[canniballectern]

I don't get it - if "the mafia" wants "7% on your cap table", why would they reject your YC application and backchannel to get VCs to back off?

[manquer]

In this scenario (not getting into if its true or not) logically the "mafia" would want to get 7 % in successful companies, and the key to that success is to influence everyone else not invest in anything they reject, which means less competition/resources to their portfolio. This makes life harder if you never applied so you are kind of forced to apply and be forced to pay "protection" even if you may not like it.

More powerful a mafia is, more likely their rejection dooms your venture, making it more likely you would be okay with deal even if terms are not too favorable.

[wmf]

The theory is that YC would rather support Stripe's "monopoly" than take 7% of a bunch of different payment startups.

[dang]

YC has funded and continues to fund a lot of payment startups. More generally: YC funds close to a thousand startups a year at present—obviously it's impossible to avoid funding competitors in such a model, nor would that be in keeping with YC"s founding principles, one of which is to try to fund as many good startups as possible (https://www.ycombinator.com/principles/). But you can have good practices around it, such as not playing favorites, not giving inside information about one to another, reminding founders that startups mostly don't die because of competition, big markets are big enough to support multiple players, and so on.