Comment by nkotov | Hacker News Reader

Comment by nkotov | Hacker News Reader

To be honest, this feels like a PR stunt since we all know if you add "YC is bad" and share it on HN, people will look and react. I haven't heard of Bolt, I'm not familiar with the space at all. I use Stripe because the product just works and I can trust my business with it. Seeing a CEO who publicly complains turns me away from even wanting to try the product.

On a related note - I helped review a little over 100+ YC applications since getting in myself in S20 as a way to give back. There were a lot of bad applications or just ideas that seemed over saturated (a social media for some niche as an example). Literally tens of thousands of people apply for YC every batch. I personally recommended around 20 with around 15 getting interviews and around 10 getting in. I only recommend companies that I personally would want to invest in if I had the capital. YC has funded a handful of competitors in my space (PaaS) and I actually had calls with them to exchange notes and see where we could help each other.

It looks to be more like a heartfelt rant than a PR stunt, the person who posted this to HN doesn't seem to be same as the one who wrote the tweet.

But it does amaze me how often HN seems to fall for this kind of sensationalist story.

I have to agree, it's suspicious coming a couple weeks after another negative Stripe post that got a lot of attention.

And the timestamps on the HN posts he linked to are pretty damning as well. What's more likely: an established startup scrambling to launch a new product a couple hours after a small startup's blog post, or the smaller startup piggybacking off the more established startup's announcement?

> Seeing a CEO who publicly complains turns me away from even wanting to try the product.

Really? That turns you off? What a lame argument. Your criteria for using Stripe is that "the product works" but not using Bolt is "CEO who complains".

A CEO spouting a contrived storyline where they are fighting against nefarious SV forces makes me question their rationality. Which, you know, is an attribute I care about if they're running a payments processer

Comes off as whiny. Checked out their website, Stripe just seems like a better product.

> Seeing a CEO who publicly complains turns me away from even wanting to try the product.

I see comments like this all the time. I'm pretty sure these companies are happy they drive people away who seem to be high maintenance. Companies hate high maintenance customers. Yes, they want customers but they want good customers and not high maintenance customers.

It’s not an issue of high maintenance (which we and many other companies are not), but more of an issue of accusations and trying to frame a “David vs. Goliath” story. I’m all for a good underdog story, but publicly ranting with untrue statements about a huge conspiracy out to ensure they don’t succeed is borderline unhinged.

I guess there are two camps. The people who see a story like this and go "hell yeah the underdog strikes back!" dispute how true any evidence may be, and the people who see this story and go, "Stop whining."

If this tweet thread gets massive amounts of traffic, which it looks like it has, and a whole slew of people in the first camp discover Bolt and become potential future customers... Mission accomplished.

What similarities did you find in good applications that you selected?

Great founder-market fit, some traction or a clear path to getting traction, and market-size over $b.

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