Y Combinator Saved Our Bacon | Hacker News Reader

Y Combinator Saved Our Bacon

mattmaroon.com

62 pointsMaysonL34 comments

This is chronically unfair. So now the people who have money and are already part of an elite get better service and get their complaints resolved faster? And normal people don't? What is being built here - some type of tech aristocracy where the YC alumni get to be at the top of the pecking order? Those people did not get in there by sheer ability, they got in there by already belonging to some good schools and nicely middle class parents.

Technology should be fair to all.

Back before I even knew that facebook had guidelines I had a facebook app disabled (and associated facebook account). It was not spamming or anything, just inviting people in strongly worded language to download the app. I have sent about 10 emails so far to their accounts, and I have NEVER received a reply back. I've tried pleading, I've tried angry, nothing works.

I just gave up and made another account, that first account is still disabled. I don't care about it anymore - but the lasting impression of this whole situation is this: facebook does not care about developers.

Microsoft have always had frontline people interacting with the developers. Every problem I had during my microsoft days was quickly resolved by some guy working on the product. It never took long and it was never complicated.

Apple is different - because there senior executive take care of major problems. I've sent an email to steve and had the manager of iTunesConnect call me. Schiller has emailed me to solve problems. You can call and talk to a reviewer. Apple cares about their developers and they care about quality, and they will try their best to handle both.

But facebook - so far I've not found a way to break this wall of silence that they have. I guess when we get big and famous, they will start to care - but you know what? Microsoft cares about me even though I am not rich or famous or anything. Same with Apple - even if they have a harder task, as they care a lot about quality.

And no, I don't want the problem resolved anymore, I've moved on and am content being an unimportant small player on the facebook platform. If there is an issue I'll work it out myself or give up - I know there is no way to talk to them.

Rather than lamenting the unfairness of it all, a more productive response might be to hack the system. As I recall, you have a blog post or two about convincing people to give you what you want. (Simplest way: convince them they want to give you what you want.) This is closely related.

All hackers should know how to network, wear a suit (or not), ask for things, make people from outside your socioeconomic background feel like they grew up with you, etc. You will be astonished how much those matter.

> a more productive response might be to hack the system

Yes and no - for those of us not currently involved with Facebook, a more productive response might simply be to steer clear of a system where it's all about who you know - if it is indeed like that and this isn't just an unfortunate blip. "Choose your battles" and all that.

I'm not sure why you feel socio-economic background is relevant here. And I'm not sure what relevance a suit has here. I'm not trying to raise investment from Zuckerberg or get invited to a dinner with Paul Graham. I'm not trying to launch in career in silicon valley, or get the attention of a venture capitalist.

I'm trying to recover my facebook password! That's all!

I should not need to make people from facebook "feel like I grew up with them", just so they can re-enable my account.

All of us here on HN are helping promote YC companies to the disadvantage of other startups. HN is an amplifier of pg's already formidable megaphone in the industry. YC has used HN's buzz machine to fantastic effect and is starting to have a real disruptive effect on silicon valley. Whether by design or not pg's empire is working synergistically. And you good sir, as well as all of us here, are part of it.

> Back before I even knew that facebook had guidelines I had a facebook app disabled (and associated facebook account). It was not spamming or anything, just inviting people in strongly worded language to download the app.

The exact same thing happened to me in Jun '06 when facebook platform launched. The application was /ireadit I used to respond to each and every post on our wall, sometimes a long message encouraging users to invite other book readers, few emails to moderators of book clubs. Most of these messages were ofcourse similar. I had sent anywhere up to 20 such emails and my account got blocked day 3. The application was registered through my account (then only the owner can add other developers), it was growing at exponential rate, and we were so scared the app would stop working.

They unblocked the account in next one day. I guess that was only because our founder knew someone higher up in facebook.

I don't know what you think about YC alumni, but you don't get in by having money or having gone to a good school (though the last never hurt). Our founders were not upper middle class and between the 3 of us had 2 degrees from Akron U. I didn't get the impression that pedigree was a big part of their selection process.

But you are US-based, aren't you? That's one kind of pedigree.

Some YC teams are from overseas. Web startups have a highly US-based bias.

OK, I'll concede that the 'prior' is also US-heavy.

If you think facebook is bad try getting a response from a 'live human being' out of google.

Tales like this are exactly the reasons I haven't even CONSIDERED developing for FB. I'd always heard their support was atrocious.

This is very enlightening as to WHY people I know were completely ignored -- they weren't YC Alumni. I'll be sure to forward this to them, so they realize why they were denied support. I'm sure they'll be interested.

It's nice that YC helped these guys, but getting this kind of consideration on a platform is something everyone should be entitled to--you shouldn't need a special "in" with YCombinator to get it. It's like if YC partnered with Apple just to help YC startups get their apps approved.

This makes YC look good, but FB look bad.

It's like if YC partnered with Apple just to help YC startups get their apps approved.

Wow, what a great idea! :)

Hey there, Carl Sjogreen from Facebook Platform here.

I'm glad we were able to help Matt out, but am embarrassed he got in this situation to begin with. We're working on some new systems to handle abusive applications (getting rid of which helps users and the entire platform ecosystem) but clearly have some technical and communication issues to work through still, and its totally unacceptable to be taking such harsh measures with applications that aren't doing anything wrong -- let alone being so hard to get in touch with.

The only silver lining of this otherwise unfortunate situation is that it will help make sure it doesn't happen again.

The technical part is quite understandable. I can't imagine what you guys must deal with in preserving the platform. You have to be a target for every spammer in the world right now. It happens, and it's certainly better for everyone if the platform remains spam-free.

Thanks again for getting it taken care of so quickly!

In your new system please don't ignore people who have been blacklisted, at least respond with a reason or if you can't do that at least acknowledge that a human has read it and isn't going to take action so poor people like the author doesn't have to sit around wondering if he's even going to get a response.

Actually stuff like this just reminds people why one shouldn't deal with monopoly suppliers who are big enough to ignore you without getting hurt in the process.

I don't think the being a monopoly is as much a factor here as being really big is. And of course being big is why you do business with them, they bring many clients/$ too.

PG was asked a question at the YC event that essentially boiled down to: "What are the best startups that will make use of Instant Personalization?"

His answer was that it was impossible to predict but whatever it was, it would be something that at first seemed wrong, ie something that wasn't how Facebook intended the API to be used, and something that they wouldn't be sure they should even allow.

This isn't that sort of case: a previous version of Matt's app that used the API in the exact same way was thoroughly reviewed and approved.

Nevertheless, one can easily imagine that the truly disruptive Facebook Instant Personalization Apps may only even have a chance of surviving the FB approval axe with the support of an organization like YC. This, in my opinion, is among the biggest reasons why the YC/Facebook deal will be so beneficial for YC companies, and why Jason Calacanis' criticism was mis-placed: the real risk is not that Facebook will steal your disruptive idea that is obviously good, the risk is that Facebook will just shut off your weird idea which isn't obviously good at all and only later turns out to be quite disruptive.

While I think it's awesome to have friends in high places, and I wish these guys the best, it reminds me just how miserable it was to work on the FB platform.

Their milquetoast, ever-changing policy that's occasionally enforced and frequent API updates and breakage was maddening at best. IMHO FB makes apple's app store policies seem "not so bad".

I understand that zynga and the lot have made a lot of money, and the level of traffic FB can provide is intoxicating... but I'll be damned if i'd do that again. This tale is a good reminder of why.

Their platform is maintained pretty well from a technical standpoint. Breakages do occur, but their bug tracking system usually results in the big ones getting resolved rather quickly. Work on the MySpace platform a bit and you'll REALLY appreciate Facebook. They break crucial things all of the time and then just don't fix them for weeks if at all.

Our experience with Apple so far has been ok. Lots of waiting, which is frustrating. We can update our Facebook app multiple times per day. With Apple if you ship a game with a bug that crashes it on some devices (oddly, despite having an iPad app, with all iPads being the same in every relavant way, our first app crashed on only some due to memory issues) you're screwed. You're racking up negative reviews for a week.

Good story.

Lessons learned:

1. Business is not 'fair'.

2. Its unrealistic to expect playing field to be level.

3. Its about who you know.

Big thanks to all parties involved for the reminder.

Best of all, without knowing we did, because that type of help scales.

For the same reason I'm always especially pleased when I hear about one YC-funded startup having helped another without us even routing the request.

Actually Harjeet helped me there by giving me the contact info. Gotta say I'm a big fan of Harj.

Oops. Thanks Harj! (Me too.)

It scales inside YC (which I have no problem with). If Matt didn't have the connection, he'd still be screwed. I think it's a great move on YC's part, but it doesn't change the fact that Matt was just a normal guy who didn't have many options until the YC connection became available. Overall, the system is pretty scary if you're on the outside looking in.

Did Facebook fix whatever caused that app to be flagged, or is this a case of them just unflagging it and leaving it at that?

If this app is erroneously flagged then there's a good chance that many other apps are in the same situation, but aren't lucky enough to be able to get the magic email address.

So is it end days for the app economy? I quit developing mobile apps (J2ME) when it became clear that to make money you had to be endorsed by operators. And operators wouldn't even talk to you if you weren't a multi-million Euro company. Maybe it is inevitable that any market turns into that after a while.

So good-bye to the idea of the indie app developer...

Don't give up so soon. There are more potential indie developers than there are mega companies. If mega companies block us from reaching our users we'll find a way to route around them.

It didn't work out so well for J2ME, though.

You might be excited to hear about this new platform from a small computer company called Apple. They have now released a mobile phone, and let you write applications for it without carrier approval.

What is more, they only take 30% of the purchase price (unlike the carrier fee of 70%), and the approval process - while slower and more annoying than many would like - doesn't require you to setup meetings with carriers business development group.

There is also a web based platform called Facebook where you can deploy apps. The approval process for that is usually so straight forward that a guy did a blog post when he had to rely on personal connections in order to get his application enabled!

;)

Or better yet, you could create an app for this totally free system called the web, you wouldn't need anybodys approval and every level of supplier you would need (from domain registration to hosting to software to run your servers) are a commodity market or open source and so are actually beholden to their customers more so than Apple and facebook are.

Even better there is nobody who can tell you what kind of technology stuff you have to work with, nor is anybody going to demand 30% of your income (except the taxman - set of an offshore account before you start to make money).

I had a similarly frustrating experience with Feedburner in early 2008. I was running something slightly controversial and they basically reverted to an older version of my RSS and wouldn't let me do anything to change it, including redirecting the traffic away from Feedburner. I emailed the Google rep I had dealt with in addition to trying all their listed means of contact with absolutely no luck. The EFF told me that their terms of service probably (and did) have a clause that they could discontinue service to me for any and no reason (which is how it seemed). Since this was for a podcast I decided on a whim to try emailing Steve Jobs too. I had full control of my account not an hour later, and I've been happily on Amazon's S3 ever since.

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