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Tell HN: Winners of Apply HN for YC Fellowship 3
196 points by kevin on May 5, 2016 | hide | past | favorite | 302 comments
Last month, we decided to reserve a few spots in the next Fellowship batch (F3) for the Hacker News community to decide who they’d like to fund. Startups applied publicly via HN and the community “interviewed” and voted for their favorites.

Context: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11440627

We ran a poll for the top applications and the voting was so close that we decided to fund one extra startup. Here are the winners:

AutoMicroFarm (264 points): https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11454342

Feynman Nano (208 points): https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11443122

Casepad (200 points): https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11452884

I’ve talked to the founders of these three startups on the phone already and I’m really excited about working with all of them. We’ve disclosed all the vote totals in the original poll thread (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11615639). Of course, the application that got the most votes isn’t on the final list and we’ll discuss that in the thread below.

We received 343 applications via Apply HN and over 1700 comments were generated across those posts. I was quite impressed by the quality and depth of the discussions on these applications and really loved the moments when HNers would take the time to provide quality feedback to the founders on their applications.

Thank you to everyone for participating in our little experiment. It takes a lot of bravery put your passion out there to be judged publicly and it takes a remarkable community to treat that courage with kindness and respect. It makes me very proud to be part of HN.

While we haven’t definitively decided whether we’ll do this again at this point (we’ll want to see how the companies do in the batch), I’m delighted and optimistic about what the community accomplished here.

We’ve already received a lot of great feedback from many of you on how to do this better, but please feel free to share more below.




I voted for Pinboard as a member of this community, even when I likely would not have voted normally, because Maciej is a smart, charismatic founder who I knew would do something brilliant with the opportunity. I'm sure there are many HN members who voted similarly, which very well might look like a comparatively odd pattern.

I'm sad that the community choice was not allowed to be made by the community, and doubly sad that the majority of us who voted for Pinboard, in good faith and within the spirit of the event, will not be able to enjoy what Maciej would have done.

Congratulations to the winners, nonetheless; this wasn't their fault.


Seconding this. I voted for Pinboard because A) I use and genuinely love the service, and I was excited to see what Maciej could do with the money and B) because Maciej's statement of semi-purpose:

> I am hoping to attract a certain protest vote of the silent majority who enjoy this community, but are uneasy about the values of its founders and more broadly, Silicon Valley.

accurately reflects my feelings towards HN/SV, and I think having a dose of skepticism in the fold would be good for YC.


Pinboard & the community should just do it without YC/SV.


I anticipated this outcome by becoming profitable eight years ago.

But I still want my $20K.


I'm trying to figure out a way to articulate why "I still want my $20K" seems to me.

The way this whole thing was handled stinks, and I'm sorry you got screwed by a poorly thought-out "contest." But it seems like the YCF deal isn't solely about the money -- they're trying to find companies to work with. Honestly, did you... want that? Or just the $20,000 that keeps getting mentioned?


YC's values are so diametrically opposed to my own that I thought it would be interesting for everyone to have me go through the program.

As for my demands to get paid, I had a clever idea about how to use the money, and I'm miffed that I won't get a chance to do it.


You're saying (a) YC's values are diametrically opposed to yours, (b) your call with Kevin wasn't successful, and (c) YCF isn't designed for companies like yours—but adhering rigidly to the original guidelines you still ought to get your bag of cash.

Basically you tried gaming the system, with your fanbase who voted for you despite your comments like "I will go through YC like a bowling ball," and now you're protesting that YC won't let you. You don't even like YC. May I ask, out of curiosity, why you're doing this?


It's odd to criticize me for gaming the system given the name of this website.


No, that part's fine. But you're protesting that an organization you've more or less openly criticized won't let you game them.


More specifically, an organization that's willing to burn a huge amount of credibility in order to avoid a tiny investment in an already-profitable (cf pg on ramen profitability) business whose proprietor doesn't fully conform with their arbitrary values. Given this, is the overall diversity of other YC founders any surprise?


Tell me about a time you hacked a system.


I think you should realize that pinboard's very nature and existence is a wonderful hack of the SV and "web 2.0" mindset and ecosystem.


You'd be surprised to learn than hackers are more than computer guys (even in the original e.g. MIT sense), and systems are far more than computer systems.


He said he would go through YC "like a bowling ball through a python" ... sometimes you look at an organization that, overall, you like and appreciate, and yet still think it needs a massive dose of fiber.

I genuinely wanted to see what would happen with a YC/Maciej arrangement, and not just for entertainment purposes. I think they might have been good for eachother.


Can you explain a little bit about how your values don't align with YC's values? It would be interesting to hear your thoughts.

If you don't mind me asking, how would you have used the money, if you were accepted into the program?


Re. the former, I would start by reading e.g. http://idlewords.com/2015/11/the_advertising_bubble.htm and http://idlewords.com/talks/internet_with_a_human_face.htm


The Alameda-Weehawken Burrito Tunnel?


Why do I have a suspicion that the planned use of the money is something KLF-esque? :)


Serious: With the number of votes you had, you could probably get those voters to give you $10-20k through gofundme et al ;)


If you're willing to raise the $20K for 1.5% of Pinboard under the same terms YC offers (minus access to YC & its resources) - I'm willing to make that happen; no guarantees, but pretty sure it's possible.

If you're interested, let me know.


Thanks, but $20K is about three weeks of revenue for me. It's not as funny if I sell a piece of the company for peanuts to anyone else.


What would possibly be funny and/or interesting would be you taking this opportunity to disrupt the whole funding business, not just in a kickstarter vein, but by some means that does help to reinforce your own values. Of course, pinboard's business model already does this, to some extent, but I'm sure you could do something innovative by exploring the next level of investment.


This post is a good reason for why you shouldn't be picked.


On the contrary, it means he was more in it to go through the process or have access to YC than the money. This is precisely why he should have been picked.

They're all presumably adults, I'm sure they could get through some differing opinions, no?


If you read the rest of his posts you will see he is very eager for the money (he even feels entitled to them, somehow), and don't want anything to do with YC.


If you read Maciej's comments and interpret them as "entitled to what's mine" you are obviously unfamiliar with the general vein of his work. In support of my opinion I expect the man himself to reply refuting this completely, stating no, it is in fact about the money.

If anything I'd expect that he (and a lot of other people) are disappointed with not seeing what he was going to do with the cash, not the loss of the money itself.

If funding is rocket fuel, I was excited to see what could be done with it in the hands of a proven SV-venture arsonist.


bro, I'd advise you to not take everything at face value.


> They're all presumably adults, I'm sure they could get through some differing opinions, no?

I'm guessing you aren't from here/haven't been in Silicon Valley that long.


Try Kickstarter. Seriously.


I did. And now I have to write all this shit about Antarctica.


So, on the bright side, you're getting some nice publicity right now. I did not quite know of Pinboard (it's like.. del.ico.us? but with attitude?), I knew about you only a little bit. Now I do sorta know Pinboard and a little more about you... and I've decided I'll pay for pinboard.


The attitude (or opinions) comes from the creator/operator. The service itself appeals to me due to it's utter lack of attitude. What? A vanilla service that people pay for?

If the primary criteria is "quality of founder(s)" I have no idea why they passed. Except maybe seeing someone everyday who's been successful with antithetical values might have been too much to bear.


Thank you!


It's almost like this is working!


Who could have foreseen, and profited from, such an outcome?


I am disappointed you aren't going to be included in YC, but also ever so slightly relieved given my desire to see you avoid writing poetry in the future. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11443299


I've had a bit longer to think about this than the rest of you -- I discovered that the vote totals were being inadvertently leaked earlier today -- and I have to say that I'm impressed with the quality of the results. Leaving pinboard out of the picture[1][2], I think the voting selected a group of companies with tremendous potential: AutoMicroFarm has the potential to develop scalable technology which completely changes how food is produced, Feynman Nano has the potential to save hundreds of thousands of lives, and Casepad has the potential to make a huge industry dramatically more efficient[3].

I hope YC does something like this again in the future, but I'd suggest a different approach: Rather than asking HN to help select startups to fund, I'd suggest asking HN to help select startups to interview. This would solve the problem of needing an out-of-band mechanism to determine if an application is "real" or not; worst case, YC would end up paying travel expenses for some companies they decide not to fund. I suspect that the advantage of having extra eyeballs ensure that they don't overlook promising startups[4] would easily justify this -- not to mention the possibility of saving YC lots of time on in-house reviewing.

The one biggest danger I see with this is the potential for vote brigading; I suspect that we would have had more of that if it was announced at the start that votes would be a significant deciding factor. One possible way of solving this would be to limit voting choices, e.g., ask each person to pick one out of a small subset, so who only turn up because they want to support a particular candidate would usually end up filtering themselves out. I suggested this to Dan, but he thought that there wouldn't be enough voters to make this feasible; I'm not sure I agree with him.

Obviously I have no idea how this experiment is being viewed from YC's perspective -- and it sounds like YC won't know how they view it for a while yet either -- but as an external observer I'd say that this was a very interesting and very successful experiment.

[1] I'm sure that most people who voted for pinboard did not do so because they thought it would be a good investment. This gets back to the "it's not really clear what YC is trying to accomplish with YC Fellowships" problem which I've mentioned in earlier threads, but the original call was to "fund startups", not "fund your friends".

[2] I think that YC could gain a lot by creating some other mechanism to bring people like Maciej into the system -- something like an "honorary YC founder" status. But I don't think funding is the answer here.

[3] I'm a Canadian and not particularly familiar with the US legal system; but I've seen enough of it to know that (a) there's a huge amount of money there, and (b) they desperately need an infusion of technological competence.

[4] I'd be interested to know if any of the three had applied to YC via the normal route: Did HN identify good startups which YC missed, or would YC have funded these three anyway?


> I'm sure that most people who voted for pinboard did not do so because they thought it would be a good investment.

I voted for Maciej fully believing that he had no intention of building a billion dollar startup and just wanted the 20k. That said part of the reason I voted for him is that I thought it could could be a good opportunity for YC anyway, albeit risky, in addition to just being entertaining.

I also think they made the right call not to fund him, given Kevin's explanation.


If this had been "YC is giving away money! Pick someone you think YC should give $20k to!" then I would absolutely have voted for Pinboard. And I would have submitted Tarsnap, too.

But they were looking for more than that, so I voted based on the question they asked -- who should they fund, not simply who should they give money to.


And yet I bet you voted with the expectation that winners would be chosen based on the criteria laid out in the original ApplyHN post.


You're right, I thought that Dan would make the final call rather than Kevin.

But I never thought that votes alone would decide anything; the original post explicitly ruled out that possibility.


If it's unsurprising that YC picks based on their gut and not on any hard criteria... it shouldn't be. Surprise, almost all white dudes again!


This entire ordeal has shown us the thin skin of VCs and VC culture.

If HN/YC wanted to do the right thing, they should have taken some time to assess removing Pinboard BEFORE voting ended. Instead, what they did was game their own system: They likely sensed Pinboard could be trouble from the beginning, but hoped they would not win. They attempted to achieve that result by letting the voting play out, and THEN disqualified Pinboard when the voting results were not in their favor.


Kevin's explanation was the one that was basically "I didn't like the cut of his jib", right? That Maciej is Not Our Sort, Dear?


> [4] I'd be interested to know if any of the three had applied to YC via the normal route: Did HN identify good startups which YC missed, or would YC have funded these three anyway?

During my phone call with Kevin this was one of the questions that came up, and the answer is yes, Feynman Nano applied to F3 through the traditional route. But we got buried under a lot of other applications.

As appreciative as I am to Kevin for selecting us, I'm even more appreciative of the HN community for giving us an opportunity.


We (Casepad) also applied via the traditional path to YC Core and YCF. We put in a weak application the first time around, unfortunately offering a less helpful signal as to whether or not HN identified something that was missed, so we took Apply HN very seriously as a second chance.

I'd like to echo /u/jonwachob91's post above in saying that we can't thank the community enough for the votes, feedback, and support. Also, many thanks to Kevin and his team for giving us a wildcard slot.


During my phone call with Kevin this was one of the questions that came up, and the answer is yes, Feynman Nano applied to F3 through the traditional route. But we got buried under a lot of other applications.

Based on this alone I'd say that Apply HN should count as a success: It allowed YC to catch a startup which fell through the cracks of their existing system.


That surely depends on whether the startups that fall through the cracks of the existing system caught by ApplyHN prove to be, on average, [close to] as successful as the ones picked up by the existing system and thus deserving of being caught. The cracks could be a feature rather than a bug.

Obviously you need more than two startups to make this sort of deduction, and I'm perfectly willing to believe that these and other startups missed by the traditional application process genuinely are more promising than some of those selected by it, but I'm not sure that what we have at the moment is really evidence either way.


Also very possible there's a bit of selection bias, since it wouldn't be surprising to discover that YC cross referenced the Apply HN apps with the YC/YCF apps and the act of doing that alone would be a source of bias.


This might be the case, but I think we should wait to make a final decision if it is a good way to catch startups that fall through the cracks. We really need a random selection to know if HN (and YC) are adding alpha.


> I hope YC does something like this again in the future, but I'd suggest a different approach: Rather than asking HN to help select startups to fund, I'd suggest asking HN to help select startups to interview.

Yes. Were this the case this time, I suspect there would have been zero complaints.


> I discovered that the vote totals were being inadvertently leaked earlier today

How were the totals being leaked?


I'll let Dan answer that if he wishes to do so.


Oh that's no problem: they were still being published by the API. Perils of having two systems where there should be just one. We plan to fix that (hopefully this year) by making a new API that will also be much more usable.


Yeah I was tracking that via the API. It's interesting how close #2 and #3 were along the way. Neck and neck for hours.


> I'm sure that most people who voted for pinboard did not do so because they thought it would be a good investment.

No, of course not: after all, it's only been a profitable business for years which just needs a bit of cash to fund expansion plans with a lot of potential (aka acquiring delicious.com).

Why would anyone invest in that, when they can fund a backyard-sized aquaponics systems for the residential market which will mostly be applied to recreational crops deemed illegal all over the world?


The original hypothesis was:

> If Hacker News could fund startups, what startups would it fund?

The answer was clear and overwehlming: The people chose an understated business model helmed by a charismatic leader who they passionately believe in. We choose an antiestablishment founder over the status quo.

You asked the question and you didn't like the answer. It's your house so you're within your rights but I can't say I'm pleased with the way this was decided.


The question also came with a few stipulations, and the winner did not like them.

This was never about pleasing the HN community.


I've figured YC out as soon as I finished reading a few good books on it. I especially loved the journey Justin and co. went through in their frantic search for something (seemingly anything would've done) to sell. HN does not equal YC, regardless of whoever is at its helm. Just as the well being of the 1 percent does not equal the well being of the human species.


You know, it is ironic that the 1 industry funding innovation (venture capital) is the 1 sorely lacking any innovation at all. It's always just the case of former-founders pooling their cash into a fund, then asking for more money from pension-funds, etc. and they then become "X fund" or "Y Capital" or "Z Ventures", etc. The game always follows this type of rotational pattern but...

Based on that, I'd like to tell you guys at Y Combinator that even though you are very entrenched in the happenings of the Valley, you are also probably the only VC-like company doing innovative and risky things like this.

I don't think I've ever heard of a VC or other-type organization funding companies based purely on a pseudonymous-community of "up" votes.

With that being said, at least we will see someone attempt to commercialize small-scale aquaponics, so something good/interesting did come out of this experiment. And not to be biased, I hope the other 2 do just as well.


I can't tell if this is too harsh, but it seems like you're praising the contest that was advertised, not the one we got. They didn't fund companies "based purely on a pseudonymous-community of 'up' votes." When they realized the community wanted something too risky for them, they bailed, and picked the "winners" themselves.


It turns out when you let people pseudonymously vote for things you get research vessels named Boaty McBoatface and similar (which I think would be awesome BTW http://mobile.nytimes.com/2016/03/22/world/europe/boaty-mcbo... )


FWIW, that wasn't the issue in this case. We knew about that possibility and planned for it and even called it by that name. But Kevin and I decided not to treat Maciej's application as a troll. The earnest comments he posted were what convinced us of that, and I don't think we were wrong there.

I admit to being flummoxed by the combination of trollish and serious elements--it basically does a denial of service on my brain; if it were stage hypnosis I'd be squawking like a chicken. But I'm starting to think one could have taken all the jokes out of this and much the same thing would still have happened. If that's so, then the troll aspect is a red herring.


I admit to being flummoxed by the combination of trollish and serious elements--it basically does a denial of service on my brain

For very good reason: Trolls often pretend to be serious, but serious people pretending to be trolls is incredibly rare.


This sounds like something Paul Graham would say. It's only missing the words "it turns out that".


I don't know if it's really that rare, though. From where I sit Maciej is playing the fox/anansi/trickster character to a tee, with a healthy dose of ha ha only serious (http://www.catb.org/~esr/jargon/html/H/ha-ha-only-serious.ht...). Whether it's a character he's pretending to be or just his natural communication style is for him to say, but dude-who-wanders-in-to-fuck-up-your-ego-with-practical-jokes is a pretty well-established archetype that predates "troll".


Now I'm blushing.


I think you're just drunk.


You seem to be implying that you think Maciej is a troll. Have you read much of his writing? He is a jester: he tends to couch the things he's serious about in a lot of humor.


I think we agree? When you let "the crowd" make decisions for you, sometimes they make weird, possibly dumb decisions -- that's why "the crowd" doesn't get to do that very often. It's also why I was so impressed by the idea that we'd get to pick these companies to get funded -- if not by literal vote, at least by discussion. THAT was the innovative bit.


You also get Republican nominees named "Donald Trump". https://medium.com/@ginsudo/president-trump-is-your-fault-e5...


Except that's not what was advertised. In fact, the announcement said explicitly that they weren't going to fund companies purely based on voting.


You're being kind of disingenuous. The announcement said that all evaluation would take place in open HN threads, but it didn't.


You're right, they were more generous than the original announcement suggested. If I had been in Kevin's shoes I would have rejected pinboard based on the content of the thread rather than holding an ad-hoc phone interview to give you a chance to redeem yourself.


I'm afraid the whole process lost all credibility. Please, do not repeat it. It's just disenfranchising for the community as a whole: it doesn't matter what we vote for, if YC will decide on their own as they would normally do.


This summarizes why this all rubs me the wrong way. YC already has a well-oiled machine that vets startups. The whole point of the YCF was ostensibly to try something new. If you're only going to give money to people after an "interview" which can be the sole eliminating factor, what's the point of a popular vote at all?


Couldn't agree more with this statement.


I've thought about this a bit and see where both parties are coming from.

For Kevin, due to the "trollish" behavior of Maciej during this competition, Kevin was (validly) very suspicious of Maciej's intention for participating in the program. Of course previous history of Maciej rallying against all YC stands for did not help assuage the fears :)

For Maciej, the rules are the rules. he (fairly) believes you do not have to like someone to keep your end of an agreement.

Here's my position. As this is an EXPERIMENT, YC should have taken the risk. Worst case, they would have had to kick him out of the program. But everyone will see they have been fair. Seen to be fair is a quite important.

I have "clashed" with Maciej before [1] however, i see him as some one who only has a hard bark and will be quite cook in person or once you know him. Dont't be too worried Kevin.

Of course, your house your rules. But still..

I hope YC can rescind and take Pinboard in (I know... I know..:).

[1] http://oonwoye.com/2011/03/09/maciej-of-pinboard-in-nigerian...


For Maciej, the rules are the rules. he (fairly) believes you do not have to like someone to keep your end of an agreement.

Except that he's inventing rules ("whoever gets the most votes wins $20,000!") which were explicitly not there, while ignoring other rules ("Can I ask people to upvote my submission? No.").


Fair enough.

But like someone said re: raising money from VC (was it PG?) don't listen to the reason, listen to the answer.

Kevin is uncomfortable with Maciej and took his decision based on that. As it would not seem politically connect to give that as his reason, he began looking for "good reasons" to justify it.

Is this conflict that can keep dividing us worth the 20k to YC? I would guess no.

They could and should sort this out. Kevin should understand that these HN YCF coys "belong to the community". If Maciej goes in and try to mess it up the community will (as my people say) "treat his fuck up".


Kevin is uncomfortable with Maciej and took his decision based on that. As it would not seem politically connect to give that as his reason, he began looking for "good reasons" to justify it.

My interpretation of events is rather different: Maciej cheated and got caught, but Dan and/or Kevin were concerned about the reaction if the submission which received the most votes was excluded based on the vote-rigging alone; so they went out of their way to try to find a way to include him anyway.


Even on tilt the way you are right now, you know this isn't true, and that this was a very slimy comment to have written. I'm surprised.


on tilt the way you are right now

I got increasingly irritated with his faux innocence as the evening progressed. I should probably have stopped around midnight.

you know this isn't true

My turn to be surprised. Which part isn't true? It seemed true to me when I wrote it at 2 AM, and it seems true to me when I'm reading it again now at 8 AM (curse these early morning meetings!).


Is there a way for us to have this conversation without each of your comments adding to the list of specious accusations you're making? There's nothing "faux" about his innocence.


Ok, you win. As the evening progressed, I got increasingly annoyed with the way that he gave every outward appearance of acting like a dishonest troll, despite the fact that he is actually as pure as the driven snow and never had anything but the best interests of YC at heart. Happy?


I got increasingly irritated with his faux innocence as the evening progressed.

Please look up confirmation bias. And (please) do not lecture me about my lack of awareness of the situation due to my newbie status.


Dude, it has nothing to do with him cheating.

It has more to do with the fact that he called pg a "weenis" years ago, and openly criticizes YC and SV culture in general.

The rejection was basically "sry, but you aren't quite the culture fit we're looking for". Which is fine, YCF can fund whomever they want, it's their money and their prerogative.

But here's the rub.

The way I see it, the biggest irony of the whole experiment is that it was probably meant to draw non-traditional founders, because of the pseudonymous nature of HN. But in the end, biases still prevailed. Which is why hiring/funding in SV is beyond broken, as this experiment has proven empirically.

This thread is the embodiment of all the diversity problems that tech has, the root node if you will. When the decision comes down to arbitrary "gut feeling" vs. the best (candidate|founder), then you know there's a problem.

If you can't see that, then...I'm not exactly sure what to tell you. Spend more time in the Valley?


Apologies - as stated elsewhere, "Can I ask people to upvote my submission? No." was never a written rule. Perhaps it was intended to be implied by virtue of this being HN and voting rings being frowned upon, but this is decidedly not the same situation as any other HN submission.

The /specific/ rule here should have been made clearer.


It's an explicit rule of HN, and from the start this was explained as "let's see which startups HN would pick". Things can always be clearer, but I really don't think there was much ambiguity here.


don't forget - a true "growth hacker" only needs the thinnest veneer of ambiguity to really go to town.

I think the biggest shame is that under the guise of an experiment they had the opportunity to "really disrupt" themselves and "change the face of" ...money.. giving...

What hashtag should I use to support the twitter campaign to get Maciej into a program that he probably shouldn't be under which we're discussing on a message board... UGH! crashing under the meta-overload...


Respectfully, I still have to disagree here. Of course it's an explicit rule of HN - that has always been clear. However, the reasoning for that is that we want the HN community to decide on what's interesting and gets on the front page. Yes, that's simplified, but true at a high level.

But this was not just another HN submission. This had nothing to do with 'keeping the front page interesting'. This had to do with allowing HN to "democratically" elect companies they thought were best to fund. A candidate company asking its supporters to...support them does not only seem obvious, but very different from HN trying to keep the front page clean.

If you disagree that they are different forms of using HN and not the same spirit of submission, I'm not sure we'll be able to agree here, which is also totally fine, of course. :)


> However, the reasoning for that is that we want the HN community to decide on what's interesting and gets on the front page.

Exactly the same reasoning applied to deciding what's interesting and gets funded. I'm surprised this is even a question. If we had changed that rule, HN users would have skinned us alive.

Saying that "interviewing and evaluating will be done in regular HN threads" meant that the regular HN thread rules applied. We did change one of those—from "be civil" to "be nice", which by the way people did a pretty good job of—and I explained that change at length in the original post.

If you read through the comments in that original thread you'll see that a lot of them had to do with people's concerns about gaming of the voting system, which is one of the most common things that comes up here, and my answers were all about reassuring them that we'd watch for it and disqualify applications if we found it.


Yo Dang,

I don't think this brouhaha is worth it. Let the community send one of theirs in there. If he takes the money and bails (I doubt) the community takes the blame and deals with it.

If he takes the money and does a gimmick (I suspect) the community will also deal with it.

Remember, this is an EXPERIMENT. It is theoretically not to work. It is similar to the "come with no idea" thig YC did years back

I didn't vote for Pinboard [1] however, truing to justify the silencing of 700+ votes will be hard.

You and Kelvin, take a deep breath and let the EXPERIMENT run its course.

[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11618930


Except that he multiple times, even in this thread, has shown that he only wanted the money and not be a part og YC. So it's really on him.


I would like to thank everyone for the feedback and the discussion.

I've been plugging away at CADWOLF for a while now to get an MVP going and I am really just a few weeks from a solid code base. The feedback I got let me know that I was headed in a valid direction. This whole experience was great.

On a side note, I'll be referring to the company as "the one that came in fourth" for a while. I also may be setting a record for YC rejections. Is there a solid number on that somewhere?


Can't wait to see what you come up with. I encourage you to apply to YC ... But make sure you are able to communicate what you are doing ;)


Thanks, I've got 3 or 4 YC rejections and now 2 fellowship rejections (single founder). Finding a co-founder in Houston is not easy.

I believe that my YC applications were better written than the very limited writeup we got here, but I should revisit that before I release the robot army to avenge me.


I slightly disagree with how you think you have written. The problem is that HN and YC are highly technical. Most of us already know that web based CAD/numerical analysis is invaluable... What everyone is trying to figure out is YOUR approach. And there was not enough detail in it. You are constantly focusing on the bigger picture - which everybody has already granted.

You're in what I like to call "the nuclear fusion problem" - how the hell do you think you can pull it off ?

If I were you, I would talk about the innovation in the JS based symbolic solver (and that's pretty much what I would focus on from an implementation POV) and how you will use THAT to disrupt several industries.


I've been sitting here trying to digest everything that has happened since we applied for this endeavor. And while we're disappointed we didn't get many votes, it was a proud moment for us to be among the top 20 companies out of so many that applied. I really mean that. We never thought our platform, that hasn't even launched yet, would get this much attention and we thank EVERYONE who voted for us.

The feedback we got from this process was very valuable and we even got some great beta users signed up. However, we likely wouldn't go through something like this again.

This was a bit of a distraction for us to be quite honest. We spent a lot of time working to craft a great pitch and responding to the feedback we got (despite some obvious trolling) in the best way we could.

I get why some people are/were upset though. Anytime you include such a robust community into a decision making process, you're just asking for trouble. You're not going to please everyone and even if everything goes the way you thought, you'll still be met with skepticism. This is especially true for a site like HN in which there are clear "regulars" who understand the nuances within this community.

I'm not saying that's a bad thing. I've been an outside observer for a long time and get tremendous value from the posts here. It's a site I check regularly many times a day.

All-in-all, it's an indictment of the community when you witness how the process plays out. This is not dissimilar to our own US presidential race happening today. You get people that say dumb shit, people who make outlandish claims, and people end up feeling disenfranchised. Long live democracy! :)


Even though Krewe wasn't chosen, I'm grateful for the opportunity to participate in this.

I really wish I had the opportunity to "re-pitch" Krewe. I was one of the first to apply, and I don't think I did it in the right way. It was clear from the comments that people had a really poor idea of what it is. So my suggestion for next time: have founders fill out a form so everything gets formatted correctly.


What I find disappointing about the conversation here is that, in typical HN fashion, many people just assumed that this experiment was like one of those contests where you sign the legal "terms and conditions." As if the process was simply mechanistic.

As I understand, this could not be further from how this works. It was always obvious to me that votes would only be one objective factor among many subjective factors.

The discussion around Pinboard was somewhat polarized and tended to focus on the wrong aspects. I was partly guilty in that, but it's not great when the question mark is over whether or not you're serious, rather than over your business (having a question mark over your business is totally fine! that's the right kind of risk). And it was always obvious to me that the YC partners would do a final pass on selection.


It's comments like this that are the reason YC's communications here are so upsetting. Pinboard isn't a joke. It's how the guy pays his rent. Not only that, but it's a valuable and important service. I use it every day. Less than I use Google, but more than I use Wikipedia.


Pinboard's YCF application being perceived as a joke is due entirely to Pinboard's YCF application.

YC has no responsibility for that at all.


No one communicated that Pinboard, the company, was a joke. I feel quite the opposite.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11441978


I think you mean to say, "no one intended to communicate that Pinboard, the company, was a joke."


Tom from Utiliz here. While dissapointed to miss out we were pumped to get into the final 20. The Q&A was enlightening and enjoyable. Good luck to the winners and thanks to Kevin and Dan.


I am a little surprised not to get into the top 20 as my submission got more votes and comments (and I thought they were quality ones) than AutoMicroFarm but their product sounds awesome so I wish them the best.

I'm also thankful to YC for doing this and to the people who took the time to read and comment on my business. That extra runway and the YC advice would have been a nice bonus though.


Tom keep going. I don’t think you really need funding to build your business and you would be much better off bootstrapping.


Brodlist would like to deeply thank Kevin and Dan for doing this. It not only gave us great feedback but we found it a lot of fun as well. The winners deserve their spot and I'm looking forward to seeing great things come from all three.

Thanks again, guys.


A word about why Pinboard is not included. We spent a long time thinking about this, since the original application did sound trollish, but comments like https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11442027, https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11590386, and https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11590315 made us think it was also serious. Had we thought it was merely a joke, of course we'd have disqualified it. We'd referred to that as the Boaty McBoatface scenario when planning the experiment and deliberately included a measure of moderator review as a way of filtering such applications out. But we wanted to give the benefit of the doubt. We like Maciej's writing as much as the rest of HN does, think Pinboard is a fine company, and Kevin was excited by the prospect of working with it. So we decided to include it in the runoff, knowing that its pre-existing popularity would probably make it a winner. That last part isn't necessarily a bad thing; popularity is a good property for a founder and company to have.

But then two things happened. First, Kevin and Maciej had the good-faith conversation described at https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11441978, and Kevin reluctantly concluded that Maciej doesn’t want to participate in the program as intended. I don't know the details and can't speak for Kevin, but that's his call to make as the partner who runs YCF, and I know he hoped and expected it to go the other way. Getting into a YC batch isn't a cash prize—it's a close working relationship, and that's something that has to be right on both sides or it won't work. Both Kevin and I wanted it to work (if we hadn't, we'd simply have dropped Pinboard from the runoff and said why), and I felt sure that a good-faith conversation would be enough to bridge any remaining gap. It turned not to be, which is disappointing.

Second, we found evidence of vote brigading, something we'd disqualify others for. I don't believe that Maciej organized a voting ring (actually I don't believe he'd give it a second's thought), but when we dug into the data we found that the votes for Pinboard look dramatically different from the votes for the other startups. I presume this is the effect of Pinboard's (deservedly) large audience being asked to promote the post, e.g. at https://twitter.com/Pinboard/status/727255170594131968 and https://twitter.com/Pinboard/status/719599297604390912. We didn't know about those links earlier; we only found out about them from user complaints after the runoff was posted. But we would and did disqualify people for soliciting votes on a small scale, so it wouldn't be right to allow soliciting them on a large one.

We're sad about this. As I said, Kevin and I both really wanted it to work--I thought it would be good for HN and Kevin admires Pinboard. We also appreciate that humor and irony and "a variety of publicity stunts" (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11443463) are Maciej's style, and he was simply practicing it. That part is not a problem--as readers, we enjoy it too, and creative cleverness has always been prized on HN. I both take Maciej at his word that he wasn't trolling and Kevin at his word that he tried to find a way to accept Pinboard into YCF and in the end just couldn't.

We're going to have a community discussion about things that didn't go so well with this first Apply HN experiment, but I'm not sure I'd put this in that category. I'm glad that we chose to believe the serious parts of what Maciej posted. I think it was the right call, I still believe them, and under similar circumstances would do the same again. It's not always easy to tell the joking bits apart from the serious bits, but that goes with the territory.


I call shenanigans.

The way this experiment was presented, the Hacker News community would be allowed to select two YC Fellowship recipients. According to the announcement, "all the interviewing and evaluating will be done in regular HN threads."

But that's not what happened here. I won the voting by a yuuuge margin, and then the vote was nullified in a vape-filled room after it became clear that Hacker News might have its own agenda, separate from YC.

Accusations of soliciting votes by tweeting the HN threads would carry weight with me if there had been any published guidelines about what kind of publicity was allowed. But rules about "vote brigading" on HN are intentionally kept secret.

People have repeatedly accused me of trolling, but I don't think it's me who just trolled you all.

I want my twenty grand.


You're right to single out that sentence, or rather that word "all" in "All the interviewing and evaluating will be done in regular HN threads". We didn't stick to that, and I'm sorry. That's precisely what we changed, and yes we changed it at the last minute.

I didn't think of this experiment as having fixed rules, but rather as something we'd figure out as we went along. I tried to make that clear up front: "Note that word experiment! We'll start small and figure it out as we go. But here are the initial conditions." I can see why that wasn't enough.

It occurs to me only now that "figure it out as we go" and "changing the rules" are the same thing. So yes. We changed the rules, and I'm sorry.


The only catch with this is that "Note that word experiment! We'll start small and figure it out as we go. But here are the initial conditions." can very easily be taken to mean "we'll start small this time, and adjust things for the next time, figuring it out as we go." That's how I, and seemingly some others, interpreted it.

"We'll change things next time based on the results of this experiment" and "We'll change things this time as we see fit and appropriate" are very different, though your initial statement can be read as implying either.

I don't even think one is better than the other - I would just be more careful about communicating which it really is, next time. You guys are free to do what you want, heh. This entire "debacle," if you can even call it that, is actually a great case study in how and why clear communication is so important. The problem wasn't the decision that was made, but rather how it was communicated.


> can very easily be taken to mean "we'll start small this time, and adjust things for the next time, figuring it out as we go."

That's not what I meant at all. This is the first time this interpretation ever occurred to me.

If that's what people thought I meant, I can certainly understand some of this thread better. But it floors me that my intent would have failed so completely to come across.


Interesting. I'd interpreted it as "we'll start small this time, and adjust things for next time, if there is a next time". Usually an experiment (in science) implies that you don't change the conditions of the experiment while it's running, you let it run and record the results, whether they're positive or negative. Otherwise, you limit your ability to be surprised, which is the whole point of science.

It gets a little more muddled with social experiments, where it's often hard to delineate an "ending point" of the experiment, and there's often real collateral damage in the process. Even with social experiments, though, you get a more accurate signal if you let them run past the point where your gut tells you it's a bad idea.


Surely the point of an experiment is to run it. Observe the results. Then change things in the next run.


> That's precisely what we changed, and yes we changed it at the last minute.

no rule of law -> automatic bullshit.


I don't agree with that at all, and taken literally it would make adaptation impossible, which can't be right.

HN has never been a rule-driven, legalistic kind of place, and isn't going to get that way. But I've had to learn a lot about people who do feel this way and obviously have a lot to learn yet. My own temperament is very far from this; it's almost impossible for me not to read "we'll figure it out as we go" as a good, fine thing.


You're missing the point others are trying to make. I'm all for experimentation - by all means. I experiment literally every single day, often failing, but occasionally succeeding.

The issue was that it wasn't clear there would be rule-changing or experimentation /during/ the experiment, rather than after the experiment.


I agree that if that wasn't clear, it was a huge problem. The whole idea was to figure this particular experiment out as we went along. Not putative future instances of it, which we hadn't even thought about or mentioned amongst ourselves. Why would we, when the first one hadn't even started?

From my point of view that sentence about making it up as we go was the most important thing in the original post. It meant that we didn't have to plan a fixed set of rules: if and when something unforeseen came up, we'd adapt to it then. That's why I said "initial conditions". I'd never have proposed anything that took away our ability to adapt in the middle of this, and especially not about something so untried.


You changed the rules to keep Pinboard out of the program. Even Kevin Hale admits that. You weren't turning the knobs to see what would change. The outcome was clear, you didn't like it, and so you prevented it from happening.

I think, at this point, the issue is that it's clear to most of us what happened, but YC is still trying to put a gloss on it.

The more you and Kevin Hale try to mitigate this, the more polarized it gets, and the meaner some commenters get about Maciej, who didn't do anything wrong. You don't have to accept Pinboard into YCF, but you have a responsibility not to let him take any of the blame for this.


> You weren't turning the knobs to see what would change. The outcome was clear, you didn't like it, and so you prevented it from happening.

Yes. I wasn't arguing against that.


It is very difficult to have a meaningful experiment if you change what you're doing in the experiment as you go. "Initial conditions" makes sense as "the conditions for this initial run".

Or maybe, now that you've figured out what this experiment is supposed to be, you should actually run this experiment, i.e., start it over, with a clear understanding of what's going on and what the parameters are. It's unsurprising that people were confused about the parameters since you yourselves were confused about them. Their confusion is on you.


If the "we'll figure it out as we go" is used just to reiterate the status quo, it's not a very sound or innovative approach.

About that, I like the point zellyn makes: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11633818


According to the announcement, "all the interviewing and evaluating will be done in regular HN threads."

According to the same announcement, "We can talk about this in the comments, but to answer one question I know will come up: Upvotes are an important factor but they're too brittle to rely on exclusively; doing so would encourage the wrong kind of trying to game the system."

They said from the start that votes alone would not decide the results.


The overwhelming sentiment in the HN comments was that Pinboard deserved a slot.


We were specifically asked to be nice.

I certainly didn't think that saying "Please don't give money to Pinboard, I don't think Maciej will act appropriately and it will spoil any chances of following this process again" fitted into "nice". Now some people did post (generally more constructive) versions of that comment, but I refrained base on the stated policy.

There was no way to vote Pinboard down other than to just vote for the other options.

The process did not actually offer any way to determine the HN community's overall view, only that were was a large subset that wanted to fund Pinboard. That subset might be greater that the subset that specifically didn't want to fund Pinboard, but there's no evidence available to determine that.


"The process did not actually offer any way to determine the HN community's overall view, only that were was a large subset that wanted to fund Pinboard. That subset might be greater that the subset that specifically didn't want to fund Pinboard, but there's no evidence available to determine that."

This might be worth dang and others factoring into the next iteration of this stuff. Some way for people to express agreement without being mean. Might be one post saying "Disagree or voting against" that they can upvote if they want opposition to be tallied. Maybe even make it stay in one spot on page so it doesn't get in way of rest of discussion.

What yall think?


Voting systems are hard, but in practice they'd want to introduce something more useful than a plurality vote.


More because people thought it would be funny than because they thought it was a fit for the program. Many knew, and 'idlewords acknowledged several times, that it wasn't.

The original announcement said:

At the end of the month, we'll rank the startups and YC will fund two. The ranking will depend both on upvotes and on the quality of discussion, similar to how the ranking of stories works. We can talk about this in the comments, but to answer one question I know will come up: Upvotes are an important factor but they're too brittle to rely on exclusively; doing so would encourage the wrong kind of trying to game the system. So we're going to gauge community interest both by upvotes and comments, and in case of doubt I'll make the final call—or better, figure out a way to put the final call to the community.

All this says is that (a) upvotes and comments will be used to rank the startups, and that (b) YC will then fund two. It doesn't say they'll use the ranking as the sole criteria. It seems obvious that an organization giving away bags of $20k will exercise some kind of discretion beforehand.


I have the top comment on the runoff thread, and I was against Pinboard (due to doubts about whether Pinboard would do YCF in good faith - similar to what dang is saying here). So while I did notice a lot of people were in favor, it can hardly be called overwhelming.


I voted for Pinboard but did not downvote your post (it would be wrong for me to have done so).

While the upvotes are an indication of support for your position, it wouldn't have accurately captured the number of people who disagreed with you (and thus supported Pinboard), since disagreement is not grounds for downvoting.


According to Paul Graham, it's acceptable to downvote for disagreement. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=117171


It's true but I'm in same boat as parent: I only downvote on spam, hate comments, etc. Downvoting can make comments disappear and sort of censor aspects of a discussion. Even bad claims are often misconceptions worth addressing with comments and evidence instead of downvoting for other readers' benefit. So, I almost never downvote.

I'm sure there's others given I know specific people's position on comments I made that they could've downvoted. So, parent's claim stands but we can't know how much. Maybe worth considering modifying downvote concept to deal with this somehow in another forum as an experiment.


My view is that there is a ton of noise of HN, and HN has this problem where threads devolve into tangents/pedantry/really nitpicky arguments where people start arguing over little logical details. And rather than just go down the rabbit hole of this morass of noise, I'd rather just downvote.


Sounds reasonable. A third option you don't mention is simply ignoring the noise to upvote the quality submissions. You apparently had to look at the noise anyway to downvote it. So, is there another reason you're taking that effort?


I have to at least skim it to determine whether it's noise or not in the first place.


What's the score on that comment?


My feeling, (like Colin's, I think) is that even if the announcement could have been clearer on this point, it implies that votes & comments wouldn't be the only deciding factors.


Both Dan and Maciej are personal friends of mine, and it's uncomfortable to see them at odds.

But Maciej is right.


I think, in the spirit of the community, you should provide some argument for why you think that, rather than just state your judgement.

From a fairly outsider perspective, Maciej/idlewords seems to dislike SV & VC culture (for lots of reasonable reasons) and YC by extension, and is trying to joke/troll here as a form of protest or publicity; OK.

On the other side, the YC/HN guys are actually trying to do something innovative, with YC fellows which is more accessible than vanilla YC (can do remotely), and now with a community choice, which is a step in a more innovative/accessible direction again.

Surely this is a step in the right direction? If not, could someone explain why? If they are trying to make good faith steps in the right direction, and someone is trolling them (by which I mean for humor/protest, not bad intentions), isn't it fair enough to exclude that application?


Did Kevin Hale have special phone conversations with the other three founders to ensure that they would be able to work together with YC?

Meanwhile, look at the the post Kevin Hale just wrote. It says, "We ran a poll for the top applications and the voting was so close that we decided to fund one extra startup. Here are the winners." But that's not true at all. The fact that Pinboard took more than 3x the number of votes as the 2nd place vote-getter is mentioned nowhere in Hale's message.


Yes, I called all the other winners too. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11633517


It was pretty clearly an experiment, and it looked pretty obvious to me that they were reserving the rights to tweak and nudge and basically run it as they saw fit. It's not like it was a cereal box competition or the lottery or something where you just win some money and that's that.


It wasn't a tweak or a nudge, it entirely invalidated the stated intention of the experiment, and completely disenfranchised the HN community.

But that's not the worst, dumbest thing about this. The dumbest thing is that YC would have gotten the most benefit out of giving Maciej the money, and they let their fear and discomfort keep them from doing that.


> completely disenfranchised the HN community

Their money on the line, their call. I have never felt "out of the loop" because I didn't influence their investment decisions. The value I get from HN is the conversations and things I read about and learn.


Of course, they get to do whatever they want. But their reputation suffers when they say they'll do one thing, then do another, especially when it's a bad decision made for bad reasons and communicated poorly.


don't call it a tweak or nudge when the experiment's parameters were deliberately altered to avoid the outcome the data was indicating.

"We had an idea for figuring out where we'd spend our money. We didn't like what happened so we spent it based on other criteria."

So the experiment was maybe the voting / HN selection, but they don't get to paint it as the experiment was "let's see who HN selects, then compare their outcome with traditional participants" like we were led to believe...


Right about what exactly? The deal was not "we'll give $20k to whoever gets the most upvotes." It was about participating in a YC program, which this person doesn't seem to have any interest in, or at least wants to feign complete disinterest. I'm glad a spot was not wasted on him based on his attitude alone.


Could you be a little bit more careful in minting new truths about people's psychology, especially if you don't know those people, to score points in Internet arguments? The Maciej I know was definitely not disinterested in winning that YCF spot.


The Maciej I know was definitely not disinterested in winning that YCF spot.

Did he want the YCF spot, or the $20k? I don't know him, but the fact that his immediate response was "I want my twenty grand" reinforces my belief that Kevin made the right decision here.


Let me save you the time and (having watched and read quite a bit of Maciej's stuff, internalizing his reasoning about many things in our culture) tell you that he was being deliberately facetious here. (Maybe "facetious" is too strong a word: he was merely speaking in jest, "calling YCF out", perhaps being a bit too flippant due to his (justified) frustration, if any). I'm replying to your comment because I see you reproducing your above point all over the place, and it's sad you think that way about this.

(That being said, for someone not familiar with Maciej's approach to things, I can perhaps understand why you'd think that way.)


God forbid that someone so known for his sobriety in all things should on this one occasion have a jokey response.


If he reiterated that jokey response in his "good-faith conversation" with kevin, then kevin made the right call. I'll agree with tptacek though that they should've just said that, instead of talking about voting rings.


Different people. Dan runs HN, and I'm sure he thinks about voting rings all day long. Kevin is from YC, and thinks about founders and fitting into the YC community. I think it's safe to say that they both had very good, but entirely independent, reasons for not wanting to fund pinboard.


There are probably ways he could have conveyed that better. Judging by the outcome, smarter people than me came to that same conclusion.


Now do you see the problem with how YC chose to explain Pinboard's exclusion?


No, it's pretty clear

> Did he want the YCF spot, or the $20k? I don't know him, but the fact that his immediate response was "I want my twenty grand" reinforces my belief that Kevin made the right decision here.

I agree, Kevin made the right decision as well.


I don't care about the decision. I care about how it was communicated.


The "Kevin talked to Maciej and it didn't seem like it would work out" part seems pretty straightforward. The voting brigade thing seems dumb, but Kevin was pretty explicit that part wouldn't have mattered.


Of course he was interested, trolls are always interested in getting a response.


>Accusations of soliciting votes by tweeting the HN threads would carry weight with me if there had been any published guidelines about what kind of publicity was allowed.

Sure: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11442647

P.S. I voted for Pinboard.


That's the problem with with this. You know and I know that posting a Twitter message about your HN post is against the rules, but that's because we're HN nerds. Maciej isn't.

I understand completely why the complete rulebook on how you can't and can't promote your posts isn't posted clearly on the site. Voting ring suppression is an arms race, and posting the current rules helps the vote-ringers.

But a general statement about not soliciting support for applications could have been made clearer. And, more importantly, the vote ring really had nothing to do with this. Kevin Hale didn't want Maciej in the program. That's all there was to it.


I agree with you on everything. But also with Kevin and Dang.

Getting into YCF even with 100 more votes than the next 3 combined is not a right. If YC doesn't feel comfortable working with him and think that he'll negatively affect the batch and the alumni network, that's their call. (Just take this thread for example, what was supposed to be a post mortem of the contest and a place to give suggestions and feedback has turned into a complaint fest).

I did somethings which the mods didn't approve of in their judgement and my application itself was disqualified (it was ranked at 5 by upvotes) but I don't feel entitled so I'm not complaining.


> I don't feel entitled so I'm not complaining

Is it because you don't feel entitled? Or because there's a vast chasm of difference between "5th place" and "1st place by several miles in each of two separate races"?


I don't think I would quite describe the comments as a complaint fest, it seems like a fairly civil and thought out discussion.


> posting a Twitter message about your HN post is against the rules

Questions:

1. where are these rules published?

2. why would someone (except in this one case involving money for votes) solicit upvotes for a post?


High positioning on HN can presumably drive a lot of traffic?


Your reply to Kevin in the cited conversation (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11441978) was 3 sentences long, where you graciously accepted praise for being compared to Berkshire Hathaway -- arguably one of the big corporate success stories of our generation. Are you willing to share the details of your subsequent good-faith conversation....?

I voted for pinboard... and I'm curious why Kevin decided that it wasn't in the spirit of the program.


I have no bone in this fight, since I did not apply nor would we apply for YCF (I think it's a great idea, but my company doesn't fit the criteria). And, if it matters, I do not use Pinboard and have never spoken a word to 'idlewords.

I respect 'dang and 'kevin both, a ton. Have always had nothing but pleasant interactions with them, and the amount of care they put towards managing this community is seemingly boundless.

With all of that said, 'idlewords is absolutely right here. The HN mods and/or YCF made a choice here not to fund Pinboard, regardless of whether HN wanted to or not. It's not really OK to say that it's an experiment where HN gets to make choices and then not support them, unless there were explicitly some bad blood or trolling occurring. Based on everything 'idlewords has posted, it would appear that he is not trolling. Sure, perhaps he has a bit of a 'let's watch the world burn' attitude, but it's not entirely clear to the rest of us that that isn't just a persona.

If I had applied for the "Apply HN" experiment, there is no way in hell I wouldn't have tweeted or asked customers to upvote - of course you would! Sure, perhaps this doesn't reflect the true nature of HN's vote, since these may or may not be regular HN users, but unless you only count users that have some age or karma, you can't prevent that. Alternatively, you can make it a stated rule that this isn't a popularity contest and thus you should not ask for votes elsewhere. That was not made clear at all - it was implied, or at least I perceived, that this was intended to be 'an experiment in democracy,' for better or worse.

I do think, if 'idlewords is truly interested in the fellowship and all of the requirements therein (Skype meetings or whatever else), that it would be good to stand by the original rules. With that said, these are investment decisions and aren't intended to be taken lightly, and obviously you guys have the final decision anyway (this was always true, no matter what HN said - you're the ones putting up the money and time).

I just think it's more 'right' if you follow along with the original plan of the experiment. Hell, maybe 'idlewords ends up getting so much value out of YCF that he becomes even more serious about Pinboard and it's the next Pinterest (no pun intended). If nothing else, YC/HN may learn something from it.


Have you not got more than $20,000 out of all the publicity? It is not better for you to have been “kicked out” than actually selected?


Regarding Pinboard, the simple answer is he won the votes, he won the poll, but he made me feel uncomfortable in the end. I went into my good-faith phone call with him very much wanting this to work out and I was disappointed to come out of it tense and with less energy than when I went in. It’s touchy feely, I know, but the truth.

The thing with YC is startups can’t do the program in a vacuum. Even with the remote nature of the Fellowship, the founders affect the partners they work with and the other founders they work alongside, both in their batch and among the alumni community. We made the decision to call all the startups we’d consider taking on through Apply HN and make a decision on fit. I know that’s changing the rules at the last second, but we didn’t realize this until Pinboard entered the fray. I'm actually grateful for the head's up. Like all our experiments at YC, we design them to adapt as things happen, and they certainly did here.

I made the same phone calls with the other founders and they felt completely different. I wasn’t looking for gratitude or devotion or deference. My minimum was connection, my ideal was simpatico—evidence that I could spend a lot of time with the founder, which is what’s needed to make this relationship work well. Unfortunately, I couldn’t find a good rapport with Maciej. Regardless of the vote situation, I’d make the same decision.

Maciej is clearly brilliant and quite witty and knows how to build and direct a passionate following. Pinboard is unique and I’m glad it exists. More opinionated software should exist in the world. Even though we couldn’t find rapport together, I sincerely wish him and his startup the very best.


I'm sorry you didn't feel full of energy after our (very unexpected) phone call. Building rapport with you was not one of the evaluation criteria.

We're grown-ups and don't have to like each other to work together effectively.

However, I appreciate your being honest about arbitrarily changing the rules on me.


> We're grown-ups and don't have to like each other to work together effectively.

This times 1000. A working relationship is not a friendship nor does it require any particularly strong "rapport". Though the idea that there's no difference between a working relationship and being best buds is, I guess, not uncommon in SV---something to protest against the next time an experiment like this is run, I guess.


This depends on the context of a working relationship. It is certainly true that if your manager hired you and some other guy, it is possible for you to work together effectively with the other guy, even if you seriously disliked him personally.

YC is much more of a "mentor+mentee" relationship than a regular "coworkers on a team" relationship. A mentor relationship is much less effective if there's no personal rapport between participants.


Do university professors call all their students individually before lessons start, just to build a "personal rapport"? No, they build it as they are mentoring. That's how it's done, if it's all about mentoring. Mentoring someone you know in advance and have a personal rapport with is just a form of patronizing.


Also, as others (maybe you, elsewhere?) have pointed out, it would have been a good experiment (!) to take Maciej on despite the initial cold feeling just to see what happened. Maybe it would have worked out! Maybe that would be a lesson about relying on vague gut feels!


Thesis advisors certainly do this, though.


Working relationships, especially an intense mentoring-type relationship that YC is trying to set up, certainly do require strong rapport.

To put it another way, suppose the best advice YC can give is to focus on something other than pinboard (or something like that), would idlewords listen? Because if not, what's the point?

I can see this is disappointing for idlewords, but overall, this seemed fair and reasonably transparent to me.

I'm worried the overall outcome is that instead of being a fun and interesting experiment, it's going to be a 'bad and sad' in YC's minds, and any future contest is going to have a lawyer writing the rules.

So, here's to a clearer 'judge's decision is final' next time and that the three accepted applicants turn out successful.


"He made me feel uncomfortable" is like slide 3 of every "unconscious bias" training workshop ever. As we slowly try to claw our way out from a deservedly terrible reputation in our industry, high-profile retentions for, basically, "lack of culture fit" send a dark message to every person in existence who fears they might not leave you "energized".

I realize it's inadvisable to wade into this discussion, but this just leaves me indignant and disappointed on behalf of my whole industry and profession.


This is the Achilles's Heal of YC's application process. The human "culture fit" test, where in (literally) just a few minutes they evaluate the founders as people.

The reason this experiment was so interesting was that it would bypass their biased human filtering and let in people based purely on their merit.

Not accepting Pinboard undermines the entire experiment. Pinboard could likely be a huge company with YC's help, and it would be fucking hilarious to watch.

Let Pinboard in and do the experiment again. He's smart and he's not crazy. Any founder able to win the votes is someone you can work with. Consider it a diversity program, which it would be.


It also flies in the face of the "meritocracy" narrative that's so often brought up when talking about tech culture.


> he made me feel uncomfortable in the end

This kind of statement is broad, and covers anything from "he said he'd use the money to breed a race of robotic nazi grizzly bears" to "his voice reminded me of my ex-spouse's".

YC is y'all's thing, you run it however you want, but the lack of details here does make it seem like it really is about the fact that Maciej routinely criticizes the whole VC/startup fairy tale that YC peddles, and that changing the rules at the last minute is the only way you came up with to dodge having to work with him.

I generally agree with what Maciej has to say, and have a fairly negative opinion of YC (despite enjoying the HN community, and respecting some of the people involved with YC) - I thought I'd be pleasantly surprised by YC here and see what happens when they're willing to work with one of their smarter critics.

But in the end, there's just disappointment, and no reason to reconsider my perception of YC.


Could you guys maybe amend the post you just wrote, and Dan's disclaimer about Pinboard?

"We changed the rules at the last minute. We're sorry, but that's the way it goes."

I can live with that. What you did instead, first by pretending Maciej didn't win in your post, and then by blaming him for not being selected in Dan's follow-up, was a mistake, and not a great way to treat him. I don't know you at all, but Dan likes you so you can't be a bad person, and I can't believe Dan is happy with this.


This is exactly what strikes me as odd about the whole thing. 'dang has made an impressive effort to keep everything on HN as transparent as possible, and this explanation just screamed inconsistency.

Were the real reason, as stated here, published the first time, I wouldn't even have bothered to comment.


And, YC, you can be inconsistent. That's fine with me.

But when you're inconsistent, you should bear a special obligation to be generous and charitable to the people you're disadvantaging. YC didn't live up to that obligation here.


Sounds to me like they were generous, with their time. Kevin called him and they had a conversation... that's more than any other VC will do.


"Asshole VC associate" is not the bar YC is trying to clear.


I was an applicant and I understood from the start that the votes would influence it but that YCF would make the final call. It was clear to me before I applied that YCF would have a final say. I'm sorry it's confusing you.


What are you talking about? They promised a certain criteria, disqualified someone who appeared to win by it (minus the vote boost maybe), claimed it for one set of reasons, it looked like it was for worse reasons, half-ass admitted that later, and still aren't fully owning up to it now or presenting it honestly for future participants in these things. At least, that's how I read tptacek's comments throughout thread.

I was about to even agree with one saying the evidence looked fishy given spotting or countering subversive behavior is kind of my thing. Then, kevin's comment appeared just as I was about to write mine to confirm opposition angle a lot.

Full disclosure: First time I've ever found out who idlewords is, I don't use that product, probably didn't give it a vote, I give mixed reviews of Silicon Valley politics/VC's, and say whatever I think facts lead to regardless of blowback. As in, near zero bias in this and people's concerns are still obvious to me.


You misunderstand. There was a time when I thought we might be #2, and I thought, 'I think that gives us a good chance'. I didn't think, 'therefore they have to pick us'. They were clear about that.


tptacek's comment said a lot more than "he had more votes." Matter of fact, it didn't mention that directly at all. One would have to read his other comments to get context. That's what context I had in mind when trying to interpret your comment.

Now, if this is your whole argument, then I don't disagree with it. Yet, tptacek's reply to you is still true based on what's in the comment you replied to and the others. Your counter doesn't apply to what he wrote.


This comment has nothing to do with mine.


It has everything to do with it because I'm saying that I understood, everyone understood going in, that it was not a popularity contest.

If Pinboard had no votes, we wouldn't be having this conversation. It was specifically because it had the most votes that there was any expectation that it might be chosen. But it was always Kevin's prerogative to say no, and he did. They were clear that it is an experiment, and that we would figure things out as we go. I don't see how you can accuse "changing the rules". There were no set rules.

You would be dishonest if you tried to say that Pinboard didn't initially approach this as a funny/protest entry ("Let's make YC great again"). Whether he changed later is irrelevant. Whether some voted for Pinboard because they liked it is irrelevant. Others voted for it for it in the same spirit as he entered it, and suddenly (whether he intended it or not) you have the Wonka Factory's doors open and a bunch of people finding it fun (and maybe cathartic) to act like Veruca Salt. Don't blame Kevin or Dan, blame Maciej.


>We made the decision to call all the startups we’d consider taking on through Apply HN and make a decision on fit. […] Unfortunately, I couldn’t find a good rapport with Maciej. Regardless of the vote situation, I’d make the same decision.

1. As other posters have said, "we couldn't find rapport" is a warning sign of unconscious bias. And, as you said, the rules were constructed "on purpose: we don't want to bias it along the lines of how YC already operates."

2. It's pretty clear that "we decided to privately call all the startups rather than do everything in public" only happened because of Pinboard's success.

3. You guys dropped the ball on this one, big time. DQ-ing Pinboard isn't the real problem. If you think the Pinboard business is no good, or the founder would squander the money, whatever, that's your call. But it should have happened far earlier in the process. Waiting to drop Pinboard until after after two rounds of votes were tabulated is ridiculous.


>My minimum was connection

>Maciej is clearly brilliant and quite witty and knows how to build and direct a passionate following. Pinboard is unique and I’m glad it exists. More opinionated software should exist in the world. Even though we couldn’t find rapport together, I sincerely wish him and his startup the very best.

I find this a little confusing in that it seems to conflict with what I had taken as the entire purpose of the experiment. If not trying out people who have positive attributes who others seem to like that you don't connect with then honestly, what's the point of this?

Everything HN readers know about choosing successful founders comes from reading material written by you guys and seeing your results in action. The facts were never going to be radically different in that our primary criteria would be things like "company name has lots of strong letters" or "that guy has a power beard", no the things discussed in the comments were stuff we've read from VCs and are effectively regurgitating. Nothing revolutionary there.

The true value I thought you were going for was to take the bias of "do I connect with this guy" out of it. But instead you say you think he's great, companies great, but just don't connect with him. You don't need us to be able to find great people with great ideas that you do connect with.

You've taken a system that would remove your own intuition bias, and then created a step at the last minute where the only apparent intent appears to be to introduce that bias. :/

I sort of hope this is just a polite "this isn't a business decision. It would just suck to work with this guy and I'm successful enough to not have to do things that suck for money", in which case fair enough.


I am not sure feeling uncomfortable around someone or not having a connection with them is a reasonable excuse for a company that wants to encourage diversity and reaching out to disadvantaged groups. Racial bias in workplaces is largely the result of people hiring those who are most like themselves. I think if your goal is to really to be inclusive, you should take people on their merits and abilities, not on the minutia of how you personally feel about them.

Disclaimer: I didn't vote for Pinboard and hadn't even heard of them before this voting.


Very much agreed. Allowing vague, largely unexamined "gut feels" to drive decision making is antithetical to what we want tech culture to be, and also precludes objectivity. It is by a very wide margin the most common tool used to restrict diversity - in all its forms - and keep something a closed club by making its decisions vague, nonspecific, and by its nature unchallengeable either from within or without.

Gut feels are often valuable signals, but without further examination and specificity they are a gigantic bias bomb waiting to explode.

An organization that widely permits this type of vague assertion to pass unchallenged is institutionally incapable of improving inclusivity or diversity, and one has to wonder if it's institutionally interested in the same at all.

Some concrete questions: what is YC's policy on ensuring employees/partners have received training re: bias? Have YC decision makers all participated in de-biasing education? If not, how does this reflect on YC's apparent dedication to improving diversity in our field?


Wouldn't it have been a great experiment to see if a company Kevin didn't like did well in the batch?

If the point was to experiment I think YC missed out on a big opportunity.


Yeah I have to admit that this puzzled me as well. I think Kevin and the rest of the YC folks have every right to do whatever they please with this process, and am not bothered in the least by the fact that Pinboard wasn't chosen, but reading Kevin's explanation somehow made me think that some of those WOULD be reasons to select it.

Pinboard is in a relatively unique situation amongst all the other companies in that it is beyond finding product-market fit -- it's got an established userbase and a founder with proven chops and a large following. It seems like he is in the exact position where something like YCF can help pour gasoline on the things that he's doing that are already working.

I understand YC's tremendous focus on finding a right fit with founders when they join the regular batches. But, at least at first, it's not entirely clear that this criterion should hold as much weight with YCF. They'll talk less frequently, invest less money, etc. -- maybe the optimal strategy for YCF is in fact focusing much more on the present stage of the company and whether or not the little bit of cash/partner influence can cause an inflection??? Who knows, really... but it sure sounded like accepting Pinboard -- not in spite but because there were these issues with Maciej -- would make it an especially interesting case to try out.


The right thing to do here would have been to award the fellowship to the voting winners and then amend your rules to exclude "applicants about whom we have bad vibes" going forward.

Retroactively doing so, sure, is your right but it's fairly underhanded.


Now, I'm just waiting the next hilarous talk Maciej will give about this YC case.


"I don't like him so we didn't pick him"


Let's be honest here, this is all because of Maciej's hilarious twitter account...


"Pay the man his money"

Is what I would say.


Especially considering the amount we're talking about is peanuts, by VC (and YC) standards. Some startups pay more for a chair.


> More opinionated software should exist in the world...

"...but we aren't going to be the ones to help that happen."


The 'ol Bay area bait-n-switch. Honor isn't something you 'prototype and revise'.


>> "Like all our experiments at YC, we design them to adapt as things happen, and they certainly did here."

Hi Kevin... :-)

Understand your feelings and agree with the choice in the context of YC/YCF - but to me this is a massive opportunity to grow YC beyond what it is now; to me, it feels that instead of looking for a way make it work, YC bailed out.

To that end, on a trial basis, I'm offering to start YCX, which would allow YC and the community to work together to make this possible.

While I wouldn't pretend to know the all the answers now (or in the future) - I deeply believe in bridging the gaps between communities to form new communities that in the end will be in sum stronger, more diverse, create opportunities, etc.

Very possible that I've misunderstood, but the main issues I'm seeing are: (1) how YCX relationships would work with YC/YCF and (2) insuring that the way capital is provided works for YC, the startups, and community.

To that end, to me, some solutions might be to have the funds provided by the community via non-equity crowdfunding, have YCX only mentors, allow YC/YCF to opt-in to relationships with YCX fellows, etc.

Happy to talk more offline if you're open to trying to make this work; also, completely understand if it's not a path YC wants to consider too.


I can't speak for anyone else, but I voted for Pinboard and only Pinboard because I wanted to maximize the impact of my vote for Pinboard.

If that's what you mean when you say 'the votes for Pinboard look dramatically different from the votes for the other startups', then I think you've unfairly confused my deliberate intentions with 'vote brigading'.

Things turned out exactly how I expected they would here, but it's still disappointing.


I'm in the same situation; I lurk HN daily, and voted for Pinboard only.

I hope single-votes are not being called out as part of some 'vote brigading' conspiracy :\


Throw me in this pool. I lurk frequently, rarely comment or contribute.

But I made a single vote, explicitly for Pinboard, and had not seen his tweets. I probably look like a voting scheme. But it was a legitimate and intentional vote because I believe in Maciej and what he could do to grow his business and improve YC through the fellowship.


> Things turned out exactly how I expected they would here, but it's still disappointing.

Yeah, this is disappointing, but also completely predictable.


same voting pattern for me as well, 1 vote for pinboard


I voted for Maciej because I admire what he's doing and I'd like to think that I "get" him (though I don't know him personally). I cut my teeth in this industry working at a startup that's still bootstrapped and profitable, and I share his vision of building an internet to "CONNECT KNOWLEDGE, PEOPLE, AND CATS" [1], instead of whatever insane internet people are dreaming of these days. Yes, it's a bit of a political thing, and while it might be a protest against the current industry culture (can you honestly blame us?), I don't think it's just a joke either. I think Maciej has a great intuitive sense of how people, technology, and culture interact, and he's good at expressing that; his ventures are certainly worth spending the equivalent of a single employee's recruitment fee.

Is the true YC? For all the talk about funding radical new ideas in their normal batches, they fund a lot of companies that look and act alike. So, when YC backs out of its own experiment because it turns out unexpected, it's not really disappointing; it's just a reminder of how seemingly conformist its attitudes are.

[1] http://idlewords.com/talks/web_design_first_100_years.htm


To make this right just make an additional YCF spot for Maciej, call it the "People's Choice" award, and be done with it. You can't hold a popularity contest and deny the popular candidate. Curate from the rest, sure, but people are always going to feel ripped off if the popular winner gets arbitrarily disqualified. That's why 'people's choice' awards exist. Plus if this is an experiment, why not run with the unexpected?


This is chock full of platitudes and obfuscation. Pinboard appears to have participated in good faith, as you admitted yourself. It seems rather like HN/YC had never intended to allow Pinboard to win, even before any votes had been cast.

If your aim with this contest was to pilot something new and unique that might further distinguish YC, I suppose you've done just that, even if in the opposite direction. Sometimes karma is more than just a column in your database.

(Disclaimer: I did not vote.)


I understand the concerns you all have, but I thought the experiment was to see what would happen with some startups selected by HN. By disqualifying one of the submissions based on an interview, you're testing something slightly different.


If you're 'sad' and 'really wanted it to work,' well, why isn't it happening? Do you have the power to make it happen? The voters apparently didn't.


There are two sides to an investor/mentoring/incubating relationship.


> I presume this is the effect of Pinboard's (deservedly) large audience being asked to promote the post, e.g. at https://twitter.com/Pinboard/status/727255170594131968 and https://twitter.com/Pinboard/status/719599297604390912.

Rather than presuming, you could check your logs and subtract the votes from users who arrived at the thread via one of these referring URLs. What do the vote totals look like if you do that?


I voted for Pinboard during "Apply HN", then went about my business. I don't refresh the HN homepage every 5 minutes (well, not every day...) so there was a big chance I would miss the second poll if it hadn't been for the Pinboard twitter feed. In fact, at this point there is a nagging suspicion that someone hoped less people would notice the second poll and results could "normalise"... The "voting ring" smear is just clutching at straws, really.


at this point there is a nagging suspicion that someone hoped less people would notice the second poll and results could "normalise"

I exchanged a few emails with Dan, and based on those I can say that this is definitely not what happened. Rather to the contrary, he was concerned that having a poll among "leading candidates" would make it too easy to game.


You've just reinforced the point you're trying to dismiss.


How so? Reference to voting rings is clutching at straws... because it's something Dan was explicitly concerned about last week?


He got more votes in the first round alone than the "winner" in the second round, and twice that amount the second time. The will of the community was pretty clear the first time around, and it only got stronger when new hoops were added; this not just from votes but from comment threads. Invoking "voting fraud" is clutching at straws. Kevin didn't like him - fine, let's just say so and move on, it's their money and all, but don't try to hide behind some sort of hacking (eh) or fraud that never was.


> But then two things happened. First, Kevin and Maciej had the good-faith conversation described at https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11441978, and Kevin reluctantly concluded that Maciej doesn’t want to participate in the program as intended

How in the world do you come to that conclusion from THIS:

> Kevin: If you were seriously interested, I'd be delighted to work with you.

> Maciej: I feel like after seven years, I have a pretty good sense of what bookmarking/archiving needs people have, but am at the limits of what I can personally build. If the votes swing my way, I'd be happy to have a good-faith conversation with you.

And then how do you reconcile this statement from above:

> Kevin was excited by the prospect of working with [pinboard].

with this from below?

> tptacek: You weren't turning the knobs to see what would change. The outcome was clear, you didn't like it, and so you prevented it from happening.

> Kevin: Yes. I wasn't arguing against that.

if you wanted to work with Maceij, and he said he'd be happy to have a good faith conversation with you if he won, then why would you a) not like the outcome or b) prevent it from happening?

I don't really care who won, but these claims have no internal consistency and literally don't make any sense.


If you removed votes from all accounts newer than the day you announced this entire program, what would the tally be? If I had to guess it would have still won.


Lol vote brigading. You mean... people showing up and voting for what they want?


No, I mean soliciting upvotes, which is against the rules (and culture) of HN. We discussed this elsewhere in this thread.


FWIW, I don't have any dog in this race; I'm just a HN reader who liked Pinboard and voted for it.

Is it possible to address the points raised by `beeboop' and `killwhitey' above with the data available -- would long-term HN members have been enough to put Pinboard over the top ? (i.e. the vote brigading had no substantive effect and it was just the phone conversation that prompted the decision)


Even easier: how many up votes did the original "Apply HN" for Pinboard get before he sent out his first tweet about it?

If it's more than what one of the "winners" got in the second poll, then the whole argument is over.


To do or not to do the following is of course entirely your / YCF's prerogative, but: would you perhaps consider providing a more quantitative answer to 'toyg's query below - in particular: "Even easier: how many up votes did the original "Apply HN" for Pinboard get before he sent out his first tweet about it?"

Surely this is not hard to check? I think many people are justifiably curious, given that "vote brigading" is in my mind an accusation. (I understand that the decision has already been made and that it will not be changed.)


>when we dug into the data we found that the votes for Pinboard look dramatically different from the votes for the other startups.

What do the totals look like if you filter out new accounts, or accounts with little karma?


"but when we dug into the data we found that the votes for Pinboard look dramatically different from the votes for the other startups."

Examining the data, we found that there were oddly more votes cast for Pinboard than the other contestants, which smelled fishy so they were disqualified. Seriously, don't ask for people to vote for things and then ignore the results. Just don't ask them to vote in the first place.


Thanks for the transparency as always, Dan. It's well appreciated.


>transparency

I hope this is sarcasm.


This "vote brigading" thing is ridiculous. Are we to believe that no one else involved tweeted or otherwise publicized their candidacy?


Let's be clear; this wasn't just somebody tweeting about their Apply HN. It was explicit and repeated requests to vote specifically for him, going to a couple of orders of magnitude more followers than a normal person would have. What would be ridiculous is for the results to be determined by who has the biggest social networking presence.


> It was explicit and repeated requests to vote specifically for him

Where, exactly? His Twitter feed contains a single link to each of his original Apply HN and the later poll (plus one link-less joke about the poll). I mean, yes, he has a big following, and yes, he promoted his application (which everyone involved admits he would not have done if he had thought it was against the rules). But "explicit and repeated" makes it sound like a lot more than one (humorous) tweet per poll.

And it's not like he used a personal account, either. That one doesn't mention it at all. It's just @Pinboard - and frankly, it would be weird if you didn't think current customers would want to support you in growing your business.


Three tweets that contained a link that solicited votes, which is almost certainly three more than the median applicant. It'd be more if you also counted links without the requests to vote.

https://twitter.com/Pinboard/status/727255170594131968 https://twitter.com/Pinboard/status/720802750317993984 https://twitter.com/Pinboard/status/719599297604390912

And sorry, claiming they were just jokes can't be a free pass. Everything about that application was framed as a joke from start to finish.


Dude, any election is a social thing. To pretend otherwise is to kid yourself. If you don't want a popularity contest across social networks, don't have public voting - simple as.


If they did so publicly, you can tell dang about it...


That's not really relevant; I don't think it's our job, or anyone else's, to police the internet for 'vote brigading.' In this case, it was never against the stated rules.


It's definitely against HN's rules and is in the FAQ:

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsfaq.html


That specifically refers to submitted stories.

I think it is dodgy to have an online election, and then disqualify participants for mentioning it to people who might want to vote for them.


I can't reply to dan's reply to this, for some reason, but regarding "I don't see a distinction there. It refers to submissions, and Apply HN posts were submissions, a.k.a. stories in HN's sense (posts that aren't comments).", well, it also says that users should vote for "a story" because it's "intellectually interesting", which is not a rationale (or in the case of "story" a referring term) that seems to make much sense in the present case. So it makes a lot of sense, I think, to construe it as referring to submissions in the narrower sense.

Regardless, the tweets in question were around a long time before Pinboard was disqualified without expectation. The first one certainly predates kevin's phone call, for instance.

(And of course one of the tweets in question was contained a link to the general poll, which was not a submission of Maciej's, and the other, technically, was a link to all the Apply HN posts, not to his.)


I don't see a distinction there. It refers to submissions, and Apply HN posts were submissions, a.k.a. stories in HN's sense (posts that aren't comments).

Certainly it never crossed my mind that the rules about voting rings would be any different than with regular posts. HN users are passionately opposed to the voting system getting gamed; we'd have been skinned alive if we allowed it. But tptacek makes a good point about that not being obvious to everybody.


Do you think I would have consciously sabotaged my chances by breaking this rule had I been aware of it? Especially knowing that YC would be looking for any pretext to disqualify me?

Your rules about voting rings are not public. I think that you're so used to modding the site that you forget this, but take a look at the letter of what it actually says in the FAQ.


No, I don't think that for a minute.

I'm confused by your second paragraph—I just don't get it—but if there's a way to make the FAQ clearer I'd like to. There's no question that I have trouble seeing this stuff from an outside viewpoint. I'm too immersed in it.

By the way, I didn't reply to the bit about the voting rules because I think it's the only important point in your post; it isn't. It's just something that I knew how to respond to. I'm trying to write something in response to the larger substance, but am having trouble because my feelings (bad, and sad) have the better of me right now. I'll get there.


You've managed to personally lose an astonishing amount of credibility, and this has managed to do a shocking amount of damage to the YC brand. I literally just came from three different bars (hey, it was a good night) in SF and overheard no less than five different conversations about this clusterfuck. Obviously YC/HN doesn't give a shit (because sama could easily drop 20k like a rock and not care), but it looks super bad.


Holy crap. You need to go to different bars!


Why do think I kept leaving!?


Haha, this may be the best comment of all. For once, I'd just like to go to a bar and talk about Trump. Is that too much to ask? :)


The post he provided a link to wasn't his Apply HN submission; it was the run-off poll.

I told him when I noticed the same Twitter post that it was going to cause problems (too late!), and he was genuinely surprised.


He did also provide an earlier link to all the Apply HN submissions (not his alone).


Right - I agree with you, in general. I just think that this particular situation is a bit different, and Apply HN implies that there are folks outside HN applying /to/ HN. Those folks outside HN may have no idea about the voting rules, and it also isn't clear, even to long-time HN users, that this wasn't a different situation entirely.


Yup! And I don't intend to ever do that.

But that says nothing about the Apply HN situation. That's new, had a different set of rules (hell, you wrote a polling solution), and the regular guidelines didn't necessarily apply. That they did should have been made clear.

Again, nothing against it this time, since it's all up to you guys - just feedback for the next time.


Why is the FAQ not linked within the Guidelines page (https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html)? To me, that is a guideline... you wouldn't look at the FAQ before posting something.


No transparency here. How disappointing.


Hi guys. Alex from Gresham Dollar (now Greshm Dollar) here. It was a pleasure to share my project with all of you. Great questions and lively discussion from the HN community. Thanks to all of you who participated.

Thanks to HN and YC for putting this together. I doubt I would have been noticed if I'd applied in the conventional way.

Congratulations and good luck to the three startups who are getting funded!

Back to work.


Keep at it. Your idea is crazy in the best possible way and I truly hope it works out. I voted for you.


I'm really rooting for AutoMicroFarm. I'm in the process of moving from the Triangle area, with a large interest in aquaponics. It's very surreal how similar our paths could have been...


How did YC not see this Pinboard thing coming?

Obviously when you put something valuable up to an internet vote someone, somewhere is going to manipulate the results in some sort of fashion. Did anyone honestly think the opposite was going to happen? Did people honestly think the internet was going to play fair for the first time in history? That an online vote was going to be taken seriously?

And how do you respond like this after Maciej explicitly said it was a protest vote? How could you not see this turning Maciej/Pinboard into a martyr? You're only adding fuel to the fire and proving everything he says about Silicon Valley right.

This whole thing was played so obviously wrong from the beginning it feels like a publicity stunt. How can people who practically control this industry understand the internet so poorly? I'm honestly at a loss for words.


Did people honestly think the internet was going to play fair for the first time in history? That an online vote was going to be taken seriously?

Of course not. And if you read the original announcement, it was very clear: "to answer one question I know will come up: Upvotes are an important factor but they're too brittle to rely on exclusively; doing so would encourage the wrong kind of trying to game the system."

Maciej tried to game the system, and got the answer he deserved: "Nice try, but we told you that we weren't going to let you do that". Actually, I think he got more than he deserved: If I had been in Kevin's place I wouldn't have bothered with the ad-hoc phone interview.


From that same post:

So we're going to gauge community interest both by upvotes and comments, and in case of doubt I'll make the final call—or better, figure out a way to put the final call to the community.

Pinboard was the most discussed entrant as well as the highest voted. I also don't think it's foolish of me to think that a ranking based on "discussion" or "comments" is just a glorified poll with more subjectivity, and just as vulnerable to manipulation (if not more).

It was also implied a value judgement would only be made in case of doubt, seems like Pinboard was doubtless the front runner. Very unfortunate they didn't manage to put the final call to the community though.

As an aside, i'd just like to echo how odd it is to see people on Hacker News advocate against people gaming the system


Pinboard was the most discussed entrant as well as the highest voted

I'll concede that it could be misunderstood, but I'm sure that by "comments" they meant the content of the discussion, not just the number of comments.


with the benefit of hindsight, I'm regretting not applying with Startupy McStartupface


How can people who practically control this industry understand the internet so poorly?

They've consistently failed to understand even the basics of community moderation here, permitting a cesspool of racism, bigotry, and "meritocracy" (a word which originated as a dystopic warning) to grow to the point that it's beyond parody in most other corners of the internet. The idea that they know anything about human interaction on the internet is a sad joke at best.


Congratulations to everyone who made the final 20 and especially to the three winners. It was a really interesting, if some what flawed, experiment. Being able to get access to the raw pitch data is really invaluable.


Offering Pinboard $20k but NOT a YCF slot seems like the most unambiguously correct thing to do. Sadly, I do not have $20k to give.

(and then the correct thing for him to do is either politely turn it down, or donate it to a charity or something of mutual agreeableness)


I disagree. Offering him $20k would simply be rewarding him for being obnoxious. I refuse to accept that he honestly believed that YC was running a $20k contest to see who could solicit the most votes via twitter, but that's exactly what he's pretending that this was.


As opposed to a $20k contest to see who could solicit the most votes via word-of-mouth in the Bay Area? Because that would have been totally fine, of course.

> rewarding him for being obnoxious.

What about rewarding honest HN community members who voted for him in good faith? Ignoring their wishes is a big slap in the face; we've been reminded that we're all just plebes and real power will always lie with Big (White) Men and their gut feelings.


As opposed to a $20k contest to see who could solicit the most votes via word-of-mouth in the Bay Area? Because that would have been totally fine, of course.

Of course not. But I haven't seen any evidence that anyone was doing that.

honest HN community members who voted for him in good faith?

How many such people exist? I don't think anyone knows. Unfortunately the vote spam which he solicited via twitter overwhelmed any other signal.

Even if this was supposed to be entirely decided on the basis of votes -- which is explicitly not what was planned from the start -- when people cheat they normally get disqualified. You don't say "this Olympic athlete took steroids, but maybe he should keep his medal... after all, he might have won even without the drugs".


> > honest HN community members who voted for him in good faith?

> How many such people exist?

raises hand

Hi, my account is 3000 days old today, only a little less old than your own. I went back and checked and it turns out that I didn't vote for Pinboard, but that's largely because I hadn't been active on HN in quite a while and I didn't think it was necessary. I did voice support for Maciej in the comments there.

I genuinely wanted to see him go through the program ("like a bowling ball through a python"), and not just for entertainment purposes. I think it would have been a valuable cross-pollination for everyone involved.

I've generally felt that HN -- and to a greater degree, YC -- aren't particularly welcoming towards people like me. I got fed up enough that I wrote a news reader to mine HN for articles just so that I wouldn't be tempted to visit HN as often, and when that broke a while back, I never bothered to fix it. Literally the only reason I'm here now is because Maciej mentioned it on his Twitter account. I've always been an outsider here. Seeing YC accept another, more successful outsider would have been nice.

This fiasco has all the scent of cliqueish hostility towards Maciej, you have been non-stop and relentlessly accusing him of being a troll (and you're smart enough to know better than to claim to know someone's psychology better than they do over the internet), and the results stink like a US election.


raises hand

To be clear, I'm not saying that such people do not exist. I'm saying that there's no effective way to estimate their number.


Sure there is. The way has been outlined by `beeboop' and `killwhitey' in this thread, and subsequently by myself. The question have not been answered: if the concern is vote-brigading then the correct result can be determined by looking at accounts that are more than 30 days old.

If the outcome is the same then the twitter-promoting explanation is simply a smokescreen.


There are plenty of people with old accounts who would not have voted for pinboard -- or, for that matter, even been aware that there was a poll happening -- if he had not actively solicited votes on twitter.


...I was about halfway into rebutting this when I realized, you know what, you're right.

I would not have cared at all about some contest on HN for a YC acceptance if it weren't for him mentioning it on Twitter. In fact, I would not have even known it was happening.

And now that I've seen the way both HN and YC has handled this throughout, including the attitude you've had towards his application since the beginning, I wish that he hadn't mentioned it on Twitter at all and my nearly 6-month-long streak of forgetting that HN exists had continued unbroken.

We could probably keep sparring over this, but the results are clearly not going to change and HN does not look any more like a community I want to be a part of than it did so many months ago.


What about by the quality of the discussion in the Apply HN submission? This was (as I understood the original experiment) to be the primary mechanism for selecting finalists.

Pinboard's application had the best discussion.


Dude, the guy got 300+ votes from HN regulars in the first round, before he'd even hit twitter. That's not steroids. It's like "this Olympic athlete won fair and square once, then we decided to change the competition to make it fairer to others, and he won even more, lapping everyone else, but the judge doesn't really like him so he won't get a medal."


How many points did Pinboard get?


Vote totals are live again on the runoff thread: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11615639


Tiny difference in the count, really.


More than all three companies that were funded, combined. Ahem.


So what happened?


He had already got 300+ up-votes the first time around and was the clear runoff "winner", so they added a low-key second poll hoping that some of the later entrants could cut it down to size. People got wind of this blatant rule-bending and gave Pinboard twice the votes he got the first time. So Kevin reluctantly called Maciej, didn't like the sound of his voice, and decided to cut him out regardless, vaguely implying that the voting process had been somehow compromised by a tweet.


He tried to stack the deck by asking his 30,000 twitter followers to vote for him. He got caught. YC decided to be generous and interview him rather than disqualifying him completely. After the interview, YC decided not to invest in his company.


Just to be clear, your opinion is that Maciej deliberately and knowingly cheated?


My opinion is that if you use performance-enhancing drugs, you lose Olympic medals, even if it only happened because you accidentally took the wrong cold medicine while in a foreign country (see Silken Laumann). Maciej should have known that soliciting votes via twitter was against the rules; whether he did know is irrelevant to whether he should be excluded.


You didn't actually answer my question.

When you use a lot of phrases like: "Maciej cheated", "Maciej tried to game the system", "He tried to stack the deck", you don't make it sound like you think he accidentally took cold medicine - you're directly attributing malice to him.


He deliberately took a drug which he knew would improve his athletic performance. He may or may not have known that it was on the banned drugs list.


In that case, I'd recommend switching to phrases like: "Maciej may or may not have cheated", "Maciej may or may not have tried to game the system", "He may or may not have tried to stack the deck" and modifying the rest of the tone of your comments appropriately. tptacek, who knows Maciej personally, seems confident that he did not.

In the comments on the new guideline about gratuitous negativity, the intent seems to be "use the most charitable interpretation". Accusing someone of being dishonest falls outside that.


Nitpicking here: I don't think Silken Laumann lost any Olympic medals, only Pan Am medals if I remember correctly. Not that it makes any difference whatsoever to your point.


Huh, you're quite right. I guess I mentally conflated "Olympic athlete" and "lost medals" into "lost Olympic medals".


Feyman Nano is not doing anything new or innovative. In the materials world this is old technology with a very old spin.


Feynman Nano sounds awesome - anything with the potential to save lives is fantastic. Good for them!


I didn't see this set coming outside Casepad. Interesting. Will be more interesting to see how they do from here on out. One little benefit was that I had never heard of aquaponics until now. That's really neat stuff.


Vishal from WedWell here. Really appreciated the input from everyone who commented, and the votes. We're charging forward. Hopefully you'll see us in the next YC round ;)

Overall liked having an open forum for people to give feedback on our idea. We used some of that feedback to evolve the product, we even got some new clients from HN.

Changes for next year? I'd love the final run off to be a bit more like the final four, where you pit one start-up against another until there are only a few standing. Then YC can pick from the cream of the crop.

Thanks again


Congratulations to the winners!


Disappointed not to see Pikii!


Here's some great feedback: how about we let the winners win and the losers lose?




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