“Got into YC” is being used a bit loosely here. They got invited to startup school, which is a two-day event hosted by YC.
Fake it until you make it, baby!
I got into YC Startup School by hacking it
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Re: I got into YC Startup School by hacking it
#42“Got into YC” is being used a bit loosely here. They got invited to startup school, which is a two-day event hosted by YC.
I got into HN front page by hacking it (the post title)
Re: I got into YC Startup School by hacking it
#43> YC wanted me to use something called Paxel on my computer as part of the application. > I should run a script, a very easy-to-use cURL one-liner that installed something on my computer and analyzed every line of code I’ve written with a coding agent, compile a report, and upload it to YC’s servers. Yikes! I hope this is NOT the future of hiring.
wtfffff what do you think it says if you don't use AI
It only uploads your AI agent transcripts, so if you don’t use AI there’s nothing to upload.
Re: I got into YC Startup School by hacking it
#44> YC wanted me to use something called Paxel on my computer as part of the application. > I should run a script, a very easy-to-use cURL one-liner that installed something on my computer and analyzed every line of code I’ve written with a coding agent, compile a report, and upload it to YC’s servers. Yikes! I hope this is NOT the future of hiring.
the sad thing is that paxel sounds like it would be a pretty fun tool to run locally and see what my LLM assisted code gets classified as. instead, to borrow cory doctorow's framing, it is designed to do something to me rather than for me.
> instead, to borrow cory doctorow's framing, it is designed to do something to me rather than for me.
That's nice framing. I believe the goal of American business culture (in general) is to do a much to users as possible, and do as little for users as they can get away with. Silicon Valley is the dumb partner who tends to say the quiet part loud.
Re: I got into YC Startup School by hacking it
#45[dead]
Re: I got into YC Startup School by hacking it
#46Re: I got into YC Startup School by hacking it
#47Re: I got into YC Startup School by hacking it
#48> I found that this year, YC wanted me to use something called Paxel on my computer as part of the application.
> I should run a script, a very easy-to-use cURL one-liner that installed something on my computer and analyzed every line of code I’ve written with a coding agent, compile a report, and upload it to YC’s servers.
This is ridiculous. Any kind of application (job, startup school, whatever) should not do this. Honestly, wtf is YC thinking with this?
Re: I got into YC Startup School by hacking it
#49Earlier quoted context omitted.
It only uploads your AI agent transcripts, so if you don’t use AI there’s nothing to upload.
Which indeed tells them something about you.
I should hope! It's something I'd want known. Not something I think they'd like though. ...but being outside the mainstream can also have its benefits
Re: I got into YC Startup School by hacking it
#50Against better judgement, I ran it on my repo. Poking at the "Ask anything about the report" bot, it penalizes me heavily for not having "positive tracked outcomes", as I don't report back to Claude what the outcome is. It wanted me to do this:
"At the end of research-heavy sessions, add a tiny closure note:
Decision: Use CacheMountStore with registry/local/GHA backends.
Why: GHA cannot expose the same content.Ingester path, local import has discovery issues, registry can resolve by tag.
Proof / current artifact: See files X, Y, Z. Subagent found A, B, C.
Next action: Implement interface in package N. Do not add new cache-mount flags yet. Use mode=cache-mount on existing cache flags."
There's no need for this, Claude is not my task tracker.
It also penalized me for:
- Using Claude to introspect a codebase as throwaway work and ` not close with a crisp “acceptable / risky / copy this / avoid this” decision this session.`. No action was needed, it wasn't an actionable session!
- Using Fable for code review. `Several BuildKit subagent sessions produced research reports, but the transcript does not show whether those findings became implementation choices.` Yes, Fable launches subagents to code review. Valid findings get turned into fixes or WONTFIX.
- `The Cloudflare CI upload failure got narrowed well, especially after you supplied the exact timestamp and challenged the /v2 routing recommendation, but the session ended without a chosen next diagnostic owner or action this session.` There's no need to pick a next diagnostic owner when I'm a solo founder with no employees.