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Comment by jmduke | Hacker News Reader

OP has a history of railing against YC, largely for engagement's sake:

https://twitter.com/search?q=from%3Advassallo%20YC&src=typed...

(I have never applied to YC — my closest affiliation is that I reviewed YC applications for prospective applicants while at Stripe — but I do find engagement farming really annoying.)

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I personally also strictly disagree with their feedback: "try many small things, experiment, tinker, and build a portfolio of multiple income streams".

This is very much the indie-hacker route, but honestly, if you have one thing that's working out, it's usually better financially (though maybe less fun if you like purely doing engineering/product work) to try to grow it than to build a portfolio.

As someone who went through YC, but started out more on the indie-hacker side, I want to mention that going through YC in particular does not close the door to just continuing to build a successful, growing business without raising one round after the other.

I think some indie-hacker influencers encourage this kind of us vs. them thinking about VC's, and the truth is somewhere in between.

I know of many businesses who have decided (either by choice or through a lack of fundraising options) that the ideal way to grow and scale their business after YC is to not fundraise. It's something that YC partners explicitly acknowledge. They understand that an alive business can continue to grow, whereas a dead business is just dead.

Exactly this. And the irony is that he himself follows the very same standard playbook: play around, do several "small bets" and then go all in on the most successful one. But he sells you the idea that you need to be your own VC and have multiple income streams.

His other projects are mostly dead by now and my bet is that he won’t have another one ever. He’ll probably save a lot of money from his course, put it in an ETF and call it "see I diversified my income" lol.

i don’t think you understand his point at all. tinker until you find that thing. maybe keep tinkering after. a single source of income is very fragile.

I had followed him for years and recently stopped (and even blocked) because he’s become a prolific engagement farmer. Given how pointed his takes have become, there is little chance he’s changed in so little time to become this opinionated. I doubt he believes much of what he writes about. When all you do is sell courses, no publicity is bad publicity. It’s all a numbers game and he knows it.

If this is what you think, good riddance. I think carefully about what I write publicly, and stand by what I say.

I’m curious if that analogy actually makes sense. Why would you pay people to dig their entire lives in one spot? Why wouldn’t you just do the more efficient way and have founders mine their own 100 yard fields?

I agree the incentives of VC want are to swing for the fences and they get the benefit of diversification. I just don’t think the analogy works…

What is engagement farming?

Two common implementations of engagement farming are a) very contrarian/misinformed opinions to bait people to respond negatively and b) simple Q&A prompts like "What opinion about AI would get people mad at you?" which encourage people to respond. The organic discussion (positive or negative) is generally favored algorithmically so it gets boosted, and in the case of Twitter, there is a monetary incentive to do so, as Twitter Blue accounts can earn revenue from tweet views.

The tweet author performed the former very recently and caused a news cycle by complaining about MKBHD's Humane Pin review with a bizarre take: https://daringfireball.net/linked/2024/04/16/vassallo

fancy clickbait

It used to be called "trolling," before trolling was redefined to "publicly disagreeing with important people." It's maximizing the ratio between the characters you type and the characters typed in response to you.

Is an ideal response one so thoroughly perfect that nobody has anything to say after it? Or is leaving some room for continuation good until it's excessively so?

The problem is being more concerned with the response than with what one is typing.

For example, your comment

So you're more connected to YC than 99% of the people commenting in here, I don't think that your viewpoint can be seen as objective.

To be clear, I reviewed applications _on behalf of Stripe Atlas customers applying to YC_, not on behalf of YC. (I have never chatted with anyone in YC, besides presumably on Hacker News.)

he does it on pretty much any topic he can get engagement with actually. a repulsive human being in person.

Daniel? He’s been a friend of mine in person for over a decade. I knew him long before his exit from tech into working for himself. He’s a wonderful human being, a kind and gentle man who enjoys mentoring people and being with his children.

He’s also building his business I assume, which I guess entails a certain amount of salesmanship and playing the game if your business is in the orbit of social media. I’m always surprised by the personal hot takes

More like personal dumb takes.

I admired him in his early days too. Yet lately he really stands out as a fucking idiot in my twitter timeline every once in a while to the point of having to block him.

A full-grown adult man just chasing clout, what a fucking clown.

Agreed. I used to go on Twitter almost exclusively for his content. Now I have him blocked. What an embarrassing fall from grace all in search of the next like and follower. Addiction to engagement claims another one. Society is materially worse off converting talented workers into social media course selling charlatans.

So what do you suggest, suppressing or censoring dissenting voices?

Your comment also doesn't add anything to the conversation, does it?

There may be a pertinent ulterior motive to the tweet thread, which is relevant to the discussion.

Shocking how a person who's deeply thought through something and has developed a strong stance against something may also have created a solution to help fill in the gap where VC industrial complex may be beneficial, e.g. networking and education.

I'd argue it's more of a service for them to engage than them cowering away afraid of certain judgement.

Arguably 400+ other people who upvoted the post agree; even though it's been flagged.

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