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An apology to pg and the latest YC class

5 points by fnid2 ↗ HN
The other day I made a thoughtless comment, several actually, when I should have congratulated you all on the hard work you've put into your startups. In the future, I will be more conscious and empathetic. Had it been me, I would have been offended by my comment, so I broke the golden rule. Instead, I should have found something good to say, because I know there are plenty of good things I could have said.

I'm sorry and I wish you all great success. I hope all your hard work is justly rewarded.

Sincerely,

fnid2

7 comments

[ 2.6 ms ] story [ 14.9 ms ] thread
pclark
chalk this submission up as "should have been a comment"
uriel
> Instead, I should have found something good to say, because I know there are plenty of good things I could have said.

I disagree, criticism is much more useful than flattery.

evanrmurphy
"something good to say" is not necessarily flattery. It could be thoughtful positive feedback, which is just as useful as criticism (i.e. thoughtful negative feedback). Feedback can be useful whether it's positive or negative, what matters is the content:

                           Useful                 Not useful

  Positive feedback        "like x because..."    flattery
  Negative feedback        criticism              trolling
uriel
> It could be thoughtful positive feedback, which is just as useful as criticism (i.e. thoughtful negative feedback).

I disagree, (supposedly thought) positive feedback is extremely common and rarely provides anything new (or own minds are well tunned to try to find reinforcing evidence to back our past decisions).

Negative feedback is much more rare due to social pressure to not 'offend' and other such bullshit, and even when it is not particularly thoughtful it adds something to our thinking as it is unlikely to be something we would have considered.

IsaacL
I looked up your comment since making this post. While I can agree that maybe criticizing these early stage startups might be a bit harsh, something about your comment resonated with me. There really seems to be a lack of impressiveness with many of the YC apps, in terms of solving technically hard problems. Maybe that's just a CS student's bias.
lsc
isn't that true of most startups? There are a lot of business problems that can be solved by an (from a CS standpoint) uninteresting webapp. If you take one of those, you can focus on solving the business problem (a hard enough thing to get right by itself) without worrying too much about pushing the limits technically.