Idlewords himself said that he is hoping to attract protest votes in that Apply thread. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11441720 https://news.ycombinator.c

Idlewords himself said that he is hoping to attract protest votes in that Apply thread. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11441720 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11441720 It's necessary to have been around for a decade to understand what the protest vote is, exactly. PG's advice circa 2009 was "get to ramen profitability", which is what idlewords did. AFAIK, PG has never reversed himself on that stance. The protest vote might be something along the lines of "YC now encourages startups to chase valuations rather than get to ramen profitability". It's unclear to me that the latter is true, but that's certainly the perception.