Ask HN: Is YC entangled with Trump’s rich supporters? | Hacker News Reader

Ask HN: Is YC entangled with Trump’s rich supporters?

Given all the endorsements from Silicon Valley billionaires that are courting Trump, does this put YC in a situation where they have to look the other way at what is happening and play ball so that their startups will be the next Valley/VC darlings?

Will startups that share the vision in some way with these billionaires who are endorsing Trump gain preferential treatment as a means of securing funding rounds or difficult contracts?

Related is the rebranding of Palmer Luckey from a Trump supporter to a liberator of Ukraine, as well as the over all anti-Trump sentiment post-2016 election that was permeating through the start up world (SV in particular).

Edit: Thank you to the poster who brought this pg comment to light: https://x.com/paulg/status/1814805327210291551

Shame this question is flagged.

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Users flagged it. We can only guess why users flag things, but in this case I've turned the flags off - see https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=false&qu... for how we approach that sort of thing.

As for your question: I'm not privy to insider discussions but have been around YC a lot and can tell you I've never heard anything of this nature. From my perspective YC is focused on finding and funding good founders and that's it. Just speaking for myself here though.

Low effort post but just wanted to say thank you for unflagging it, I appreciate the support.

I'm not in the US, not American, though I have lived in the US portions of my life.

I'm going to go so far as to say it us unamerican to mix business with politics to the level that you are suggesting here.

The rhetoric in the US about one against the other is quite ridiculous. Families are worried or even unable to celebrate Thanksgiving dinner because not everyone can agree on their political affiliations.

We should identify in our belief in something, not against, and a belief in a party or an individual is just asking for trouble.

Let me ask you this. If you had a life threatening illness, would you ask your doctor what party they are going to vote for? That's kinda what you're asking here. You're asking if YC is involved in who the founders they invest in are going to vote for. Ignoring the fact that many of the founders are in the US on a visa, and probably don't care one way or another.

Can't Palmer be both a Trump supporter and liberator of Ukraine?

In the US, our democracy doesn't really respond to the whims of everyday people. Between the two party system, campaign financing, the electoral college, etc., voting doesn't really do a whole lot.

So boycotts become an alternative avenue to change, or at least another place to vent frustration.

It flip flops every few years though, like with the diversity and equity stuff that was so popular a few years ago and now getting shut down.

The average person here has zero power to affect anything at all in Washington, so yelling at companies is all we can do lol. Wall St is somewhat more responsive than our elected officials. Kinda sad, but that's the country for ya.

PG recent tweet seems on topic

https://x.com/paulg/status/1814805327210291551

FWIW pg's twitter feed has been strongly anti-trump for a good 9 years now, so I don't think that post is telegraphing any political alignment. (To my eye it's about resisting ideological pressure regardless of political affiliation but that's just my take.)

I'd been meaning to comment by email, but ... that tweet is an extraordinarily bad look for HN & YC in my book. One that makes me question my own participation here.

One of my major concerns with HN specifically has been its overt status quo bias. Where the status quo stands to go stridently fascist, and the founder of the company and founder don't actively oppose this ... I have extreme reservations.

I've similar concerns about other VC firms (e.g., a16z), and quite frankly the VC / tech startup ecosystem as a whole. Xoogler Vic Gundotra's own revelation as a Trumpist a few years back only cemented my own initial sentiments about him. (I'd been an active participant in G+, and what I saw of him there ... stank badly.)

I mean, how much more capitalist can one get than VC? They rely on this very status quo to make money. Of course they're not going to oppose it.

Once you're rich enough, Dems vs Reps don't really matter. But more radical movements that threaten the status quo certainly would endanger their wealth.

Capital is more fungible than ideologies, I guess. Shrug.

We the community have every ability to make another forum with different biases, but well, this one is their free service, and this one is where the discussions are at. They don't owe us anything. If anything, they're probably more tolerant of opposing commentary than an anti-capitalist forum would be of their participation.

Look to Weimar, where similar sentiments were expressed.

The stakes were larger than German industrialists realised. And I suspect are now for present-day VC, amongst others.

I doubt they care what happens to the rest of the country or the world as long as they can stay wealthy.

All the more reason to protest.

And reconsider my engagement with HN / YC.

Fair enough :) I'll think about it too.

Related recent submission: "The Tech Industry's Moral Vacuum" <https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41029948> <https://www.shayon.dev/post/2024/203/the-tech-industrys-mora...>

I don't think Graham has much of an operating role in YC; he's been retired (from YC) for some time now. I think he holds a board seat? I disagree with a lot of what he has to say about politics, but this seems pretty cooly observed. To me --- one of the advocates Graham is referring to --- it seems like an odd thing to get worked up about.

Appreciate your view, as yours was one I was thinking of canvassing.

That said, the "how to deal with Nazis in the bar" story comes strongly to mind:

<https://old.reddit.com/r/bartenders/comments/j7y3cu/how_to_d...>

I remember when YC had some group with PT on it. What I remember is that rather than kick PT out, the group itself was dissolved ... and then reformulated, with the prior members sans PT. That seemed to me at the time an elegant solution. Reading what pg had written, and is writing now, makes me strongly doubt my previous rationalisation.

I've written on this ... sometime, somewhere, though apparently not on HN at least by Algolia's search. The story itself is mentioned by BuzzFeeed News <https://www.buzzfeednews.com/article/ryanmac/y-combinator-cu...> and Business Insider <https://www.businessinsider.com/y-combinator-billionaire-ven...>, both on 17 November 2017.

As for PT: he's told us enough times who he is. I'm taking the well-founded advice to believe him.

My opinion of Thiel hasn't changed, but YC's management has, as has my take on collective action in our industry --- I can be supportive of a pressure campaign to divest from a bad actor if it's part of a widespread and general mobilization across the industry, but I find it a lot harder to get wound up when a single, small target doesn't cave to a loud fringe, which is what we ended up being.

I'd be interested in what your take on effective collective action is.

As for pg's recent comments: whether or not he's on YC's board (I can't find confirmation either way, though he's listed as a founder: <https://www.ycombinator.com/people>, snapshot: <https://web.archive.org/web/20240723223830/https://www.ycomb...>), his essays are featured on YC's homepage (<https://www.ycombinator.com/>, snapshot <https://web.archive.org/web/20240723223921/https://www.ycomb...>), and he's making comments clearly indicated as guidance for both YC and other firms.

My own goal isn't persuading pg so much as YC's present leadership, and that of other firms (incubators, VC, or commercial enterprises). Opposition to populists has generally been "fringe", until it wasn't, or until all possible hope of opposition is lost.

There are other examples of notable organisations distancing themselves from founders. EFF and John Gilmore come to mind: <https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2021/10/john-gilmore-leaves-ef...>

I'm trying not to overthink or noodle on this too hard. I'm definitely not looking to pick a bone with Paul Graham. My thing here is simple: I think if you want to make a case that a particular billionaire is an advocate and activist for literal fascism, that makes sense if there's something productive you can do with the impulse. But to do anything productive, you need to mobilize the industry, to confirm to everybody that the push you're making is broadly reflective of the industry as a whole and not just a loud, concentrated special interest. That didn't happen: the politics of the rank and file of the tech industry are well understood, but they're simply not going to organize and act in a meaningful way. It's too big a lift.

Fair enough. If it's not going to happen, I don't have a problem with people recognizing that it's not going to happen, like Graham did, and I don't see why we'd keep chasing performative measures.

Thanks.

I disagree, though how and why specifically is hard to articulate. Regardless, I'd asked for a clarification and not an argument. I got that first.

Yes that was my take and why I posted it to the OP since they were asking if YC could potentially be manipulated due to political pressure from VC's.

the paulg tweet isnt encouraging :(

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