Comment by wbharding
5 years ago
As much as the parent comment strained credibility, this double-down (posted exactly 10 minutes after the original) breaks it. Seriously, how many $XB fintech founders are out there, waiting to tell their salacious tales about one of the most transparent and accountable individuals on HN?
It's OK, come out $XB fintech founders, it's safe for your temp accounts here...at least until the moderators get here and start checking the IP addresses.
It's not that surprising there are many founders lurking on HN. Many people who are famous in the tech world comment here once in a while. It's not a stretch to imagine that a lot of people from that demographic are active but silent users/consumers.
Two unrelated co-founders of multi-billion dollar fintech making anonymous accounts to comment here within 10 minutes of each other seems extremely unlikely to happen organically. Consider that the second one is a reply comment to the first. What would have to be true for this to be organic is:
1. The first person arrives organically, which is plausible.
2. The second person sees their comment within 10 minutes of it being posted.
3. Decides that they are going to respond, and respond anonymously.
4. Makes an anonymous account.
5. Writes the comment
All within 10 minutes. Consider further that if this were legit, and you were the founder of a multi billion dollar tech company, would you write any comment like this that quickly? Wouldn't you spend a while reading exactly what it was you were saying to make sure you couldn't be identified, or didn't say the wrong thing? I certainly would.
It's not necessarily implausible that Patrick is secretly an asshole. But it is pretty implausible that these two comments were organic and independent.
I find it unlikely, but not extremely so given the environment (HN). It's very plausible to me that these comments are organic and independent.
We have already had Patrick Collison and Brian Armstrong comment on this post (That I know of). I'm sure that many other high profile people in tech have since seen it as well.
The timeframe is somewhat suss, but I don't find it unbelievable.
E: other people also corroborate somewhat similar stories
- https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29389509
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It's not that unlikely - a lot of us in SV are on HN all of the time. It's the default 'waiting for something' site to check (along with Twitter). If you saw a negative story about a friend you'd be more likely to comment.
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If I get even remotely busy I forget all about HN. I can't imagine anyone trying to run a company wasting time here.
They may know each other? And have asked for support. If you run a large company, you know others.
By that logic, couldn't you just undermine the credibility of all temp accounts by creating your own temp accounts to enthusiastically agree with them?
> By that logic, couldn't you just undermine the credibility of all temp accounts by creating your own temp accounts to enthusiastically agree with them?
False-flag sock-puppetry seems like an interesting combination. I'll have to remember that one.
That was one of the tricks used by Russian trolls throughout the 2016 election and Trump presidency.
Sock puppets obviously sock puppets agreeing with “the other side” so you would convince yourself whatever “side” you were on was obviously correct if the other side needed sock puppets.
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I'd say temp accounts have exactly 0 credibility in themselves.
Fintech is worth trillions. A trillion is a thousand billions. HN/YC is the de facto hub for those. These comments are doubtful (given the money and the strong emotions involved I wouldn't trust a single one of them, positive or otherwise), but this isn't the best arguments against them.
I have always wondered why nothing humorous or fun appears/happens on HN in the comments. This post and subsequent comments are very telling.
It’s because a bunch of nerds are just really really up their own asses.
Do you have showdead enabled? Low quality humor is often downvoted or flagged to oblivion.
(https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2965166) is an example of well-received humor; it's one of the top rated comments.
I'm the real Satoshi, so I have you all beat.
Hi Craig!
I do think it's a competitor too. Just screwing up Stripe.
Lovely to know. $XB fintech founders, swimming in the money, yet they still end up on social media towards the middle of the night (US based at least)
Hahaha. Or something like that.
Eh, founders of coin base and lambda school both posted, people legit post around midnight, even founders of $xb startups.
your reading comprehension is garbage
I mean considering blockchain I think it’s a safe bet there’s a lot more $XB fintechs than you seem to think. Technically X can be 1, mind you
Note that I did not say whether this was a good or bad thing, I just think you’re overthinking billion dollar fintech startup scarcity given a single bitcoin is basically a billion dollars. Those folks are also more likely to identify themselves as fintech during an introduction in my experience, and Stripe undoubtedly plays in the crypto pool, so it fits
> Technically X can be 1
Why restrict ourselves to positive integers here? Hell everyone can be an $XB fintech founder!
I have always wanted to ask this: Is zero a positive number? And do we always round up?
- Possible owner of a mildly successful $xT company.
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Exactly, x tends to be a real number, if it were an integer or a natural number you'd use n.
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or even restrict to integers?
Then we can all be in the club!
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> Technically X can be 1, mind you
or 0.00001