the assumption the author of the article and some people in this thread are making. I bet that's not what happened, but if YC is actually full of dumb idiots who do zero due diligence whatsoever, then I guess I have to agree with the article's thesis.)

Re: Y Combinator Traded Prestige for Growth

#32

Post by autonomousErwin »

buggeryorkshire wrote: post #19

Surprised this doesn't mention meticulous.ai, who seem to spam HN with "we're hiring!" each month but i've never heard of anybody using them, nor do LI show any new employees. Hey Gabriel, what's going on?

I thought I was the only one who noticed, I'd much prefer the YC companies do a monthly "here's who's hiring" much like the "who's hiring" instead of individual ones.

Re: Y Combinator Traded Prestige for Growth

#33

Post by blibble »

humansareok1 wrote: post #13
stonethrowaway wrote: post #3

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You’ll have to expand on this for us plebs. To whom is it a net negative signal?

To anyone with eyes? Job seekers looking for startups to join, investors looking for places to put money, etc. I'm sorry if your company got accepted into YC, better luck next time. At least you can hang out with the founders of... 100 AI-assisted Code Editors, 'The first Travel Credit Card for Gen Z', 'Starbucks memberships for restaurants', 'a video first food delivery app, tiktok meets doordash', and 'the operatin…

have a look at this, it's hilarious

https://www.ycombinator.com/companies?batch=F24&batch=S24&ba...

I expect "AI Nip Alert" to show up any day now

Re: Y Combinator Traded Prestige for Growth

#34

Post by nsedlet »

I was part of the W12 batch of YC (which was a lot smaller, ~60 companies, back when Paul Graham was still leading YC).

YC funds a lot of companies and has always had super high variance in the companies it funds. Entrepreneurs are a wild bunch of people. There have always been companies where the founders turned out to be BS artists or sociopaths. Companies that folded immediately after the program started. Companies with messy cofounder breakups already brewing at the beginning of the batch. Companies that turned out to be slightly scammy. Some of the founders that were in those companies pivoted and became successful.

Picking on Pear AI (which I don't know anything about) as evidence of YC failing is silly. It's also a super early stage company and you really have no idea what they will do.

The test of YC to me is, can they keep attracting and picking some of the best founders (which you can't really tell for years). And providing the inspiring, warm, but pushy environment that best sets up founders for success, and in turn keeps them coming to YC. I'd apply to YC again in a heartbeat if I were ever starting another company.

Re: Y Combinator Traded Prestige for Growth

#35

Post by toomuchtodo »

djaouen wrote: post #28

At some point, you have to turn reputational capital into real capital. The hope, then, is that you only spend the interest on that capital.

Do you have to? Doesn't YC have enough capital to spend it on meaningful endeavors instead of silly "moonshots"? How much would be enough before this happens? Genuine questions, no snark.

Re: Y Combinator Traded Prestige for Growth

#38

Post by devin »

humansareok1 wrote: post #13
stonethrowaway wrote: post #3

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You’ll have to expand on this for us plebs. To whom is it a net negative signal?

To anyone with eyes? Job seekers looking for startups to join, investors looking for places to put money, etc. I'm sorry if your company got accepted into YC, better luck next time. At least you can hang out with the founders of... 100 AI-assisted Code Editors, 'The first Travel Credit Card for Gen Z', 'Starbucks memberships for restaurants', 'a video first food delivery app, tiktok meets doordash', and 'the operatin…

hahahaha, wow! I really thought this was a joke list. That’s stunning.

Re: Y Combinator Traded Prestige for Growth

#39

Post by neilv »

dotty- wrote: post #20
jmull wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't get the objection here. Forking is part of how open source is supposed to work.

The beauty of forking/open source is the ability to contribute back to the original project or take over an abandoned project. In this case, the original project Continue.dev isn't abandoned and actually has more traction/commits than the PearAI fork. But what PearAI did not do is a traditional fork. They took the commit history, re-branded everything to PearAI, pushed it up to their own repo, and claimed that the co…

I'm not sure how to parse this, and one possibility is worse than the other.

Did they go through and alter each commit in the history, making it look as if the committer was talking about brand B instead of brand A at the time they made the commit?

Or did they clone the commit history, and add commits to rebrand, while keeping the historical commits intact?

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