Comment by h4ck_th3_pl4n3t
6 months ago
This incompetence excuse puts YC in a bad spotlight too, because it makes them look like they are funding people with exact zero software development experience.
6 months ago
This incompetence excuse puts YC in a bad spotlight too, because it makes them look like they are funding people with exact zero software development experience.
Isn't YC supposed to offer guidance and sage advice, not just be a cash machine for naive young developers?
They're also supposed to do their due diligence before investing.
Paul Graham once wrote that startups are pretty hard to game unlike academia for top grades or a big company for promotions.
In a twist of fate, YC itself seems to be gamed like those broken companies.
https://www.paulgraham.com/before.html / https://archive.vn/UKky8
1 reply →
No. YC just throws money at the wall and sees what sticks. They fund some trash, and trash people.
Aren't VCs based on the principle of throwing money in as many directions as possible and hoping something turns out to be a unicorn?
That's what they do in practice, but not what they claim to do.
This is what happens when you have people without sufficient domain experience making decisions.
TBH, I know plenty of people with software development experience, who I think are genuinely pretty good at converting ideas to code, but who wouldn't have any idea what Apache or GPL mean.
Every init-command requires you to define or at least review a license for your project, so I would refrain from calling that one "software development experience".
> because it makes them look like they are funding people with exact zero software development experience.
Being a great software developer does not make you a lawyer (not even a bad lawyer).
You don't need to be a lawyer to understand you can't just copy others' IP without checking if you're allowed to.
By your argument, I can just torrent moviez and appz because I'm not a lawyer and can't be bothered with minutae of copyright law.
> By your argument, I can just torrent movies and appz becuase I'm not a lawyer and can't be bothered with minutae of copyright law.
Indeed, there exist people who argue that in many areas law has become so complicated and unclear what is allowed or not that you cannot thus expect from ordinary citizens to obey the laws anymore - even if these citizens are willing to.
Thus politicians do have an obligation to make the laws as clear, logical and comprehensible as possible, otherwise they loose their legitimization of expecting citizens to obey them.
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Forking an open source repo and claiming you built something in 4 days does not make you a great software developer either though.
> claiming you built something in 4 days
That is why when such a marketing claim comes up, the first question to ask is from which base they built the respective product in 4 days, and which kind of additional value the respective company added during this process.