YC has funded over 5000 companies, and this page catalogs 39 that failed, many of which, on the sites own terms, are simply business failures, with no additional drama. I don't think the authors of the site realize the case they're actually making here.
it mostly seems to be targeting Garry Tan by suggesting that there are vastly more under his leadership.
But yeah, if you're going to consider startups that just never made enough money as a scandal, then Garry and his predecessors presided over rather a lot more (as would be expected from any accelerator). And if you're not, some harmless AI startup that never made much money or some entity that didn't do anything except sue someone else for their bad behaviour isn't really in the same ballpark as Zenefits or the consumer investment scams YC funded.
I think a FuckedCompany style overview of everything Ycombinator would be fun (and probably not overly flattering to Garry Tan) but I guess that would take more effort.
Which is why these critical pieces are important, so that this proportion doesn't increase. YC should stand these criticisms lest it become a religion of sorts.
Some of these don't seem like "YC scandals":
- Zenefits: A non-YC company put a spy in Zenefits.
- Pebble: Still loved by many, just had black swan event of Apple launching a better product
- Cruise: Looks very much like a GM issue.
As an alum from the ancient days I take issue with many of the companies that YC funds these days. Flock? 9 Mothers? This shit is dystopian and I hate that I’m somehow even tangentially associated with it.
They make a very fast "AI powered" turret shotgun. It automatically selects, aims, and shoots down targets. I imagine this is great for shooting down swarms of small fiber optic or
autonomous drones impervious to electronic attacks. But automated weapons like this can easily pivot into uses besides anti-drone. Taking humans out of the loop on deadly kinetic weapons is concerning. But personally, I don't really see any other viable defense against small drone swarms.
That means 18 year olds will get splattered. I'm not for that. The kids who die in the military are just kids, regardless of their job. They aren't personally responsible for the shit orders they get.
The problem is that anything made for defense is almost inherently useful for offense, and the US is not the most trustworthy government right now. It's, sadly, not inconceivable that an automatic turret mounted shotgun could be put to use against human people across the globe, or even human people who are citizens of the US.
I don’t understand this whole idea that we are going to not having drone and autonomous weapons. Ukraine is being fought with drones. It’s the first drone war. 300k people have died in the Russian side alone. 1 million casualties.
How do you suggest we stop the lessons from the first major drone war from spreading? With hope? Prayers? The terrifying thing about it is - the US is actually already behind on this technology, China can build 1000x more drones than the whole West.
Many civilians have seen how drones were used in Lebanon and Gaza, and hesitate to trust Western leadership with that type of kill chain.
It's a borderline certainty that 9 Mothers employees will eventually contribute to the death of an innocent protestor or journalist that opposed the state.
A company named 9 mothers, which sells a service to stop artificially intelligent machines from falling from sky and blowing up everything… funded by another company that lures smart young men and women with billionaire dreams that wreak havoc on society.
I mean killer drones are absolutely dystopian but they already exist. This critique is like the common Bay Area tactic of pretending homeless don't exist because they are inconvenient.
There is tons of offensive capability companies YC has invested in they seem like a more appropriate target. I feel like most people want there to be protection from drone swarms.
Yeah, but the whole thing is still dystopian. If there was a company A planting mind controlling chips in your mind, and company B selling a service to destroy those chips… neither company makes the whole thing less dystopian.
In this situation company B is clearly making the world less dystopian then.
But anyway - the parent comment is upset about YC investing in a defense company that isn’t doing offensive systems because they find the idea that dystopian weapon exist at all uncomfortable. It doesn’t make a whole lot of sense.
It sounds like you feel that autonomous killer drones are a dystopia, and that anything related to the drones -- including mitigating their effect -- is therefore dystopian in itself, even if it is combating that dystopia? Sort of a tarring by contextual environment? I suppose by that reasoning a socialist is a capitalist because even though they fight capitalism they live in a capitalist society.
“It sounds like you feel that autonomous killer drones are a dystopia, and that anything related to the drones“
Yes!!! What do you think a dystopia is? The entire world of 1984 is a dystopia. Just cause there’s a company making money to “combat” that dystopia doesn’t make the thing any less dystopian.
Seems like AI slop. They list Rippling, and the description starts with Parker Conrad, but the rest of it is about Deel:
> Rippling
> Parker Conrad's redemption arc after Zenefits hit a plot twist when Rippling sued competitor Deel for planting an undercover spy inside Rippling who was paid €5,000/month by Deel's CEO to steal trade secrets. The DOJ opened a criminal investigation. Deel allegedly ran the same playbook at crypto HR startup Toku. YC uses Rippling for their own HR — awkward.
Per this description Rippling did nothing wrong here, all about Deel...
Sometimes I will see a domain on YC and immediately know it will be LLM-designed before clicking on the link. This was one of those projects. Wish they were more human and more understated.
LLM designed webpages are fine. But they're just that. Fine.
They're bland and average. Almost like they are designed by a system inherently selecting the average over time.
I like people made pages better because there's generally a little more flavor of the designer. Unless it's like a wiki where I'm just digesting information, I'm looking for a little personal touch. Otherwise, what's the point? If the author or designer can't be bothered to actually put work in to the project, why should I put work into consuming it?
I mean mostly the writing. The visual design is fine but the grandiose tone is clearly LLM, as well as attempt to be “data-driven” to an absurd degree.
The screaming “DAMAGE” blocks, “body count”, “(EXHIBIT)”, “7.8X MORE SCANDALS PER YEAR”, all of this looks extremely stupid, screams LLM, and undermines the points the authors want to make.
LLMs often seem to have trouble determining the severity of a bug/incident/problem in a vacuum. If you run an LLM over 1000 items in parallel and ask "is this bad," it will come up with reasons for it to be bad way more than it might if it were considering all 1000 at the same time.
I do agree. The Gary Tan takedown page is equally sensational, kinda for no reason? There’s a lot to rag on with Gary, but this webpage makes it seemed like he killed a guy or something.
Most of these scandals look like repackaged AI. It’s like there is no real business under any of these with the only real value in raising venture capital.
Pretty clearly slop, with some of the scandals make no sense. Take Ripplings "scandal":
> Parker Conrad's redemption arc after Zenefits hit a plot twist when Rippling sued competitor Deel for planting an undercover spy inside Rippling who was paid €5,000/month by Deel's CEO to steal trade secrets . The DOJ opened a criminal investigation. Deel allegedly ran the same playbook at crypto HR startup Toku. YC uses Rippling for their own HR — awkward.
I am curious what the motivation for creating this was
Cool idea, but totally botched by making LLMs generate the descriptions. I feel defrauded for my time. Might as well put ycombinator.fyi on ycombinator.fyi.
While I agree that YC appears rotten to the core at this point, it’s almost impossible to sustain a criticism of the accelerator because they make so many little investments. No matter what you accuse them of, they’ll dismiss it by saying you’re cherry-picking. I have to admit, it’s a brilliant strategy to avoid any kind of accountability.
No, it's not impossible. All you have to do is make a case. Here, by the numbers, the case being made is a 3.9% failure rate, less than half of which is scandalous, all of which appear to boil down to "YC should have known better than to invest in these particular founders". Make a better case! If they're "rotten to the core", that should be easy.
I don't think the number of investments they make is your real hurdle here. I think it's that you'll have to confront people familiar with the status quo ante of YC.
Mr. Ptacek, a) I have no affiliation with OP, and b) do you know what my actual position is (not presupposing that you care)? It's that I don't know anyone who has been inspired by anything that YC has funded in a very long time. The supermajority of these startups that don't make headlines for being scams is, in a way, even sadder.
I also think it's pointless to howl at the sky about how depressing this is. It's just the current reality of SV. I'm not going to pretend that what a16z is funding is any better (or worse).
I genuinely don't understand what you find depressing about it. That's what I'm saying. It's not hard to make a case for why it is; you just have to actually do it, unlike what this page is trying to do.
(And, side note, a16z is definitely not the status quo ante of YC.)
But yeah, if you're going to consider startups that just never made enough money as a scandal, then Garry and his predecessors presided over rather a lot more (as would be expected from any accelerator). And if you're not, some harmless AI startup that never made much money or some entity that didn't do anything except sue someone else for their bad behaviour isn't really in the same ballpark as Zenefits or the consumer investment scams YC funded.
Especially if you're going to call this data analysis https://ycombinator.fyi/timeline
I think a FuckedCompany style overview of everything Ycombinator would be fun (and probably not overly flattering to Garry Tan) but I guess that would take more effort.
https://www.rippling.com/blog/deel-admits-it-paid-spy-in-new...
Seems unofficial. Actually, the domain name is probably a trademark violation.
(I don't know anything about the company we're discussing here, but this is a weird premise.)
The problem is that anything made for defense is almost inherently useful for offense, and the US is not the most trustworthy government right now. It's, sadly, not inconceivable that an automatic turret mounted shotgun could be put to use against human people across the globe, or even human people who are citizens of the US.
How do you suggest we stop the lessons from the first major drone war from spreading? With hope? Prayers? The terrifying thing about it is - the US is actually already behind on this technology, China can build 1000x more drones than the whole West.
It's a borderline certainty that 9 Mothers employees will eventually contribute to the death of an innocent protestor or journalist that opposed the state.
Not dystopian at all.
There is tons of offensive capability companies YC has invested in they seem like a more appropriate target. I feel like most people want there to be protection from drone swarms.
But anyway - the parent comment is upset about YC investing in a defense company that isn’t doing offensive systems because they find the idea that dystopian weapon exist at all uncomfortable. It doesn’t make a whole lot of sense.
I'm not really following.
Yes!!! What do you think a dystopia is? The entire world of 1984 is a dystopia. Just cause there’s a company making money to “combat” that dystopia doesn’t make the thing any less dystopian.
> Rippling
> Parker Conrad's redemption arc after Zenefits hit a plot twist when Rippling sued competitor Deel for planting an undercover spy inside Rippling who was paid €5,000/month by Deel's CEO to steal trade secrets. The DOJ opened a criminal investigation. Deel allegedly ran the same playbook at crypto HR startup Toku. YC uses Rippling for their own HR — awkward.
Per this description Rippling did nothing wrong here, all about Deel...
They're bland and average. Almost like they are designed by a system inherently selecting the average over time.
I like people made pages better because there's generally a little more flavor of the designer. Unless it's like a wiki where I'm just digesting information, I'm looking for a little personal touch. Otherwise, what's the point? If the author or designer can't be bothered to actually put work in to the project, why should I put work into consuming it?
The screaming “DAMAGE” blocks, “body count”, “(EXHIBIT)”, “7.8X MORE SCANDALS PER YEAR”, all of this looks extremely stupid, screams LLM, and undermines the points the authors want to make.
> Parker Conrad's redemption arc after Zenefits hit a plot twist when Rippling sued competitor Deel for planting an undercover spy inside Rippling who was paid €5,000/month by Deel's CEO to steal trade secrets . The DOJ opened a criminal investigation. Deel allegedly ran the same playbook at crypto HR startup Toku. YC uses Rippling for their own HR — awkward.
I am curious what the motivation for creating this was
- release source code of each and have new section: "twinned"
- enable domain, trademark and socials acquisition and have new section: "revisited"
- enable full acquisition (including business name) and have new section: "returned"
- previous 3 becomes "legacy"
- don't limit to YC
A shame, because the idea was good. And, with a bit of patience, it was doable.
My gut says the general population has a larger percentage.
.. what?
https://choosealicense.com/licenses/mit/
I don't think the number of investments they make is your real hurdle here. I think it's that you'll have to confront people familiar with the status quo ante of YC.
I also think it's pointless to howl at the sky about how depressing this is. It's just the current reality of SV. I'm not going to pretend that what a16z is funding is any better (or worse).
(And, side note, a16z is definitely not the status quo ante of YC.)
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