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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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
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).
Not dystopian at all.
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.
https://www.rippling.com/blog/deel-admits-it-paid-spy-in-new...
> 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).
[0] demo day