Comment by pj_mukh | Hacker News Reader

Comment by pj_mukh | Hacker News Reader

"The issue isn't that PearAI did something illegal—it's that they got funded by YC with nothing more than a codebase copied from another YC-backed company. This shows that (1) YC is willing to fund just about anything, (2) they’re not doing any real due diligence, and (3) they don't particularly care about their existing portfolio companies."

This shows a fundamental misunderstanding on how YC functions. YCombinator was never a test of how good (or unique) your code was. At its core it was a filter of people, people who can work well together and people who can build something useful. That's it. You can read more about this straight from one of the founders [1]. The fact that you used open-source code (within legal bounds) to get their quicker just shows your resourcefulness, something YC actually optimizes for.

More often than not, "good people" tend to be domain experts sometimes really good and unique coders but that, to me, was always a byproduct of the search pattern.

You can obviously disagree with this methodology, but it has worked pretty well.

[1]: https://foundersatwork.posthaven.com/the-social-radar-what-i...

I think something people might be missing is the context around this post, which is that the founders are being dragged on twitter, essentially.

Since a lot of you hate the site, I'll summarise briefly: one of the founders did a thread starting with the following post:

"

I just quit my 270 000$ job at Coinbase to join the first YCombinator fall batch with my cofounder @not_nang

We're building PearAI, an open source AI code editor. Think a better Copilot, or open source Cursor. But you've heard this spiel already...

"

One thing not conveyed here is the first line is in unicode bold and the end is littered with emoji spam. Essentially, the post ticked a few rage inducing boxes for a certain kind of tech twitter user. It was rather cringe, reading like a thread from get-rich-quick influencer types while also likely imbueing some readers and quote tweets with a little jealousy they wouldn't openly admit. This was probably the impetus that pushed one or two angry people to poke around their product and find out about the open source code cloning and the fact the founders were overselling (which founder doesn't, I guess...) which lead to a rout of publicly mocking them and YC in general, resulting in blog posts like the OP, I guess.

I personally don't really think one company amongst the whole batch is enough to judge the start of a trend for YC "trading prestige for growth" or whatever. I think the discussion of prestige is in general is an interesting one, I just don't think PearAI is indicative of it more than they themselves just being hucksters which happens in tech in general.

The founders showed hustle, as every founder must. nothing wrong with that in my book.

But they need adult-guidance on communication. You dont go around twitter boasting about your 270K job etc. They need to show grown up hustle (grit, perseverence, etc). Not high-school (mine is bigger than yours) hustle.

I feel like that "270K job" comment was some sort of cultural signal to Zoomer devs on the FAANG leetcode job grind. I'm in my 40s so it just seems both tacky and unimpressive but maybe for folks half my age it's a meaningful signal towards competency?

270k is on the low end and would indicate incompetency if anything if you're older than mid-20s, esp since it's not like he's taking a pay cut to work in a cool or interesting field (coinbase lmao)

270k is on the low end?

Depends on the equity

Assuming that this isn't sarcasm, this is what happens when you permit social media to distort your sense of reality.

The simpler break-down here is that they are crappy con artists and need to be be better at con-artisting. Which is fine, but please let's not pretend it's very different.

This is an indictment of Twitter tbh. Not YC. A lot (most?) YC founders aren't even on Twitter.

the founders were status-signaling on twitter.

it is clear they are in it for the "status" of being YC. and they dont care a whit about solving anybody's problem.

they do this for a while, get it on the resume and go back to their 270K jobs after a few months.

this in and of itself is a hustle, lol. they hustled YC.

Honestly, I hate X/Twitter specifically for this - the click/rage bait cesspool that it has become in the past year after content engagement became monetized.

Every other day, or at least every week, there is a new topic that everyone piles-on rage and hate to - even accounts that have nothing to do with the topic. This is because eyeballs make users money from X - so getting any audience possible, and getting them inflamed enough to engage is the point.

Even worse, the algorithm is gamed such that the latest rage is pushed to every other users eyeballs, resulting in a constant stream of hate in your feed.

I think the real pain point you're hitting on there is that people feel like they don't get selected when they deserve to be. While there are those who don't deserve it but get selected anyway.

While I often feel this sadness/jealousy myself, and most probably a lot of the rage bait X replies do too (despite not admitting it) - someday they have to wake up and realize that life is/has always been that way.

Despite our collective desire, Tech is not a guaranteed meritocracy either.

VC firms are betting on the people. Most early startups are still looking for their market fit. The VC firm is betting that the people are able to identify that market which they'll be able to scale.

yc is a club looking for members. A lot of the members share similar traits/backgrounds which is why there's sorta this "populist" backlash. It's not meritocracy for ideas or viability.

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