https://twitter.com/fatmanterra/status/1527153694218797058
https://www.ycombinator.com/companies/stablegains
Or is it bad to talk about such things around here?
I’ve got no idea what their original pitch is, I certainly wouldn’t back a crypto startup that ostensibly aims to do something like what it looks like they tried to do, but if I was making 300 bets a couple times a year I’d be silly not to do something in the space.
Whether a ycombinator seal of approval lead to investment which lead to consumers getting fleeced and culpability in that situation, I don’t know. It’s crypto. If you’re silly enough to think it’s a safe investment, you’re blind. A company can also say a lot of things differently from first pitch to accepting millions from consumers. As an investor with 10%ish equity, you’ve got some sway, but you don’t have much sway. And who is to say their bet isn’t the right one.
A stain, but I don’t know about righteous indignation, I don’t know how much culpability transfers back to yc… but I don’t feel it’s a whole lot
Thats not how it works; VC's are allowed to pass on anything they want, and it turns out they dont cut a fat cheque to every idiot who knocks on the door.
I’m disappointed that we still do cold patches instead of heating the surrounding asphalt when filling potholes. That’s where I’d transfer soldering technology into asphalt.
Porn companies don't have exits.
That's why we have the concept of "due diligence". YC is absolutely allowed to make bets in the crypto world; but they have a brand name and a reputation of serious investors. I know that when I see the YC logo on a new product I discover, it serves as a signal. And having a fraud company being allowed to use the YC brand on their website, because YC wanted to work with them and gave them money to allow them to grow (meaning: "cheat on more people") is definitely a stain on their track record
The previous sentence isn’t and shouldn’t be particularly controversial.
As you wrote it as a generic hypothetical, no, it’s not really controversial to me. If however you are meaning to say it as a passive aggressive way to accuse YC, yeah, it very much is controversial.
To not be controversial (for me anyway), you’d need to meet some burden of proof with evidence. How much would be enough to meet that burden? I’m not sure at this moment, but as you’ve presented zero that I’ve seen, I think “more than zero” is a fair starting point.
The company in question has blatant securities fraud as their core business model.
QED
Here’s a logical construct in return. When people you like do unethical things they are still unethical.
First and foremost, did YC approve of this “core business model”? Sure, the founders got into YC, but did they pivot during the program (frequently happens)? And while YC may be on the board, they don’t have controlling interest either.
So yeah, there’s a lot of scenarios where people “you know” and/or “partner with” do unethical things, but that fact alone doesn’t mean you are unethical. You very well could be, but guilt by association isn’t enough proof here imho.
Given the number of companies that have gone through the program, I'd be surprised if there wasn't at least one that completely ignored everything the founders didn't want to hear or do.
"Dark CEO Paul Biggar said YC booting him for tweeting about internal posts on skipping COVID-19 vaccine lines.
Prolific CEO Katia Damer said she was cut after calling out misogyny by YC founders.“
https://www.businessinsider.com/ycombinator-katia-damer-paul...
https://techcrunch.com/2021/06/09/does-what-happens-at-yc-st...
Scamming their users mostly makes the Founders look bad.
NOT kicking them out is what would make YC look bad. I wouldn't expect it to happen immediately, though, if YC does an internal investigation to see whether any principals, mentors, or advisors are implicated in the unethical behavior as well, whether by commission (giving unethical advice) or omissions (such as failing to raise red flags).
YCs public track record in terms of self-reflection on possible errors in judgement isn't particularly encouraging though. From the outside the org seems to focus on evolutionary changes though certainly at a fairly rapid clip (which means that cultural norms are hard to establish and maintain, giving the "carriers" of non-normative behavior opportunities to wriggle around avoiding scrutiny. For new extensions of the program YC favors rapid experimentation and iteration, which may fail to establish compatible norms depending on who is leading the effort.
It is worth contrasting one of the more stable outposts for YC culture, this very Hacker News site. YC has a very strong policy regarding not just avoiding a conflict of interest when it comes to moderation of posts critical of YC, but moderators have been instructed to moderate those posts and discussions considerably less than would otherwise be indicated, to avoid even the appearance of a conflict of interest or self-dealing. That's a pretty strong commitment, and one that can be difficult to live up to (avoiding the appearance of a conflict of interest is a standard that judges are supposed to be held to, but not lawyers, for example). YC may or may not have always lived up to the spirit of that commitment (only insiders can know for sure), but it is reasonably plain that an ongoing effort is being made to live up to the letter of that commitment. Kudos to pg for establishing it early, and to dang for keeping it going.
The point I'm arriving at is that establishing and maintaining a cultural reference point like that is very difficult in an organization that is growing, changing, and sending out strange offshoots without a lot of explicit (even occasionally public) communication about similar bright lines and thou-shalt-nots, and outside of the HN context, we really haven't seen evidence for that.
[a croupier hands Renault a pile of money]
“Croupier: Your winnings, sir.”
“Captain Renault: [sotto voce] Oh, thank you very much.”
We already knew YC's ethics -- they proudly look for "naughty" founders who "hack real world systems" for personal gain.
Don't think if there is good reasoning and no name calling etc.
I would love to hear the explanation how these companies even got into YC from the people who picked them. Is this some type of divide between purely making money at YC (which can be dirty, immoral, bordering on criminal etc) and the tech community of HN who are generally against that sort of thing?
I mean it's not only crypto; it's dark patterns, privacy invasion etc; HN is generally against that, but probably many YC companies would be dead without them.
So is that the reason? YC!=HN?
What I'm curious about is the initial pitch. Did YC have a way to know that company was a terrible (potentially fraudulent) idea, or did the founders mask it sufficiently that it would have been difficult to tell?
But it's also still possible that it will. If you make a living by making long bets, then it's completely reasonable to want exposure to crypto.
If you are in the business of owning a piece of any company that may go public via IPO or SPAC one day, then yes, might as well give money to anyone who seems like they may be able to get to that finish line.
If on the other hand you are in the business of predicting the future of technology, it doesn't make sense to have exposure to technologies that are 99% scams on the off chance that someone accidently makes something useful in an effort to get rich. There is a lot of real innovation happening in the world that deserve that funding.
If a group of people created a perpetual motion machine community, would they deserver some funding? How can you prove that they are not going to discover new physics that allow energy generation from nothing?
Are you aware of the search feature? Or are you wondering why people aren't talking about something tangential in this thread specifically?
People talk about YC companies all the time. There is no weighting, no one flagging posts about YC companies. Most people here aren't part of YC, we have no reason to give them any more leeway than anyone else. The main reason no one in a random cryptocurrency thread is talking about one random cryptocurrency company is because that company is not a significant part of the industry, and no one except the people getting Goxxed even know it exists.