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Comment by 6stringmerc | Hacker News Reader

You planning to open up such a thing for the handicapped as well?

I mean, until the ACA came along, I pretty much took a risk-aversion pattern career path so I wouldn't get thrown into the "prexisting condition" abyss, and I'm probably not alone here. Personally speaking, a lot of handicapped folk I've met through the years are quite clever, innovative, and determined, because starting life at the plate with a 3-2 count is a lot different than being on 3rd base, if you catch my metaphorical drift. Just curious.

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> You planning to open up such a thing for the handicapped as well?

This is part of the problem with things like this - while good intentioned, it inevitably alienates another equally oppressed group.

Why can't we just have "Office Hours" and make it absolutely clear it's for anyone -- and actually follow through with the intent.

It just seems silly to says "these here are for only this one small group - and that's how we're going to help combat bigotry".

They aren't "combating bigotry". They've observed the obvious demographic gaps, and they're doing targeted outreach to try to close that gap.

Combating bigotry is a worthy cause, but it is not the only worthy cause, and evaluating unrelated outreach programs by their impact on bigotry is a sort of rhetorical sleight of hand.

I think this is worth pointing out: there is probably no criticism anyone is going to have of this program that the YC partners have not already considered. It's 2015, and they're not dumb.

Fair enough, but the squeaky wheel gets the grease. If nobody cared about what YCombinator does, or what potential affect it can have on a career path, then it'd fall by the wayside. It's one of the fine lines good businesses have to straddle - once in a position of leadership, gradually society looks toward the business and wants to know how they intend to use that position of status.

I don't see this being much different than what being featured on Oprah's Book Club could do - sometimes things are overlooked, and using personal currency to bring attention to such things makes sense.

I mentioned this below point below - but I'll make it again here. We do tons and tons of outreach at YC. We meet/talk to thousands of founders a year. With open office hours our goal was to have a way to do targeted outreach which we think is important to close the demographic gap in startups. Open Office Hours should be seen in the context of all the other outreach we do instead of in isolation.

would this be an example of the Nirvana fallacy? actual good work is being done, and you're saying that it's bad because it's not better? but then again, your suggestion is not really better. you can't fight racism by pretending there is no race, and if you acknowledge there's an unfair asymmetry in society, then the response must also be asymmetric.

if a person is ill, you don't go around giving medicine to everybody so that the healthy wouldn't feel excluded.

No one ever tries to help ugly people, but we all know they face discrimination.

That's a good idea!

Not trying to be too snarky, but yeah, I know. There are so many support networks for youth and adults in respective communities that once you put the word out, I bet responses will come pouring in. It's a good compliment to trying to raise your outreach profile with the under-represented communities overall - lots of overlap and progress you can help be a part of making!

They're just responding to whatever's in the wind today.

As a startup founder, do you try to capture every available market or start with a beach-head and expand from there?

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