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.
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.
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.
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.
I didn't read all of them, but none of the ones I read were simply business failures; most of them were selling snake oil or non-existent software as a service, or were productizing someone else's open source project while violating their license. That is to say, they were committing various kinds of fraud. Now, it's arguable whether YC could have detected all of these frauds or had a duty to do so, but the page is, to me, extremely valuable for providing examples of the ways in which the tech economy is basically a grift nowadays.
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
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...
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[ 2.5 ms ] story [ 48.9 ms ] thread.. what?
https://choosealicense.com/licenses/mit/
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.
- 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" or "sequel"
- don't limit to YC
> 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
> 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...