Trump-Supporting CEO Kicked Out of Y Combinator Startup Incubator | Hacker News Reader

Trump-Supporting CEO Kicked Out of Y Combinator Startup Incubator

buzzfeed.com

58 pointsminimaxir56 comments

Additional context: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12934388

Alternate less click baity title: Abusive Bully CEO Kicked Out of Y Combinator Startup Incubator

Admittedly less interesting, though...

Well, in fairness, one was just elected president, so maybe we should give them more leeway.

If an apprentice in one of Trump's reality shows was caught on video telling others to "fuck off", after being repeatedly told not to do that, Trump himself would've said "You're fired!" Probably kicked him out of the door himself.

Good riddance.

Does anyone know how you can tell the good buzzfeed articles from the clickbait without clicking?

I wasn't aware they had good articles.

BuzzFeed has an actual team of investigative journalists these days:

http://www.poynter.org/2016/how-buzzfeed-built-an-investigat...

But I don't know how to tell the good articles from the clickbait built-for-viral chaff either...

I find it's increasingly a problem with the web in general these days. As for HN, maybe someone can work out an algorithm that digests the content of the piece after it's posted and provides a quality score.

The step after that is for each of us to train our own bots to comment as we would ourselves.

I asked Paul Graham on Twitter if YC would discriminate against Trump supporters, and while his answer was fine [1], I never did get a response from Sam Altman about the same issue. I also never got a decent response from an anonymous thread I posted here [2]. Sam Altman's statement of support for Hillary [3] was fine, of course he is entitled to his opinion, but it was incumbent upon Altman to make a statement that neither he nor the YC application review team would discriminate on the basis of political affiliation. He didn't, and one has to wonder, given this new situation, whether there really is systemic bias at YC.

[1]https://twitter.com/sparkzilla/status/788684294130630656 [2]https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12733252 [3]http://blog.samaltman.com/the-2016-election

How bad does a leader have to be before supporting him is a genuine moral outrage?

I definitely believe the guy was in the wrong here, but what would have happened if it were a leftist harassing Trump supporters?

when leftists want to kick people out of the country or be supported by the KKK or grope/molest woman, etc we can be worried about your thought experiment.

when the candidate you choose to support openly wants to make life harder, more difficult or even non-existent for groups of people you've chosen your side and be prepared to defend it.

None of that really matters in this context. @jamesmp98 is asking if it were a left-leaning founder harassing Trump supporters. And if someone wrote a screed like https://img.buzzfeed.com/buzzfeed-static/static/2016-11/12/1... I would hope YC would react. That type of discourse is unbecoming

So, what you're saying is that in 2016, there's only one valid side to the political discussion?

I hate the fact that we've come to the point where everything is now open for discussion and sticking your fingers in your ears and screaming is considered a valid debate style. These days it's the person who holds out the longest that wins, right or wrong.

I didn't see any chance for a debate. Once one side was labelled misogynist, racist, antisemitic and homophobic, it was the end of public discussion and open season on every one of its supporters.

Have a look at social media to see what the current sentiments of the left are regarding white (males). Pure hatred and death wishes, it's absolutely grotesque. The KKK has nothing on them. Get off your moral high horse.

Bad-tempered name calling tends to get you kicked out of any private club. I had to look that one up on Urban Dictionary...

edit: went to the other thread minimaxir linked to, read some of the examples. The guy was behaving like a total asshole. Some purely left-wing analog of the same behavior wouldn't last long anywhere.

Unless you are on top like Hillary or Jobs. Or Trump.

Nada

How terrible. I've been downgraded again by self righteous leftists. How will I sleep tonight?!?

"Please resist commenting about being downvoted. It never does any good, and it makes boring reading."

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

Oh really? I love it. It's the best part of HN.

You have to admit though that this guy is smart. Getting kicked out of YC is probably exactly what he wanted. It will be PR magic for his startup... He almost definitely planned the whole thing from the beginning.

On the other hand, the very public circumstances of the dismissal will make it impossible to get funding for the startup from legitimate investors.

I don't think so. He will find even stronger support among conservatives (especially when you factor in the nature of his startup). That's the thing about capitalism; there is no down-vote button.

The more controversy you create, the better it gets financially. Friends pay well and enemies don't cost much.

I think that this guy was secretly hoping for a Clinton win; then he would have looked even more like a victim; and the defeated, angry Trump supporters would have been cheering him on with pitchforks in their hands.

I get this is a a technology forum a people generally shouldn't post politically charged stuff.

I am more then happy to never post any political crap here again, but I like to know why/how my recent post was flagged. I apologize, if I violated the etiquette or something.

Is this the comment you're referring to?

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12940111

As to how, it was flag-killed, which means enough users flagged it to trigger its removal.

As to why, I can only speculate, but it may have been a combination of things:

- invoking "moral obligation" and "dignity as human beings" implies that people who don't agree with you are somehow immoral, which they might react strongly to

- "any means necessary" can be interpreted to mean that anything goes, including violence, which is pretty strong language, and more of a call to arms than an invitation to civil discussion (which is the purpose of HN, in part)

Some of the child comments point to reasons it was flagged as well.

And things are pretty heated in general around HN right now.

I wouldn't take it personally. Move on, reflect, figure out ways to engage more constructively if you choose to.

Hope this helps. This isn't meant as a criticism, just trying to read it as I see it, since you asked.

"By any means necessary", was in retrospect an inflammatory statement, which I should not have used. I don't believe violence is necessary, or even helpful in achieving a moral society.

As for judgements about the morality of others, this is my opinion. I don't apologize for it. I know I'm unlikely to be directly persuasive using this moral judgement as an argumentative tactic, but to make people conscious of the intangible, quasi-spritual ramafications of their political beliefs does at least as much good as simply getting someone to believe what I believe.

Thanks for your superb analysis.

Shitposting has severe consequence.

Could anyone give more (insider) explanations? Not clicking on a buzzfeed link.

https://img.buzzfeed.com/buzzfeed-static/static/2016-11/12/1... probably says it all.

If you don't want to click on the image, it's a post from Andrew Torba which reads

> All of you: fuck off. Take your morally superior, elitist, virtue signaling bullshit and shove it.

> I call it like I see it, and I helped meme a President into office, cucks.

I can understand why YC would want to distance itself from that.

That's not all that happened. Torba did more than antagonize people on a Facebook feed. He carefully chose a screenshot that left out the context of his actual harassment of YC batchmates. In the most recent instance, he screenshotted the Facebook status of a Latino batchmate expressing concern about the election --- not to him, but to their personal Facebook feed --- and posted it publicly to Twitter with a "build the wall" taunt.

If the roles had been reversed and, on November 10th, a Clinton supporter (like myself) had done that to someone expressing relief on their personal Facebook feed that Trump had pulled off his upset, I'd have booted that person too.

But I'm not sure even that was enough to get him booted! It seems like the last straw was that, upon being confronted with his behavior and how it made his colleagues feel, he had an entitled temper tantrum. This could have been a Bears/Packers argument and still have been a fireable offense in a real company.

Since this is probably obvious to anyone over the age of 15, let alone to people with Philosophy/Business degrees, I think this is one of those rare cases where the most cynical explanation succeeds: this is a person whose YC Facebook advertising startup failed†, saw little future for themselves in the California startup market, and decided to burn their relationships for PR fuel.

† I should have been way more careful here. I have in fact no idea how well this advertising startup was doing. I apologize for characterizing something I have no real info on (I think the company changed names, and I was going off Twitter feed activity and LinkedIn bios). For all I know, the company was doing great before the founder pivoted to an alt-right social network. Cynicism loses again!

It is sadly amusing to look at the utter lack of empathy though. From the article, re his move to Texas:

   I didn’t feel safe anymore in Silicon Valley as a conservative. I felt like 
   such a minority that I just didn’t feel safe being there anymore.

The inability to connect that to how the Mexican founder he mocked is feeling is instructive about Torba's character.

I think that's just mockery.

The BuzzFeed article is well written, not long, and contains comments from Garry Tan, Kat Malanac, and Sam Altman. It's hard to get more insider than that.

Why? Buzzfeed actually has some well written pieces. They pay the bills with the listicles, but they use that money to fund journalism. Andrew Kaczynski was great this whole election, and was at Buzzfeed until CNN recruited him in October.

Buzzfeed isn't just clickbait articles about The Dress. They do legitimate journalism. This is one such example.

I think the "Trump supporting CEO" part of the title is largely irrelevant—he was not kicked out because of that, but because he acted like a fucking retard.

I agree, supporting Trump doesn't look like the only reason he got booted. Let's not forget that YC has a Trump-supporting "part time partner" on staff.

> retard

Maybe think about not using this word in 2016.

That thinking is how Trump won. sigh.

I agree with you btw.

He was kicked out for grossly inappropriate comments, just like yours.

Corporations and the Silicon Valley echo chamber itself are going to get the smack down for being such insufferable Marxists. It's only a matter of time. They might want to study some history and stop being such annoying know-it-alls. Might be a good idea to apologize to your conservative-leaning customers, too--they are at least half of your sales.

An investor, someone who provides money in exchange of certain promises, decided the behavior is unacceptable and said "You will no longer have my money."

And that makes the investors Marxist?

Does the word "Marxist" even mean anything now?

I feel like "Marxist," like "cuck" and "SJW" have been so overplayed and diluted as perjoratives by the right that they long ago lost any meaning or weight.

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