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Comment by oretoz | Hacker News Reader

Sam's comments are encouraging but in the notes [1] about the application process they also mention how they look at a user's comments.

I signed up on HN after being a passive reader for a long time and so haven't accumulated a lot of karma.

I suppose lack of comments shouldn't be a deterrent as Sam suggested but may be the messaging needs to change a bit? Just my humble opinion.

[1] https://www.ycombinator.com/howtoapply/

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I have 12560 karma on HN and a very loose sense of ethics or morality, so feel free to make an offer on my account.

Disclaimer: You may also need to change your name to George McBay for plausibility.

I'd offer my account, but I've already been rejected once.

most partners don't look at this very much.

I suspect it is also true that comments are more of a liability than an asset.

"He has no comments, he must have been busy doing something else interesting." vs "He has 500 comments, and shows he isn't interested in considering other approaches"

That is great to know. I had mistakenly assumed that it is one of the key requirements. I am in my late 30s and will be soon starting on my startup journey. Having worked with a big telecom vendor for a large part of my career, I sometimes make the mistake of finding reasons why I cannot start a venture. I suppose it is time for a real change. Whether I go for YC or not this year (I live in the UK and cannot leave in the near future for personal reasons), I am surely going to give this whole startup thing a good kick in the coming days!

Thanks all.

I created an HN account when we applied, because I had to. I lurked beforehand, but never commented. My cofounder had about 14 months on me account wise but he had been thinking about applying us to YC for that whole time. So I don't think it hurt us.

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