Hacker News Reader

Comment by pg | Hacker News Reader

Since 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 would give us grief about it. But we're happy to take the heat to give more kids the opportunity to attend Bing.

View on HN

"No good deed goes unpunished". I feel really sorry that current state of affairs requires you to make this disclosure for donating something.

No more than when someone needs to say "with all due respect" before offering criticism. It's a prophylactic way of acknowledging the reality of what some people will think (which would be valid as they might jump to conclusions) and warding or dulling the harshness.

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 reserve it for only those who are interested.

Obviously, any donation to Bing is better than no donation to Bing, and the reality is that it probably is a net win for the parents with less money, but it seems like it could be even better refined and ensure that there are fewer cheap-shots like in the thread below.

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 devote correspondingly endless energy to replying.

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.

One kid getting dinner is obviously no big deal, there is however something percieved to be wrong with it being normal for the rich to buy access for their kids to business opportunities. You are probably right that it is massive overanalysis considering the subject, though at least it wasn't a free lunch.

Correct. I don't think anyone here thinks Paul Graham is a bad man. I've never met him, but he seems like a good person who didn't intend to become a lightning rod. However, this was a dick move.

If they're going to give away spots at a YC dinner to teenagers-- and I think that's a good idea-- then they should give them to winners of a computing, math, or science competition. Or young people in the computing field who overcame some disadvantage.

This just proves that Silicon Valley has nothing left that can't be sold. Even the purr of a cat will eventually be metered and priced if these people can find a way.

Let's assume that most people in YCombinator are among the best and the brightest. Well, now the time of top talent is a just another resource to be sold off to rich, entitled Joffreys. Speaking for top talent here, I'm fucking offended.

> 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 kind of golden ticket? The YC application must basically be a free-to-enter lottery! (I must be pretty foolish for not playing all these years.)

To the extent that silly valley is currently a bubble-fueled casino, complaining isn't going to put a stop to that, and dinner for a not-fully-formed teenager fulfilling their parents' expectations does little to augment that. And to the extent that there are still real companies being built on technological merit, some inspiration and accelerated social connections will do little to further disrupt that.

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 talent had a chance.

Sheesh. pg obviously foresaw negative reactions, but this entire thread is simply ridiculous.

Does someone foreseeing negative reactions to something, and then doing it anyway, mean those negative reactions should not occur? If I steal something, I'm pretty sure I'll get negative reactions (social disapproval, risk of physical harm, jail time, etc.) because, as it were, it's actually the wrong thing to do. If I do it, I can't dismiss people's hatred for that action as somehow invalid by saying, "yeah, I knew that would piss you off." The fact that I knew beforehand that people would find the action offensive doesn't mitigate it's general wrongness.

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.

> 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.

I agree with michaelochurch. I think this is less important that where the money will be spent than what kind of culture your are creating.

In my observation, here in India (I am from India) that a child born in a poor family remains poor for whole of his life . There are exceptions, but this is true for most of the cases. In my opinion, the reason behind is that the society and culture makes feel a child of poor family that he/she is poor in all aspect of life. This goes to un-conscious mind of children that they are poor and they never come out this thought when they grow up and even if they are very very talented.

Please do make such kind of culture where kids feel bad simply because their parent can't afford something for them. Please do not make kids feel that they belong to a poor family. I can see the current bid is $20K which is a big amount even for a middle class family.

I know that world is not perfect, but we can try making it better at least by not playing the money games in kids matter. If you think further, this kind of culture is a way to society where only children of rich people will get proper healthcare, education etc.

Even the purr of a cat will eventually be metered and priced if these people can find a way.

Hey, isn't that the Uber kittens thing?

What harm does it do if only rich kids get to go to a YC dinner?

A place for some more deserving poor kid would be nice.

I used to hate when conservatives and Republicans made Real Americans arguments but this issue is a litmus test for whether one is on or not on the hot air balloon of the current, out-of-touch, Silicon Valley elite, or whether one is down here with the rest of us for whom gravity and reality apply.

The New 1%, the out of touch types, look at things like this and think they are somehow progressive, based on an Econ-101 understanding of "efficiency" (which is not well-defined for sociological problems). The rest of us, who've actually had struggle in our lives, find it disgusting and perverse, because it makes a mockery of the hard work of such a massive number of people out there.

Also, that scholarship is probably going to go to some middle-income-but-highly-connected child of a Stanford professor or a diplomat, and not an actual poor person. Just sayin'.

"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?"

What was done was easy to do. Simple decision "yes or no" here is the benefit. [1]

What you are asking would require meetings, details and more thought amongst people who don't really have the time for that.

[1] Keep that in mind when you are doing business with people. Make it simple for them to agree and require no effort on their part (or at least as little as possible). If you want to delay decision making do the opposite. If you want to delay it even more give them an assignment to complete (like a 3 page list of questions that they need to answer before you will take their money). Friction kills deals just like time does.

> If you want to delay it even more give them an assignment to complete (like a 3 page list of questions that they need to answer before you will take their money).

In my opinion, you are comparing apples to oranges. This is not like putting up a 12 field registration/payment form for your web app, it is asking people who are interested in getting access to one of these dinners to express why they think they are worthy of attending. The perceived value is high enough such that you should theoretically only be reading essays from people who took the time and made the effort to apply.

You are absolutely right, this is the easiest way, and it is by no means a bad idea. Donating to charity in anyway is a great idea. However, the virtue of that fact does not automatically mean that the method for raising the money to be donated was intrinsically great.

I must note that my opinion is colored by the fact that I would have loved to attend one of these dinners myself during my teen years, but my parents (nor myself) could absolutely not afford to have paid for it, but I would have been happy to compete for the spot on other criteria.

I'm pretty sure the YC partners don't have the time to comb through dinner attendance applications and manage the rest of that, unfortunately. Maybe they could outsource that, though.

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.

“Bing was constructed as a laboratory school with a grant from the National Science Foundation and a gift from Dr. Peter S. Bing and his mother, Mrs. Anna Bing Arnold.”

I’m glad I went on DDG before assuming Microsoft paid to name a nursery school after its advertising business.

That's all well and good, but couldn't even more net social utility be created by a better auction? This perpetuates generational wealth rather than giving an opportunity to someone who earned it for themselves.

At the very least, couldn't you auction off a seat to adults? At least that would be people using their own money to buy themselves advantages rather than yet another example of parents buying significant advantages for their children.

Maybe I'm just bitter because I'm 20 and my parents could never afford to pay $20,000. I don't see why you should purposefully give someone else whose parents could yet another advantage in life.

PS. To put my money where my mouth is, I'd donate $1,000 of my own money to Watsi or another charity of your choice if it buys a seat.

Is your auction and seems fairly harmless on the scale of things, but surely this prize is expressly intended to give an advantage to the kids of people rich enough to buy it otherwise you would presumably have chosen to auction off a different prize.

...otherwise you would presumably have chosen to auction off a different prize.

Do you have something in mind? An invite to a YC dinner is free and, much more importantly, costs nobody at YC very much time.

An invite to a YC dinner is free

The catering isn't.

Besides, my point wasn't about suggesting something else, it was just remarking that the whole intent of auctioning access to a business dinner is to sell some kind of percieved power to those who can afford it.

If there wasn't percieved power there, then the prize wouldn't raise much money.

Now it could also be that this prize was chosen precisely because it counterpoints the eventual use of the money, which would be as good a reason as any.

At the end of the day there are many ways of getting rich people to pay into charity and this is just one of them, is also probably quite effective as it taps into the whole dynasty thing.

I'm OK with auctions, price-based-rationing of scarce goods, and your analysis of the net good this will do.

But, you might also consider an occasional raffle'd spot, or a spot otherwise drawn from an eligibility pool with a lower economic barrier-to-entry.

You might raise as much or more, and it would be easier to mix in things like donated-tickets or third-party-sponsored-tickets.

And, the pool of losing-entries would itself be valuable, as a community with expressed interest in YC. Perhaps the drawing-winner(s) and some volunteer YCers could throw a followup separate, larger-audience event for them: passing on the good wisdom and fortune, in the YC style.

I just wished there was a solution to this that made everyone happy. The mere idea of bestowing knowledge to someone who has a resource advantage creates discomfort.

I know the amount of places is limited, but would it be possible for the next time to offer a differential attendance? For example, donators get front-seats and the non-resourceful can participate farther-back or standing up, a la kickstarter.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com