I believe the real issue we are discussing is do the ends justify the means. Is setting the precedent that you can buy a seat at a YC dinner worth a 20,000$ charitable donation. All in all I think it is. Also as a fifteen year old programmer whose parents definitely couldn't afford the 20k, I don't see this seat at the table as a great advantage and am thankful that the less fortunate will be helped.
We're auctioning off a chance for your kid to come to a YC dinner
81–90 of 91 posts
Re: We're auctioning off a chance for your kid to come to a YC dinner
#82[deleted]
Re: We're auctioning off a chance for your kid to come to a YC dinner
#83I believe the real issue we are discussing is do the ends justify the means. Is setting the precedent that you can buy a seat at a YC dinner worth a 20,000$ charitable donation. All in all I think it is. Also as a fifteen year old programmer whose parents definitely couldn't afford the 20k, I don't see this seat at the table as a great advantage and am thankful that the less fortunate will be helped.
It's a no-brainer. One seat at one dinner for one seat for one year of education. That's an obvious win for everyone. I'm sad something so trivial turned into something so meaningful can become so controversial.
Re: We're auctioning off a chance for your kid to come to a YC dinner
#84Earlier quoted context omitted.
> winners of a computing, math, or science competition Because parental resources don't have extreme effects on these competitions as well? Or is it just an easy-to-propose feel-good alternative? Sheesh. pg obviously foresaw negative reactions, but this entire thread is simply ridiculous. Please just step back and ask yourselves how your comments affect yourselves . Is it really healthy to view access to YC as some k…
Because parental resources don't have extreme effects on these competitions as well? Or is it just an easy-to-propose feel-good alternative? I took part in those competitions. There were plenty of winners from humble backgrounds and non-coastal regions. Plenty of years, the winner would be from some no-name town in the Midwest. Sure, being privileged helped, but there was real diversity, and most people with the tale…
I don't believe his actions are wrong. I do believe they piss people off.
You (and everyone else on this thread) can be pissed off. That doesn't change the fact that one lucky rich kid is going to learn quite a bit for an evening, or that a couple of lucky poor kids are going to be able to attend an elite pre-school that they wouldn't otherwise be able to go to. Just because you (well, "we", I ain't going either) aren't that lucky kid doesn't mean it's not a good thing.
It's quite possible for an act to be the right thing to do and still hated.
Re: We're auctioning off a chance for your kid to come to a YC dinner
#85Earlier quoted context omitted.
Do you feel that the concerns expressed are not legitimate? If attending Bing is more beneficial than a YC dinner, why not make an unconditional donation to Bing and then open up these dinners to teenagers willing to apply/write an essay for them, regardless of ability to pay? It would have the added benefit of self-selecting out those people whose parents think it is a good idea for them to go to such a dinner and r…
I do make unconditional donations to Bing as well, and larger amounts than this auction is likely to generate. Yes, frankly, I feel like the concerns expressed here are a kind of moral bikeshedding. What harm does it do if one rich kid gets to come to a YC dinner? It's too much trouble to armor oneself against cheap shots. People who want to misunderstand you have an almost endless ability to do so, so you'd have to…
Glad to hear that you have taken up the cause outside of this context as well.
As to what harm it does, the answer is none at all. In fact, it is an awesome opportunity for that person and I would have loved to have been in that position myself.
However, the rub for me is not so much what harm does it do, but what good does it do to have one more rich kid at the dinner? Obviously, Bing gets a big ol' donation, so that is most certainly a huge benefit. I don't know, it just feels weird to me.
How about sponsoring a programming puzzle (or series of puzzles) or something like that next time and the first person to solve it gets to go to the dinner? I would put $1,000 into that (as the Bing donation). Bing gets the money, the person who solved the problem is obviously interested in going, it takes care of the "rich parents" debate, and the overhead for managing such a contest is limited to the upfront creation of the question and parsing of the results.
Truthfully, my personal feelings here are primarily rooted in envy. I did not have parents who had the ability to pay for such an opportunity, so had this auction applied to me, I would have been looking for a way to work my way in somehow.
Re: We're auctioning off a chance for your kid to come to a YC dinner
#86This is a cause that YC likes, and they're donating one of their assets to support the cause. Why is there so much negativity around this? First, this is basically the most valuable thing YC can give away (without selling slots into its batches). What else would be a reasonable thing to offer? Second, this is access to a YC dinner, but it doesn't ruin the meritocracy aspect -- just because you met a partner at a dinn…
I think that it is more the fact that the prize is specifically for the children of the people who have, at this point, $20k+ to contribute to a perfectly valid cause. It would be another matter entirely if it were some adult buying access to a YC dinner. It is not. The gut reaction is that some rich kid gets to build his/her Rolodex because he/she hit the sperm lottery. In my opinion, it just seems like the antithesis of what YC is all about, which is (as far as I can tell), "who are you, what have you built, and why are you so good at what you do."
Re: We're auctioning off a chance for your kid to come to a YC dinner
#87Earlier quoted context omitted.
> winners of a computing, math, or science competition Because parental resources don't have extreme effects on these competitions as well? Or is it just an easy-to-propose feel-good alternative? Sheesh. pg obviously foresaw negative reactions, but this entire thread is simply ridiculous. Please just step back and ask yourselves how your comments affect yourselves . Is it really healthy to view access to YC as some k…
Because parental resources don't have extreme effects on these competitions as well? Or is it just an easy-to-propose feel-good alternative? I took part in those competitions. There were plenty of winners from humble backgrounds and non-coastal regions. Plenty of years, the winner would be from some no-name town in the Midwest. Sure, being privileged helped, but there was real diversity, and most people with the tale…
> the winner would be from some no-name town in the Midwest
Is that supposed to be the pinnacle of unprivilege? I'd bet the sheer majority of these winners had parents who had time to be very proactive in their education. Or is considering that privilege inconvenient for this conversation?
For negative reactions, you'll invariably get concern trolls who take issue just to feel like they're helping some plight (unless you're already pandering to concern trolls), so no, it's not the same type of expectation as "stealing". But my point there was only to contrast that expected noise with the overwhelming actual reaction.
Feel free to engage my main point - to the extent that YC/SV is still meritocratic, then this dinner is not a guaranteed acceptance to that meritocracy.. and to the extent that SV has become an insider network for flipping Instagrams, access to bubblicious capital is necessarily facilitated by social connections and fueling outrage toward a small time charitable event because it can be pigeonholed as a symptom is a great way to ignore the actual cause of the decay.
Re: We're auctioning off a chance for your kid to come to a YC dinner
#88Earlier quoted context omitted.
> winners of a computing, math, or science competition Because parental resources don't have extreme effects on these competitions as well? Or is it just an easy-to-propose feel-good alternative? Sheesh. pg obviously foresaw negative reactions, but this entire thread is simply ridiculous. Please just step back and ask yourselves how your comments affect yourselves . Is it really healthy to view access to YC as some k…
Because parental resources don't have extreme effects on these competitions as well? Or is it just an easy-to-propose feel-good alternative? I took part in those competitions. There were plenty of winners from humble backgrounds and non-coastal regions. Plenty of years, the winner would be from some no-name town in the Midwest. Sure, being privileged helped, but there was real diversity, and most people with the tale…
[deleted]
Re: We're auctioning off a chance for your kid to come to a YC dinner
#89Since there will no doubt be a lot of the predictable complaint that this gives an advantage to the kids of people rich enough to buy it, I want to make it clear that this auction is to fund scholarships to the Bing nursery school. Since going to Bing helps kids a lot more than going to a YC dinner would, it's a net win for parents with less money. We knew when we decided to offer this item for auction that people wo…
Do you feel that the concerns expressed are not legitimate? If attending Bing is more beneficial than a YC dinner, why not make an unconditional donation to Bing and then open up these dinners to teenagers willing to apply/write an essay for them, regardless of ability to pay? It would have the added benefit of self-selecting out those people whose parents think it is a good idea for them to go to such a dinner and r…
Why should PG be worrying about the cheap shots? At the end of the day, well done for raising this amount of money for a good charity. He could of sat on the couch watching a mind numbing tv show, but instead, he raised money for a charity offering children a very important stage early on in their lives. It would however indeed be TOTALLY AWESOME (!!) if PG also would organise a dinner for other kids, free of charge, that they can somehow win, but at the end of the day, this remains to be his choice.
Re: We're auctioning off a chance for your kid to come to a YC dinner
#90This is a cause that YC likes, and they're donating one of their assets to support the cause. Why is there so much negativity around this? First, this is basically the most valuable thing YC can give away (without selling slots into its batches). What else would be a reasonable thing to offer? Second, this is access to a YC dinner, but it doesn't ruin the meritocracy aspect -- just because you met a partner at a dinn…
I think that it is more the fact that the prize is specifically for the children of the people who have, at this point, $20k+ to contribute to a perfectly valid cause. It would be another matter entirely if it were some adult buying access to a YC dinner. It is not. The gut reaction is that some rich kid gets to build his/her Rolodex because he/she hit the sperm lottery. In my opinion, it just seems like the antithes…
The gut reaction is that some rich kid gets to build his/her Rolodex because he/she hit the sperm lottery. In my opinion, it just seems like the antithesis of what YC is all about, which is (as far as I can tell), "who are you, what have you built, and why are you so good at what you do."
Bingo.
Now, it's a huge topological stretch to argue that attending the YC dinner is really going to set a kid for life. More likely, he'll make a jackass of himself and that will be the end of that. However, it's the statement, the impression, and the direction that's getting everyone riled up.
The reason people dislike VCs is that they give resources to people who need them the least. They'd be more respected if they were pouring their efforts (at least in terms of time and mentorship; as they are businesses, they shouldn't be funding nonviable candidates) into projects and people who could actually use the help. No one likes a fairweather friend.