← Back to context

Comment by gpderetta

6 months ago

"we are sorry we got caught"

I would be running for the hills if I were YC. This is the kind of attitude that ends up in lawsuits.

  • YC is the company that (to this day!) has Yotta - a borderline scam to take advantage of financially-illiterate people - on their website after the whole thing has completely blown up and most customers lost their savings: https://www.ycombinator.com/companies/yotta

    Oh, and now they have their own rendition of the "Aviator" game often advertised by unregulated Eastern-European online casinos: https://members.withyotta.com/moonshot/. You can't make this shit up!

    I wrote off YC after this. Maybe early on it was a mark of quality and good due-diligence, but now I'd argue it's the outright opposite - if it's funded by YC, buyer beware.

    • Did you not understand what YC was? They're essentially an investment bank that doesn't accept new clients. They make money, they're not a charity. Quality only matters insofar as it drives sales and doesn't create liabilities.

      10 replies →

  • I thought tech companies were supposed to move fast and break stuff.

    • I think that phrase was coined in an era when the tech sector moved so fast that the prevailing law couldn't keep up. It caught up somewhat, but obviously there's still much leeway for improvement. Break all the wrong habits, rigid conventions and old traditions you want, just play along with the governing laws.

      9 replies →

    • > I thought tech companies were supposed to move fast and break stuff.

      This mentality is relatively new. Or more like invented by Facebook and got marketed the heck by PRs and marketing firms.

      And now we have people who code before they think.

      1 reply →

  • So what?

    YC doesn't invest that much into any individual company and that's the most they would lose in the worst case scenario. So even if they behave badly they have a capped risk but unlimited upside

    They're far more likely to just fail for other reasons, lawsuit is not going to happen regardless

  • Doesn't matter if you already made your money. And YC-funded companies are not YC. This is how business has always worked since the dawn of capitalism. All hugely successful businesses do illegal things.