Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

YC's Biggest Scandals

ycombinator.fyi

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

31–40 of 102 posts

Re: YC's Biggest Scandals

#32

Post by dadrian »

tptacek wrote: post #23

YC has funded over 5000 companies, and this page catalogs 39 that failed, many of which, on the sites own terms, are simply business failures, with no additional drama. I don't think the authors of the site realize the case they're actually making here.

There's something ironic about vibe-coding an anti-YC site. They're why OpenAI exists!

Re: YC's Biggest Scandals

#34

Post by levocardia »

ianm218 wrote: post #24
jnovek wrote: post #16

As an alum from the ancient days I take issue with many of the companies that YC funds these days. Flock? 9 Mothers? This shit is dystopian and I hate that I’m somehow even tangentially associated with it.

9 mothers appears to do defense from drones which seems completely ethical. What is dystopian about that?

Probably the worry that the jump from "we defend against slaughterbots" to "we built a better slaughterbot" is just around the corner

Re: YC's Biggest Scandals

#36

Post by theobeers »

tptacek wrote: post #28
theobeers wrote: post #11

While I agree that YC appears rotten to the core at this point, it’s almost impossible to sustain a criticism of the accelerator because they make so many little investments. No matter what you accuse them of, they’ll dismiss it by saying you’re cherry-picking. I have to admit, it’s a brilliant strategy to avoid any kind of accountability.

No, it's not impossible. All you have to do is make a case. Here, by the numbers, the case being made is a 3.9% failure rate, less than half of which is scandalous, all of which appear to boil down to "YC should have known better than to invest in these particular founders". Make a better case! If they're "rotten to the core", that should be easy. I don't think the number of investments they make is your real hurdle…

Mr. Ptacek, a) I have no affiliation with OP, and b) do you know what my actual position is (not presupposing that you care)? It's that I don't know anyone who has been inspired by anything that YC has funded in a very long time. The supermajority of these startups that don't make headlines for being scams is, in a way, even sadder.

I also think it's pointless to howl at the sky about how depressing this is. It's just the current reality of SV. I'm not going to pretend that what a16z is funding is any better (or worse).

Re: YC's Biggest Scandals

#38

Post by varenc »

ianm218 wrote: post #24
jnovek wrote: post #16

As an alum from the ancient days I take issue with many of the companies that YC funds these days. Flock? 9 Mothers? This shit is dystopian and I hate that I’m somehow even tangentially associated with it.

9 mothers appears to do defense from drones which seems completely ethical. What is dystopian about that?

They make a very fast "AI powered" turret shotgun. It automatically selects, aims, and shoots down targets. I imagine this is great for shooting down swarms of small fiber optic or autonomous drones impervious to electronic attacks. But automated weapons like this can easily pivot into uses besides anti-drone. Taking humans out of the loop on deadly kinetic weapons is concerning. But personally, I don't really see any other viable defense against small drone swarms.

Re: YC's Biggest Scandals

#39

Post by islewis »

Pretty clearly slop, with some of the scandals make no sense. Take Ripplings "scandal":

> Parker Conrad's redemption arc after Zenefits hit a plot twist when Rippling sued competitor Deel for planting an undercover spy inside Rippling who was paid €5,000/month by Deel's CEO to steal trade secrets . The DOJ opened a criminal investigation. Deel allegedly ran the same playbook at crypto HR startup Toku. YC uses Rippling for their own HR — awkward.

I am curious what the motivation for creating this was

Post reply on HN