It's much easier to spray and pray than to dive deep into business fundamentals.
Changes at YC
391–400 of 562 posts
Re: Changes at YC
#392"People were our greatest asset"
Re: Changes at YC
#393So, the CEO doesn't take responsibility here?
Re: Changes at YC
#394> Unfortunately, this means we will no longer need some of the roles on the late stage investing team. Seventeen of our teammates are impacted today. I hate this passive voice. It implies there was nothing that could be done, that this was just a force of nature. That it wasn't an active choice by YC, but rather just some eventuality. Most of us understand the necessity of hard decisions. Own the outcomes. It's ok to…
I find the euphemistic use of “impacted” to be more irritating than the passive voice. “Seventeen of our teammates were laid off today” still suffers from the passive voice, but is much more up-front. (Plus, presumably many other teammates will be impacted to one degree or another by the departure of these 17.)
I like both the passive voice and the euphemism.
When I'm looking for my next thing to do, I don't really want a blog post out there that says you fired me.
I get that ambiguous, passive language may allow the CEO or whatever to view themselves in their own choice of lighting, and there's a desire to see them much more uncomfortable because of just how unfortunate the reality of losing your job is for the people on the other side.
But it also allows "those impacted" to tell their perspective.
Re: Changes at YC
#395Earlier quoted context omitted.
Oof, I don't lurk here during work nearly as much as I used to - missed the memo about it being a banned source, do you have a link for that? In the past that source has unpaywalled articles specifically for HN readers so I'm saddened (but not really surprised) they decided to go for the full cashgrab. Not really sure what you want here - the evidence of those programs being affiliated with YC has been scrubbed from…
HN rarely comments on bans, though almost 60 submissions have been posted in past 30-days and every single one is dead. Here’s a comment from dang, the only official HN mod, related to “hardwalled” submissions: - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35074950
We comment on bans when people ask us! In this case, yes, it's banned because it's hardwalled, by which I mean there are no obvious workarounds. If that changes (including if they wanted to go back to the way we did it before - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35146525), we'll happily unban them since their articles tend to be good.
Re: Changes at YC
#396Earlier quoted context omitted.
Already linked to a source that shows the references to the programs are gone in my original comment; though that page is still there. Also, might be wrong, but “theinformation.com” as a source is insta ban as a result of it being a “hard walled” content; hard walled meaning it’s not possible to access the content via alternative means. If you have a source that’s not blocked, feel free to provide it, otherwise just…
Oof, I don't lurk here during work nearly as much as I used to - missed the memo about it being a banned source, do you have a link for that? In the past that source has unpaywalled articles specifically for HN readers so I'm saddened (but not really surprised) they decided to go for the full cashgrab. Not really sure what you want here - the evidence of those programs being affiliated with YC has been scrubbed from…
theinformation.com was de-walling (?) certain articles for HN when they would make HN's front page and we would specifically ask them. I thought it was a nice fit, but they eventually stopped responding to our emails. I never learned if that was a decision on their part or just churn inside the org (e.g. the person we originally arranged that with left).
Re: Changes at YC
#397I wish there were some publicly available numbers to analyze here, but it seems likely that YC's late stage funds have lost a lot of money (on paper) doing late-stage investments at sky-high valuations over the years leading up to 2022 that are now down significantly as a result of the current startup downturn. Folks who are thinking about these YC changes as a layoff are missing the point -- YC is exiting what had b…
and yet Anu Hariharan and Ali Rowghani seem to be leaving to start a new fund. no failures in VC, just pre-success :)
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Re: Changes at YC
#398Re: Changes at YC
#399Earlier quoted context omitted.
It’s not even a great boast. Their success is due to the Federal Reserve. Oh, sweet summer child.
Are you suggesting that YC's success is because of the long-term US monetary policy climate? That's a very incorrect suggestion. It reminds one of how people like to pretend that Elon's money is because his family had an emerald mine. Do you think that a significant percentage of wealth inheritors go on to immigrate across the world and invent electric cars and reusable rockets? Same thing with YC and the investment…
YC's success is due to a combination of luck, skill, and yes, the most juiced bull market in a century. That last one is less of a factor than one might think though. Everyone has benefitted from easy money. So if were a primary factor then every early stage investor would have a 6% unicorn hit rate and that's clearly not true.
I'm not an insider and I don't personally know any of their principals. But I have followed their work and read what they write, and I am absolutely certain they are considerably above the mean when it comes to intellect and operational ability.
I also suspect they have benefitted to some greater or lesser extent that is unknown to me from connections in government. But like it or not thats part of how the game works, so if you want to be at the top of the game you have to play ball.
Re: Changes at YC
#400[deleted]