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Why is Y Combinator so defensive lately?

68 points| WisNorCan | 2 years ago |techcrunch.com

34 comments

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lnxg33k1|2 years ago

I don’t understand why it’s not possible to downvote posts, I’d have saved someone else from killing his own braincells too by reading this article, instead I could not contribute to the mental health of a fellow specimen, sorry random stranger, not my fault

Retric|2 years ago

Given the option people downvote without reading quickly creating an Ecco chamber. There’s a flag function which serves a similar purpose but the extra effort lets a lot of more marginal content slip through.

You want more diverse content because it attracts a more interesting audience. There’s several mechanisms to promote this. “Health risks of travel in early-modern Britain” only has 35 upvotes in the last 6 hours but still ranks #17 because diversity is encouraged.

Another story is talking about remnants of a structure dating back “476,000 years and predating the evolution of our own species, Homo sapiens” https://news.liverpool.ac.uk/2023/09/20/archaeologists-disco...

There both interesting but so is “Fine-grained caching strategies of dynamic queries” etc etc.

catach|2 years ago

Pretty sure it's an HN trope to read some of the comments before the article, in part to get a sense of the quality of the article.

So, your duty was done.

chasontherobot|2 years ago

What is wrong with the article? It seemed to be a fairly normal piece, certainly not "braincell killing"

karmakaze|2 years ago

This could be a good feature if there's clear guidelines on what's off-topic or undesirable by some criteria. Seems more tricky than downvoting comments which works pretty well for keeping discourse civil as interests and what's interesting is very subjective. I do like systems that have a controverserial section if it doesn't attract content by its own nature.

cowthulhu|2 years ago

If I ever run a successful business, I’m definitely going to have a “no posting about the business on social media” rule to avoid situations like this! I’m not sure who’s in the right or not, but reading through the tweets (almost) everyone involved ends up coming across as somewhat childish, which seems like a total lose-lose.

gochi|2 years ago

On one hand, the rule is good, on the other a loss for everyone else who enjoys influential figures demonstrating how petty and childish they are behind the layers of image crafting.

lnxg33k1|2 years ago

You could hire a Chief Drama Officer

WisNorCan|2 years ago

To be clear these are not random people inside the respective organizations. These are the CEOs of the organizations.

I trust that they had the judgment to decide that they needed to defend their reputation.

android521|2 years ago

well, Elon Musk who run the must successfully businesses on earth tweets all kinds of $hit and his businesses are going up and up.

version_five|2 years ago

Right, it seems like with celebrities no press is bad press (with a couple exceptions) and Twitter feuds and drama bring more interest. But doing it on behalf of a company can only look bad.

The obvious example is Musk who regularly makes himself look like an idiot, though I think the kind of whiny defensive posts mentioned in this article look way worse.

Somewhat surprisingly, I think Yan LeCunn does a decent job of posting fairly aggressive tweets but not looking like a whiner, crazy or someone shouting pointlessly into the void.

1letterunixname|2 years ago

To be fair, what sets YC apart from most, not all incubators, is the level of community communication: signal and support. Not every incubator has as much critical mass/network effects (yes, that cliche) of cleverness, hustle, intellect, and track record in one place. Sometimes, the relative difference can be as stark as comparing an Olympic training swimming center vs. the local middle school pool open during summer months: both can cool you off, but which will be more useful to an athlete?

Social media: The business utility of it is primarily in broadcasting press release-type information and real-time notices. For personal use, the power law distribution of popularity suggests it's a time suck with little or no net positive value.

evbogue|2 years ago

I feel like I missed out on some major drama by not following these guys on X. Can someone explain this a little more, I feel as if I don't quite understand what the beef is just from reading the article.

WisNorCan|2 years ago

As I understand it, the beef is that Neo compared themselves to YC claiming to be a better incubator because they have comparatively more mentors.

YCs contention is that the number of mentors on the website is not the right way to compare. For example, the YC mentors are working full time at YC helping startups while Neo’s mentors have full time jobs elsewhere and only spend a % of their time mentoring startups.

So the contention is that Neo is directly calling out YC and making dishonest comparisons.

There are other things as well about the ethics and behavior of the Neo founder, Ali Partovi, but it is only hinted at. Not explicitly stated with examples backing up any claims.

imperialdrive|2 years ago

Money and power make people do things they would likely regret otherwise.