The YC Board of Overseers | Hacker News Reader

The YC Board of Overseers

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85 pointshglaser41 comments

What is the technical difference between board of directors and board of overseers?

board of directors has fiduciary responsibility over an organization, usually approves management plans, determines ceo compensation, etc.

our board of overseers is modeled after what universities do. it should be much lighter touch than a board of directors.

the board of overseers has a lighter touch perhaps but also the executive guillotine. even if the latter power is exercised rarely, the will of the overseers is final authority. to be sure the current overseers deserve no doubt in their moral commitment to YC, but as YC grows in influence, wealth, prestige and power, so too do its overseers, and the shadow of moral hazard darkens. actions impossible yesterday become intolerable today and invisible tomorrow.

as someone who cares about the future of YC, i am glad that a mechanism is in place to guard the integrity of the YC president, and i wonder mechanisms are in place to guard the integrity the YC board.

"the shadow of moral hazard darkens" - are you referring to this definition of "moral hazard"? http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moral_hazard

If not, can you clarify what you mean?

Yes, I mean a moral hazard in the sense of a divergence of best interests between YC and an overseer.

of all the leadership structures YC has experimented with, the board of overseers seems least proportional in terms of the power of the body and its investment in YC. consider the prior era of YC where all rewards and losses in both finance and reputation fell upon PG and Jessica. once sama became president, he put skin in the game in by staking his professional reputation on YC's success.

i pose the concern of moral hazard because one piece of information has yet to be made public: how board members are impacted by YC's success or failure.

"but as YC grows in influence, wealth, prestige and power, so too do its overseers, and the shadow of moral hazard darkens. actions impossible yesterday become intolerable today and invisible tomorrow."

I feel like that should be a quote from a Harry Potter novel.

i only posted it here because JK Rowling still blocks my emails.

A worrisome issue indeed, the prudent next step would be to establish an ideology committee and emergency commission for combating mutiny and sabotage

Could you elaborate on how the board of overseers were picked? Why these individuals?

It is a great list but missing one person.

One sounds evil, the other sounds really evil.

And then there's the Board of Overlords. Or The Council of Sauron.

http://uncyclopedia.wikia.com/wiki/File:The_Council_of_Sauro...

Does YC also have a BOD? Doesn't the BOD in most US corps have final say over basically everything?

Interesting that this board seems to be constitued by the founders of some of the most successful YC startups (Airbnb, Homejoy, Stripe, Dropbox, Weebly, Twitch)

This is similar to universities, where most of the trustees are extremely successful former alumni. I think that's the model they're trying to follow.

Success does not equate being a good trustee. Trustees should be picked for their ethics rather than their success.

True. I'm just identifying the model. They also need not be mutually exclusive. You want the intersection of helpful, ethical and successful. If you're missing on any of them, you probably won't be helpful. I think financially minded organizations tend to lean more on the success since it's easier to measure.

Very awesome. This seems like a healthy step in a direction I'm personally excited about: YC as a university (vs. YC as a mini VC).

"I'm personally excited about: YC as a university"

YC isn't a university (today) and I don't see a particular reason it should try to model itself in that fashion so as to draw comparisons. It's a different entity in itself and should try to foster that new category rather than try to compete in an existing category for attention and/or respect.

It's worth noting that YC's characteristics are slowly creeping into university territory. Facets and characteristics that make YC and universities successful:

- Strong alumni endowment (both capital and mentoring)

- Reliant heavily on personal networks and connections to vet at scale

- Critical of personal merit on application process

- Application process are almost identical (mostly criticized on paper, followed by a very short interview)

Couple all of this with the reality that:

- Many famous tech entrepreneurs are known for dropping out of school (Zuck, Gates, etc)

- Peter Thiel (and the PayPal mafia) are on a mission to fund children and have them skip uni

- pg's view of university life as a model for allowing smart people the time and freedom to create innovative new products.

I don't disagree that they are different entities, but in perhaps viewing through a particular lens, one could argue that there is little that separates how they behave at scale.

Food for thought -- let's negate the application process for a second -- if you're a parent, would you send your child to a university that will cost $150k with no guarantee (but high likelihood) of a job afterward or would you rather drop $150k into your son/daughter's startup to then be advised by some of the most successful modern day business people. I mean, life isn't all about working, but, well, it is.

Interviews generally play a negligible role in college admissions, whereas the YC interviews are the deciding factor in admission.

Interesting that PG is not there.

He retired, for some definition of retired. He's letting the new team run the ship. That said, I'm sure he's still virtually on the board of directors and if he really felt passionate about something that it would get done.

He's clearly above this board and could get rid of all of them if he wanted to. I think all involved know and understand that, and hope it never has to happen.

Why not call it "Board of Directors"? The word "overseer" still pretty much only refers to the middle-managers of slave plantations.

I think that's incorrect. Overseer is generally a term the English use when referring to administration of the poor. Not sure if it's still in use today.

Can you tell I liked me some Charles Dickens?

Here's the disambiguation from wikipedia:

In professions

[1] A supervisor or superintendent; one who keeps watch over and directs the work of others, often in the context of forced labor or slavery

[2] In law, a person appointed by the testator to supervise or assist the executor(s) of a will (mostly obsolete)

[3] Overseer of the Poor, an official who administered poor relief

It's muddled at best, but the usage in reference to a supervisory role in a professional context [1] is distinct from what you allude to [3], and [1] has the qualifier "often in the context of forced labor or slavery".

Very interesting. Raised in New England, college in Louisiana. I should know that!!

My cautious rebuttal...

Startups are generally poor when they arrive at YC. Maybe that's just Sam injecting a little sly humor like he did with that last line?

This is what I thought when I saw "overseer". I would not have chosen to use that word.

It's common in academic institutions. http://www.harvard.edu/board-overseers

Fair. I like UC's "Board of Regents" http://regents.universityofcalifornia.edu/

At Univ of Virginia we have a "Board of Visitors" http://www.virginia.edu/bov/ :)

You may find this interesting (or not): The way the Egyptian hieroglyph for overseer as commonly written has a visual pun, and literally means "one who is in the mouth" (http://books.google.com/books?id=aroQ0Zrl8J4C&pg=PA34&lpg=PA...).

Board of Directors usually meet once a month. Their job is much more than deciding to hire/fire/keep the CEO.

Agreed. Advisors would be better but perhaps they were bored at the "normal" names...

Wait, Sam Altman is both the YC president and on the Board of Overseers. If the board is responsible for both hiring/firing the president, how does that work?

The same way a CEO sits on the Board of Directors which is also responsible for both hiring/firing the CEO/President. Meaning that if fired he will be removed from the board meeting and/or he will have to recuse himself from meetings discussing his role as President.

There are 9 people, I guess they vote, but there could be a split board about the President, hopefully that will not happen anytime soon.

Hard to imagine that PG doesn't have sway over what the board decides if he should so desire. Obviously. But he can defer to the board in day to day and use it to his advantage. (Remember Godfather 1 "Michael's in charge now".) So playing the card will be a rare occurrence but possible.

obviously i'd recuse myself from a vote about me :) and it's a big board anyway.

Just curious if there is any visibly transparent process in place to add/remove members to the Board of Overseers?

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