Tell HN: Winners of Apply HN for YC Fellowship 3

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

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.

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?

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.

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

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... )

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.

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".

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.

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.

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

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.

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.

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

But Maciej is right.

>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.

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?

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.

"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.

> 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.

>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.

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.

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.

> 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'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

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

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.

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

>transparency

I hope this is sarcasm.

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.

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

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

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.

Tiny difference in the count, really.

So what happened?