Sounds like the Bill Gates school of IT. The YC startup community has a different set of social mores which emphasize usefulness of the product, a certain trendiness with respect to what else is happening in the current web 2.0 world. We are not really the budding monopolist types. Yes, there is a certain timidness in the YC community about the dark art of business. But that's mainly because most of us have never worked :)
Well, I've worked in the business world. But I have no interest in "assertively competitive business practices". Most of the managers I worked for who were comfortable with that type of approach were exactly the reason I wanted to escape into the startup world and never look back at corporate life again. So, if you want to call that 'timid', go ahead. I'd rather do my own thing, make a good product and try avoid "doing evil" as much as I can. This probably sounds cliched or like I'm trying to win some brownie points but it's actually how I think. It's not worth it for me to live in that kind of "assertively competitive" way that I see my father and his colleagues living - or working, I should say. That feels like the old way of doing things.
