Comment by tomhoward | Hacker News Reader

Comment by tomhoward | Hacker News Reader

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You've written a whole lot of words that bypass my point and double down on the accusation that I was dishonest.

You've only cited companies/orgs that are operating legally, not ones that are demonstrated to be highly ethical and substantially better for borrowers to deal with than the payday lending companies that existed when LendUp was conceived around 10 years ago.

Clearly, LendUp was talking about trying to build something much better for borrowers than what existed then, and that's what was compelling to YC (as I said in an earlier comment, I vaguely remember discussions about this being had at the time, and thinking it would be interesting to see how their plans would play out).

Exactly what went wrong along the way, I don't know, and I haven't seen any comments here explaining it - only indignant comments leaping to the conclusion that everyone involved must have had malicious intentions from the start but not offering any evidence for this.

This is why your comments are disingenuous. Both the comments here and the article itself discuss what went wrong legally with LendUp. You are willfully ignoring those.

If you want to weigh in with your "hot take" you should at least read the article, rather than coming in claiming LendUp did nothing wrong and then when presented with evidence fall back on well "I don't know" and "know little about the space".

This is exactly why your comment is disingenuous, because you specifically stated "turns out that there's no possible way of making a sustainable business in this space that's less-terrible than that was there before" as a defense of LendUp's actions, when as I have pointed out to you, there are plenty of sustainable businesses operating in this sector. If you want to quibble around "sustainable" vs. "good" then at the very least you should acknowledge there are companies that are operating legally vs. ones shut down (e.g. LendUp) after committing multiple violations.

I mean seriously, are you just going to ignore this statement:

“LendUp was backed by some of the biggest names in venture capital,” said CFPB director Rohit Chopra. “We are shuttering the lending operations of this fintech for repeatedly lying and illegally cheating its customers.”

The Director of the CFPB doesn't just come out and call everyone liars and cheaters.

This is very much worth harping on, because you are perpetuating and defending the idea that YC can do no wrong, instead of accepting that it is possible it made a mistake in funding and supporting these founders.

This attack is full of inventions. “Wilfully ignoring” the legal issues, and didn’t read the article. False. “Claiming LendUp did nothing wrong”. Seriously, where? “Perpetuating and defending the idea that YC can do no wrong”. Again, where, aside from pointing out that nobody has been able to provide any evidence that YC did wrong in this case?

The claim I’m disputing is that the original founders, when founding the company ten years ago, set out with malicious intentions to defraud people, and that YC and other investors knew and supported this.

(Others have later claimed that this wasn’t the allegation, and it was rather that YC made a mistake to invest in this company, in which case, fine, I have no major quarrel with that - most of YC’s investments turn out to be mistakes, that’s how their model works.)

But for those who insist that the original founders’ intentions from the start were nefarious and that YC was aware and complicit, this needs to be pushed back on, hard, as there’s no evidence for it and it makes no sense as you can’t build a successful business that way.

That the founders had high-minded ambitions that later turned out to be unachievable is the simplest explanation. Legal issues several years later, or examples of different companies doing different things to what the founders set out to do are not proof of malice on the part of the founders or YC, or of my dishonesty, and further wordy and aggressive replies from you won’t change that.

Seriously, the legal process has worked and the company has been shut down. Put away the pitchforks and torches.

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