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Comment by smacktoward | Hacker News Reader

This post leaves a bad taste in my mouth, at least to the degree it's talking about executives of YC companies.

I mean, the whole model of YC is to take kids straight out of college (if not before) and turn them into startup CEOs. If those CEOs come out of that process not understanding the legal obligations of their new position, whose fault is that, exactly? It's not like they're bringing decades of business experience to the gig. The only thing they know about what being a CEO requires is what YC teaches them.

If their only preparation for the post is YC, and they're ending up ignorant of stuff that could get them slapped with a felony charge, I would think that would say more about YC than it does about them.

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My impression of YC has never been that it is some hand-holding after school special. This is an investment firm in the world of business and the world of business is very serious. As a startup founder, you are treated as an adult and that includes both the freedoms and responsibilities implied.

That said, you may have a point here. If there is a recurring issue that some founders are too immature for their own good and might be a risk to their own personal safety (e.g., committing felonies out of pure ignorance), YC should probably be intentional about filtering those people out during applications. But this article isn't just about YC candidates and that's not a solution for the whole industry.

It's strange that you think that an investor who owns 7% of a company is "being serious" by declining to do any diligence about illegal behavior undertaken by management.

You have no basis for that statement.

Isn't the whole article pretty much basis for that ? :(

If sam is saying YC founders are using terms wrong, doesn't that imply that YC was fine with those terms?

So confused.

Anyway, the simple fix would be to just have a 1-3 day finance bootcamp to make sure everyone speaks the same language. Rather than getting everyone to try to being kinda-sorta competent.

> Isn't the whole article pretty much basis for that

For "declining to do any diligence about illegal behavior"? Of course not. Why did this topic come up in the first place?

Re lack of diligence, it's astonishing how people jump to make mean, false statements without a second's pause to consider the obvious.

It's not YC's job to teach executives anything. Their entire model is self-service: they give founders access to people who know this stuff, but you have to ask for help to receive it. At the same time, a lot of these founders don't know what they don't know, so IMO this blog post is a way of saying to current and prospective founders "Hey, you need to be careful about this because creative accounting is often illegal". The startup mindset is to find creative solutions to problems, but that doesn't work in finance/accounting.

> I mean, the whole model of YC is to take kids straight out of college

Isn't the average age of YC founders closer to 30?

It is interesting how this blog-post directly follows the "The Post-YC Slump" post [0]. One can easily make the mistake of considering time spent on financial statements "fake work", fake work being identified as one of the reasons for the slump.

The fact that there are financial misstatements indicates that there is more need for this type fake work, or perhaps the whole fake work thing isn't so fake after all.

[0] http://blog.samaltman.com/the-post-yc-slump

Exactly what I thought too.

Why not have a bootcamp for a few basic finance rules/jargon? Assuming they see the same sort of issues crop up, surely a 1-3 day bootcamp is a lot less "fake work" than every founder now needing to figure out what they need to know and then know it?

Depends how much these financial misstatements end up costing them. Plenty of successful startups base their business on breaking the law, to a lesser or greater extent.

At what point do people start acting like grown-ups who take the time to learn what responsibilities come with their actions?

I think college graduates certainly qualify. If I'm going to call myself "CEO" then I better damn well figure out what that means, and if I don't know, I should study or seek the advice of someone who does.

Like... YC?

You mean maybe the accelerator? It would be awesome if YC/the accelerator had a bootcamp of 1-3 days talking about this stuff. Because, let's face it, this "finance stuff" is complicated and most of us don't have a clue: it's not intuitive or something that can be reasoned from first principles. Anyway, are we supposed to build product or become focused on learning all this new jargon(is this fake work?) ? Seems like a lot to duplicated effort if the latter is the case. So, it should make sense for YC to have a short bootcamp.

So why wont they? Because maybe it will open them up for liability? I hope that's wrong because they obviously see the need for such a thing, but are too risk averse(?) to provide value there.

Anyway, why are most of sam's post about how stuff sucks/his disappointment as opposed to: this sucks, and here's how we want to try fixing it? He's running the accelerator and this lack of ownership is really hurting the brand.

Sigh. I'm going to get shadowbanned again. What am I saying that's so disagreeable?

I think you might be misapprehending Sam's posts. Demo Day just finished and he's advising startups by warning them about pitfalls. YC has a tradition of making these kinds of posts public—pg used to publish his advice to YC startups in the form of essays for anyone. I always thought that was great. (Off topic: I've been inspired by it to (slowly) write some advice for YC startups about what counts as good content for Hacker News, and when it's ready, will make that public too.)

As for what's disagreeable in what you said, let's look at your paragraphs: (1) 100% fine; (2) assumes its conclusion and makes an unfair jab; (3) mischaracterizes Sam's posts on the whole, as well as the recent ones; (4) off-topic posturing about bannage.

Thanks for acknowledging/replying.

Regarding your specific complaints: (2)Assuming conclusion and using that to open up discussion is a fairly standard rhetorical practice. Are you saying that that paragraph doesn't move the discussion forward? Why is it unfair? It's an assumption/leading for sure, but it's as fair as anything else.

3) Ok. So here's the thing: when you put things out on the internet, other people read it. They especially read it when it's the top link on HN :). And, they read the content not the intent. Mischaracterization isn't something I'm trying to do malignantly: but unless I'm missing something recent posts have been very much in the vein of "here's what I don't like" rather than "here's how we are fixing some thing we don't like". Maybe I'm still being unfair? But when these posts are up for consumption for the world, the cop-out that it was only meant for the YC class seems a bit silly. Is seeing that opinion voiced really worth the effort of silencing it? Are only "positive" (fawning) posts the ones that are allowed?

4) Are you saying I'm not shadow/hellbanned?

You're not banned. If you want to discuss these other details further we can do so offline (hn@ycombinator.com).

The average age of founders in YC startups is 29, that's not really straight out of college. I think you might actually have misconceptions of what YC does. It's not a school for sure.

"I’ve seen people use GMV for revenue or refer to an LOI as a contract many times in the past year when talking to investors. This is a felony."

This is only a problem when you're asking investors for more money. That's when you need an accountant to review what you're telling them. You need an accountant and a lawyer at that point anyway, or you're going to get screwed.

By your logic, Harvard should be to blame for the millionaires and billionaires from Harvard that are in prison for insider trading.

It's not about blame. Everyone makes mistakes.

It's about seeing a recurrent problem, then helping people by fixing it

> It's about seeing a recurrent problem, then helping people by fixing it

And perhaps this is the first step in that process.

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