Comment by shombaboor

People look at the top 5 YC success stories and think every company they fund is of that standard. In reality they "graduate" 500-1000 startups every year. They aren't all winners. In fact I'd wager Pear AI is a lot closer to the norm in terms of quality and competency than, say, Stripe or Airbnb.

there is a culture of "gaming" that is in fact promoted by YC. one of the questions they had was to show an instance where the founders "hacked" or "gamed" a system.

ie, game the test, game the admission, game everything. and some folks see this as "hustle".

eventually their own process gets gamed.

gaming incentivises a culture of "pretension" - you dont know sh* but you fake it. fake it til you make it. copy code-repos, trample over licenses, whatever, who cares as long as you are getting ahead.

I think it speaks to beginner mistakes on the part of the founders.

There are some exceptions but the typical demo day is absolutely stitched together from other peoples’ work. The difference is most hide this fact, instead of working in the clear on “open source” without understanding that it is meant to be a contribution from you to the community, because to finance bros that sounds like a joke.

The whole thing has gotten so washed out that they either thought that this is what people actually do, or they thought no one was going to look at their repo (for a coding product!).

YC now reminds me of those tech influencer frat houses.

Where it's all about the hustle, founder mode, the scene and whatever you can get away with to make money and take advantage of people.