YC's Biggest Scandals
ycombinator.fyi
ycombinator.fyi
But yeah, if you're going to consider startups that just never made enough money as a scandal, then Garry and his predecessors presided over rather a lot more (as would be expected from any accelerator). And if you're not, some harmless AI startup that never made much money or some entity that didn't do anything except sue someone else for their bad behaviour isn't really in the same ballpark as Zenefits or the consumer investment scams YC funded.
Especially if you're going to call this data analysis https://ycombinator.fyi/timeline
I think a FuckedCompany style overview of everything Ycombinator would be fun (and probably not overly flattering to Garry Tan) but I guess that would take more effort.
He is rather unpopular in some circles due to his political opinions. So I am not surprised.
https://www.rippling.com/blog/deel-admits-it-paid-spy-in-new...
> 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
(I don't know anything about the company we're discussing here, but this is a weird premise.)
The problem is that anything made for defense is almost inherently useful for offense, and the US is not the most trustworthy government right now. It's, sadly, not inconceivable that an automatic turret mounted shotgun could be put to use against human people across the globe, or even human people who are citizens of the US.
The comment you're replying to is pointing out the oddity of being anti-good-thing because somebody might one day invert their company's mission entirely.
How do you suggest we stop the lessons from the first major drone war from spreading? With hope? Prayers? The terrifying thing about it is - the US is actually already behind on this technology, China can build 1000x more drones than the whole West.
It's a borderline certainty that 9 Mothers employees will eventually contribute to the death of an innocent protestor or journalist that opposed the state.
"My drones are only for killing terrorists" is always the rose-tinted glasses used to frame murder. The pushback is 100% expected.
Terminal society this is.
Not dystopian at all.
There is tons of offensive capability companies YC has invested in they seem like a more appropriate target. I feel like most people want there to be protection from drone swarms.
But anyway - the parent comment is upset about YC investing in a defense company that isn’t doing offensive systems because they find the idea that dystopian weapon exist at all uncomfortable. It doesn’t make a whole lot of sense.
I'm not really following.
Yes!!! What do you think a dystopia is? The entire world of 1984 is a dystopia. Just cause there’s a company making money to “combat” that dystopia doesn’t make the thing any less dystopian.
That some element of the world is dystopian means the world is therefore dystopian.
And if the world is dystopian, then every element of it is dystopian: no element of the world is not dystopian.
It's an interesting "poison the well" type of argument, but it also means that if one accepts that all of human history has had dystopian elements (chemical weapons, slavery, feudalism, etc etc), that therefore the world has always been dystopian, and that then therefore everything in the world has also always been dystopian. And you've created a label that includes everything that has ever existed and excludes none of it, which is meaningless.
Seems unofficial. Actually, the domain name is probably a trademark violation.
Given that not all of the "scandals" listed on that page are even YC companies, the minimum we'd normally do is add a question mark to the end of the title, but I'm going to refrain from that too.
* https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=false&qu...
A shame, because the idea was good. And, with a bit of patience, it was doable.
They're bland and average. Almost like they are designed by a system inherently selecting the average over time.
I like people made pages better because there's generally a little more flavor of the designer. Unless it's like a wiki where I'm just digesting information, I'm looking for a little personal touch. Otherwise, what's the point? If the author or designer can't be bothered to actually put work in to the project, why should I put work into consuming it?
The screaming “DAMAGE” blocks, “body count”, “(EXHIBIT)”, “7.8X MORE SCANDALS PER YEAR”, all of this looks extremely stupid, screams LLM, and undermines the points the authors want to make.
> Rippling
> 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.
Per this description Rippling did nothing wrong here, all about Deel...
Replit for the website (he did the first 80%), Gemini to make the flyers and he'll be walking the neighborhood and talking to neighbors.
- release source code of each and have new section: "twinned"
- enable domain, trademark and socials acquisition and have new section: "revisited"
- enable full acquisition (including business name) and have new section: "returned"
- previous 3 becomes "legacy" or "sequel"
- don't limit to YC
regardless, the biggest flex you can do these days is bootstrap and own 100% of your company as long as you can
.. what?
My gut says the general population has a larger percentage.
No theology, that's all mythology anyway. Just a thought.
I guess mostly it is about ego and vanity. I am better, superior, powerful and more capable and smart then you are. About 100 billion dollar smarter than you are?
I don't think the number of investments they make is your real hurdle here. I think it's that you'll have to confront people familiar with the status quo ante of YC.
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).
(And, side note, a16z is definitely not the status quo ante of YC.)
Nobody's reading this but you and me at this point, so we might as well call it here.
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