alt Hacker NewsYC's Biggest Scandals
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Scrolling down, a bunch of these seem to just be "the startup shut down after getting customers", which doesn't seem particularly scandalous to me?
Only a portion of these are "scandals", the rest are just usual startup failures.
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.
Putting things that are clearly not scandals damages the credibility of this site and masks the actual scandals.
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
"Official archive" it says.
Seems unofficial. Actually, the domain name is probably a trademark violation.
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.
I like how you need to tap the spoiler tags to show the text which works as a link to the individual page where you need to again unveil the spoilers
If all that happened to your startup is that you couldn't get traction or compete, that's not a scandal.
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...
This is definitely made by some bitter YC reject. Amazing the vitriol of those types
The scandals/year page has a little more umph to it than the main page https://ycombinator.fyi/timeline
LLM-designed sites like this are always so pompous. The obnoxious format does a disservice to what you’re trying to present.
This is one of the most annoying click-baity mechanism I have ever come across.
Yeah, we know how the economy would look like if the society considers business failures "scandals."
- allow claiming of each by founders
- 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
At least make the Ripping post about Deel…
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.
uBiome is probably the biggest one: https://ycombinator.fyi/exhibit/ubiome
A shame, because the idea was good. And, with a bit of patience, it was doable.
If you do mass investment then it's almost impossible for everything to go perfectly.
Between every surface being a link and the needless redacted text flourishes, this site is kind of awful to navigate on mobile.
agree with the other commenter.. YC has funded more than 5000 companies. I feel like this is a massive stretch and unfair
regardless, the biggest flex you can do these days is bootstrap and own 100% of your company as long as you can
I have a weird question on a tangent. If you spend 100k daily, it will take you 27 years to burn a billon dollar. Make it 3 billion and age expectancy around 80 years. What are you going to do with 100 billion net worth? Money that you cannot spend in your life time and there's no guarantee your offspring can handle well.
No theology, that's all mythology anyway. Just a thought.
I guess mostly it is about ego and vanity. I am better, superior, powerful and more capable and smart then you are. About 100 billion dollar smarter than you are?
I wish there was a way to see how many grifters YC has under their umbrella compared to the general population of startups in general.
My gut says the general population has a larger percentage.
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.
I looked — 99% of them involve AI
meh. someone butt-hurt from rejection would make something like this.
In the US, it's not a real scandal unless the scammers can cash out the story rights to Netflix
No the biggest ycombinator scandal is Scam Altman
web2isgoinggreat
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.
Those are ONLY the public ones, I wonder how much more is swiped under the rug
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.