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Is Y Combinator the next Aum Shinrikyo?

21 points by yamada ↗ HN
Cult .... or YCombinator? Hard to tell!

- Charismatic leadership? Check!

- Zealous focus on charismatic leadership to whom inner-circle members display unquestioning commitment? Check!

- Members required to relocate in order to increase dependency on the group? Check!

- Preoccupation with bringing in new members? ("Don't forget to apply now for the October deadline!" / "More people should start startups") Check.

- Group receives constant messages to let go of material aspirations ("Success is not about the money"), yet the tone of the group overall is a preoccupation with making money? Check!

- Questioning, doubt, and dissent are discouraged? (Don't downmod this forum, please!) ... Check!

- Mind-numbing techniques like debilitating work schedules used to suppress functions of pre-frontal cortex in order to decrease cognitive resistance to the group ethos? ("You have to work very hard and code all night to succeed") Check.

- The leadership dictates sometimes in great detail how members should think, act, and feel? Check (in case you don't know what you should think about any startup-related issue, consult any of the dozens of articles on here that explain exactly how you should think about every detail. .... Check!

- The group is elitist (see explanation of how "How Not To Die" article is intended only for "smart, flexible people"), claiming a special, exalted status for itself, its members, and especially it's leader, who is seen as being on some sort of special "mission" which only he and the group see the true significance of? Double-check!

- Pervasive and persistent "us-vs.-them" mentality where "them" consists of people who "just don't get it"? Check!

- Leader espouses a "means justifies the ends" creed? Super-check

- Group uses it's own propoganda material as basis to support its own logic? Check ("If you ever read Paul's essay on (insert subject here), you'd know that he said ...").

- Leadership leverages shame to induce feelings of guilt and encourages others to do so as well in order to manipulate residual self-images of members? (See recent "How Not To Die" article which goes into detail about how cool it is to "go public" and then feel the pressure of shame if you fail in front of people you went public to.) Check.

- Members' subservience to the group causes them to cut ties with family and friends, and to give up personal goals and activities that were of interest before joining the group? ("Move to Boston" / "You have to prove your dedication"). check

- Members are expected to devote inordinate amounts of time to the group? check!

- Members must submit their individual schedules to moderated group activities they feel pressure to engange in? ("Startups that meet every week for dinner ...") Check.

- Members are strongly encouraged to live and/or socialize mostly/only with other group members, with implication that doing so is an unspoken prerequisite for advancement in group? Check!

- Pervasive doomsday scenarios with grave repurcussions for failure to comply with implications? Check! (Oh noes! The deadline for the next YCombinator funding season went and we forgot to send in our application! Our 733t startup will have no money for 6 months! This suxors to the maxor!)

- Leader claims to have contact with superior beings who are inaccessible to "normal" people? Check! ("The other day I called my venture capitalist friends ...")

- Extensive use of metacommunication to implant subliminal messages by stressing certain key words over and over? Check! ("Blah blah blah blah STARTUP, blah blah STARTUP STARTUP, blah blah blah STARTUP blah blah APPLICATION DEADLINE blah blah STARTUP APPLICATION DEADLINE!")

- Espouses the idea that there's no reason whatsoever to leave the group? check! (See "How not to die" article).

Weeeeiiiird.

65 comments

[ 2.2 ms ] story [ 97.8 ms ] thread
portLAN
Don't forget we're planning to bomb Pearl Harbor.

Chinpokomon.

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gwenhwyfaer
Stockpiling large quantities of biological and chemical weapons? Er... doubt it.
yamada
How do you know for sure though? None of these groups ever started out by communicating their ultimate intent at first. Aum started as a humble local yoga club.
gwenhwyfaer
See, if you'd just left it at the original post, without trying to defend it, it would have been funny. Now you just look sad.

Never mind. Being turned down isn't the end of the world; there's no reason you can't start up without YC funding.

[dead] yamada
Tell me, does it get lonely all the way up there on your pedestal? Why do you assume I got "turned down" by YC? Narcissistic much? Hmmm?
[dead] gwenhwyfaer
> Why do you assume I got "turned down" by YC?

Because if you're this pissed off at them for no reason, that's just fucking weird.

aswanson
No.
yamada
Simple, dogmatic answers to rhetorical questions? Check!
aswanson
>Simple, dogmatic answers to rhetorical questions?

Yes.

motoko
Edit: delete as in this is spam
yamada
>> Questioning, doubt, and dissent are discouraged?
jamiequint
+50% rate of success?

Check.

yamada
Success being defined as ... what exactly? By whom?
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mattmaroon
In fairness, they're nowhere near 50% success yet. Only a few startups have actually "succeeded" by PG's definition (i.e. gotten rich). That's largely because most of their fundees haven't had time to get there yet.

They do have enough horses still in the race and running strong that I wouldn't bet against them, but their success rate right now is a something around 5% right?

gabrielroth
"Leader espouses a "means justifies the ends" creed? Super-check"

In general this is kind of funny, but I'm honestly not sure what you're referring to in the point above.

Plus you have an itso in point 12.

alex_c
OK, as posted by someone who joined 4 days ago this is most likely a troll, but still, that was probably the most entertaining thing I've read on ycnews!

(cue /. humour tagline: "It's funny. Laugh.")

nostrademons
Next up: Is your job the next Aum Shinrikyo?

Zealous focus on charismatic leadership to whom inner-circle members display unquestioning commitment?

"Yes, Mr. CEO, the numbers all add up. I'll have those reports for you in a moment."

Members required to relocate in order to increase dependency on the group?

"No telecommuting for you!"

Preoccupation with bringing in new members?

"We're hiring! Tell all your friends! You get a bonus for bringing in new people!"

Group receives constant messages to let go of material aspirations ("Success is not about the money"), yet the tone of the group overall is a preoccupation with making money?

"Budgets are tight this year, so you won't be getting that raise you thought you would. But don't worry, it's not about the money, and we'll make it up to you at the holiday party! Keep up the good work, and don't let those sales numbers slip."

Questioning, doubt, and dissent are discouraged?

"I can't have you questioning my authority like that..."

Mind-numbing techniques like debilitating work schedules used to suppress functions of pre-frontal cortex in order to decrease cognitive resistance to the group ethos?

"Mandatory overtime for everyone!"

The leadership dictates sometimes in great detail how members should think, act, and feel?

"You! Button that collar, and I want to see cufflinks tomorrow!"

The group is elitist, claiming a special, exalted status for itself, its members, and especially its leader, who is seen as being on some sort of special "mission" which only he and the group see the true significance of?

"We're miles ahead of the competition."

Pervasive and persistent "us-vs.-them" mentality where "them" consists of people who "just don't get it"?

"Bury the competition!"

Leadership leverages shame to induce feelings of guilt and encourages others to do so as well in order to manipulate residual self-images of members?

"Everybody else in the division is counting on you!"

Members' subservience to the group causes them to cut ties with family and friends, and to give up personal goals and activities that were of interest before joining the group?

"Honey, I haven't seen you in weeks! You're spending all day at the office, and then just go to sleep as soon as you come home."

Members must submit their individual schedules to moderated group activities they feel pressure to engange in?

"You must be in by 8:00 AM each day."

Members are strongly encouraged to live and/or socialize mostly/only with other group members, with implication that doing so is an unspoken prerequisite for advancement in group?

"I'd like to see you at our Friday afternoon happy-hour"

Pervasive doomsday scenarios with grave repurcussions for failure to comply with implications?

"If we don't hit the numbers this quarter, management is threatening to kill the whole project."

Leader claims to have contact with superior beings who are inaccessible to "normal" people?

"The other day I called my friends at McKinsey..."

dfranke
Don't feed the trolls.
nostrademons
But they're so amusing!

Oh hell, I've got startup to work on, that's more fun anyways.

aswanson
Amen, dfranke.
yamada
So sorry. Next forum: "YCombinator is super-awesome and infallible!" Commentary anticipated to range from "LOL" to "LoLoLoLoL".
jraines
Obvious troll is obvious. But getting better at least. Nice rhetorical schtick . . . I used to use this one to "prove" that America had all the traits of a fascist dictatorship.

Is this one of the guys from Uncov? (Which, if you haven't seen it, is pretty hilarious for about 45 minutes and then . . . kind of pathetic.)

bluishgreen
This reminded me of my uncle's dog. You should have seen it chase its tail. when I first saw it, it was very funny. But then it quickly became the saddest thing I ever saw. It would chase its tail for hours till it became exhausted. My uncle explained that it was imagining its tail to be some snake that caught on to it. The dog had imagination, except it was paranoid. It died a few months later exhausted, bitter and lonely.
yamada
Someone should report you to the ASPCA for neglecting your lonely dog. Shame on you!
shiro
It is, actually, pretty difficult to judge whether a group is a (destructive) cult or not only by what the leader or its members are saying or how the group is working. The border is pretty blurry. I learned it in hard way (by tring to save a friend from one).

A good test (though not perfect) is to look at the output of the group---is the group producing outcome that contribute to the society at large? Are the people came out of the group taking important roles in the society? Many cults claim they will do that, but fail to deliver that.

yamada
Well, that's hard to say - many cults actually make associations with successful people and then claim that their success is based on the influence/teachings of the cult. I'm sure some people think scientology is a cult (it is in the process of being declared criminal in some EU member states) and Sky Dayton seems to be doing ok. And of course, the trickiest part is that the group always claims that its output is beneficial and if you don't understand how it is, well then that's why you need the group to explain it to you.
shiro
Yes, that's why I said it's not perfect. The thing is, to some people, the cult's methodology works for their success (since many mind-control techniques are not evil by themselves, and can be used to improve one's life if used wisely).

You have to look at not only those successful cases, but also the rest of cases---if the group has contributed to the success of a few celebrities, but not for the 99.9% of other members, then the success cases are likely to be by chance rather than the real result of the cult.

dood
A better test may be simply: does the belief/practice lead to health and happiness for the practitioners, and those they affect and interact with?
shiro
Unfortunately, you can make people subjectively happy by mind-control techniques. Being healthy is also difficult to define (to some extent).
yamada
So then how do you distinguish that? Like does YCombinator method make people succeed? Or is it good at identifying likely future successes and convincing them to associate with YCombinator? Or both? How do you gage the effect either way? In other words, does YC make the successes, or is it better at systematically finding them and associating with them?
shiro
You can't draw a concrete line, and it may take time. However, if, say, a few years later, 30% of YC companies succeeds big and 50% of them are producing good results (not necessarily in their startup, but by taking important roles in other companies), then people can hardly say YC is a destructive cult.
yamada
Depends on how you look at it. Most web 2.0 innovations are just reiterations of low-yield activities designed to encourage phatic communication at the cost of personal and corporate productivity. Who knows what effect that will have on, say, our national economy?
shiro
Time will tell. Meantime, all you can do is to watch the concrete numbers. Note that the line between destructive cults and other groups are not only blurry, but some cults may morph into a normal group over time, or vice versa.

If you really suspect a certain group is a cult and want to do something about it in a short span, watch a concrete prediction the group makes (somehow lots of cult leaders often makes them, e.g. the world will end by year 20XX). Then compare the outcome. Don't be destructed by what the member of the groups says, or how the group is organized and managed. Look for the objective evidence.

dood
It is possible to percieve very many things as cult-like, especially if you try to imagine how people will look at them in, say, 200 years (e.g. fashion, university, jobs, using drugs, not using drugs, being a sportsfan, being a nerd, following societal norms, constantly quoting the big lebowski, etc. etc.). Play along by looking at people's lives and beliefs throughout history, and try to work out who were the least culty.

The conclusion I came to is that it it generally best to work things out for yourself, and rarely bad to question your assumptions.

rms
Nothing wrong with a benevolent cult.
[dead] yamada
But most cults start out benevolent. When was the last time you heard of a cult that openly proclaimed mass destruction, chaos and anarchy as part of their recruiting pitch?
mattmaroon
This is actually hilarious. I could go through and point out how many of these things are wrong due to outsider perspective, but I wouldn't want to degrade the humor quality of the post.
cturner
I felt this was in fun as well. It applies to me, I laughed, I upvoted. Now I'll close ycom and go back to my project :)
pg
This is so dumb. It wouldn't work to have a cult of startup founders. Cult members tend to be passive people who need someone to tell them what to do. But if you funded startups started by people like that, they'd all go off and immediately fail.
jsmcgd
I think the author has firmly placed his tongue in his cheek.
rms
He's just having fun trolling (saying something he doesn't necessarily believe to get a rise out of people).

The best way to get him to stop is to ask him to stop trolling.

pg
It's often hard to tell trolls from nuts. But in this case the signs point to nut: a large number of really long posts; lots of exclamation points; tinfoil hat stuff:

http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=52085

[dead] yamada
>> "us-vs.-them" mentality where "them" consists of people who "just don't get it"

WE'RE illuminated. All those who disagree are just profane/nuts/trolls/useless eaters, etc.

Yes, definately tin-foil hat stuff:

http://soundwaves.usgs.gov/2006/09/research3.html

http://science.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=06/02/12/0738233

http://discovermagazine.com/2007/feb/toxoplasma-gondii-cultu...

>> But in this case the signs point to nut: a large number of really long posts ...

Takes one to know one, Mr. "http://www.paulgraham.com/articles.html"

And of course, we all know that the human brain is definately NOT an electric system and is therefore immune to attempts to manipulate resonance, which is why TV for example does NOT induce narcotic trance states which makes the mind more susceptible to advertising and therefore leads us to conclude that advertising on TV definately does NOT work and so major companies are just wasting billions of dollars.

I am such a nut.

And of course my sometimes long posts have more to do with my being a nut than the simple fact that I may just not care to take the time to edit my thoughts. That must be it.

rms
Alright, it's solidly nut then.
[dead] yamada
I was seriously considering getting some kratom ... but I refuse to do business with those who make such comments. Good day to you, sir!
rms
:) Like you, I don't mean everything I say on the internet.

Send me an email if you're interested, I'll give you a discount to make it up to you.

[dead] yamada
You'll pay me to sample your krypto-krato and write a culinary review to all my hippie friends? Hmmmm ... sounds tempting .... How much do you offer?
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gwenhwyfaer
Hmm. Where did the post go...?
[dead] yamada
It's been killed. Another characteristic is the need to compartmentalize and control the flow of information on a "kneed to know" basis.
gwenhwyfaer
Never mind. I just realised what "showdead" meant and now feel very silly.
[dead] yamada
.... "The leadership dictates sometimes in great detail how members should think, act, and feel?"

Pay attention! Simon says you should perceive this post as "So Dumb".

>> Cult members tend to be passive people.

By definition, cult members of rapidly growing cults can't possibly be that passive or else their cults wouldn't be rapidly growing. And we all know the bits about Jehova's Witnesses showing up at your doorstep.

>> Who need someone to tell them what to do.

Would this qualify: paulgraham.com/articles, ie, "How Not to Die", "The Equity Equation", "The Hacker's Guide to Investors", "Why to Not Not Start a Startup", "The 18 Mistakes That Kill Startups", "A Student's Guide to Startups", "How to Present to Investors", "Copy What You Like", "The Hardest Lessons for Startups", "How to Do What You Love", "How to Fund a Startup", "Ideas for Startups", "Writing, Briefly", "What You'll Wish You'd Known", "How To Make Wealth" ...

>> But if you funded startups like that, they'd all go off and immediately fail.

Not true! They'd all be encouraged to read "How Not To Die" and keep plugging away!

[dead] gwenhwyfaer
I have to ask - why do you insist on going up to pg's front door and shouting your dislike of him through his letterbox? If you really find him that scary, wouldn't it be much more sensible to run like hell and shout your abuse from a good safe distance down the street?
[dead] yamada
I have to ask, why do you see every dissenting opinion on a forum where people voice their opinions to be a personal attack on Mr. Graham? I mean, if 1,000 forum members all agree with everything, well then that would make 999 of them redundant, which would leave you with a baseless forum, wouldn't it? Are you his wife/girlfriend/secret admirer or something? Honestly I was joking when I put up the Y-Combinator/Cult post, but judging on some of the replies, Paul's own direct attack on my very sanity itself (as if to imply that he's the very essence of reason itself and all disagreement is a sign of insanity or something) and the wild gyrations in my karma points are starting to make me consider that perhaps my joke actually may not be that much of a joke after all. Look at your response ... "Leave our beloved leader alone!" ... Seriously how old are you? If you answer over 20, well seriously go join the peace corps, get out in the world ... there are many more important things to do than hero-worshipping William F. Buckley wannabes ...
[dead] gwenhwyfaer
> why do you see every dissenting opinion on a forum where people voice their opinions to be a personal attack on Mr. Graham?

Deliberate misrepresentation of parent post (DMPP) count: 1

> I mean, if 1,000 forum members all agree with everything, well then that would make 999 of them redundant, which would leave you with a baseless forum, wouldn't it?

Baseless personal assertion (BPA) count: 1

> Are you his wife/girlfriend/secret admirer or something?

Gratuitous insult (GI) count: 1. BPA: 1.

> Honestly I was joking when I put up the Y-Combinator/Cult post,

Sudden volte-face (SVF) count: 1.

> but judging on some of the replies, Paul's own direct attack on my very sanity itself (as if to imply that he's the very essence of reason itself and all disagreement is a sign of insanity or something)

(honorary) DMPP: 1. Rampant paranoia (RP) count: 1

> and the wild gyrations in my karma points

RP: 1

> are starting to make me consider that perhaps my joke actually may not be that much of a joke after all. Look at your response ... "Leave our beloved leader alone!" ...

DMPP: 1

>Seriously how old are you?

GI: 1

> If you answer over 20, well seriously go join the peace corps, get out in the world ...

GI: 1. BPA: 1

> there are many more important things to do than hero-worshipping William F. Buckley wannabes ...

BPA: 1. GI: 2 (a double-hit combo).

Total: DMPP: 3; BPA: 4; GI: 5; SVF: 1; RP: 2

for an overall credibility bonus of: -15.

As usual, the numbers speak for themselves.

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staunch
I've read a few of your emotional crackpot rants and they all say a lot more about you than YC or this site. You got some issues, Stan.
[dead] yamada
I don't know who "Stan" is but the fact that you assume anybody who makes a post you don't agree with must be this "Stan" person says a lot more about you and your relationship with Stan than it does about me or this post. You Sir, are the one with issues. You're just in denial, which results in cognitive dissonance which you try to resolve by displacing your own condition and projecting it on to me. So your assertion that I have issues is really an admission of your own condition. Think about it. And if you disagree with me, well that's just further proof of how far in denial you are about your own issues. Let "Stan" go my friend ... just let him go.