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I'm starting to feel conflicted about these YC deals for priority API access. Yodlee is notoriously expensive and not particularly developer friendly. It's gr
by jgilliam 16y ago
I'm starting to feel conflicted about these YC deals for priority API access. Yodlee is notoriously expensive and not particularly developer friendly. It's great YC is lessening that burden for their companies, but it's starting to create a competitive advantage that undermines core hacker ethics.
What I'd like to see is YC working with the Yodlees of the world to make their APIs more available to all startups.
Don't turn YC into the next Harvard.
- mwerty 16y agoWhy is it in YC's interest to do so?
- citricsquid 16y agoIf everyone has access more people will play around and/or be able to create things. Having an idea and applying to YC with "I want API access" probably won't work too well, even if they do "invest in people".
- rewind 16y agoAngels/VCs are about return on investment, not making it easy for other other startups to compete with their portfolio companies.
- pg 16y agoThis deal will tend to make that happen. A lot of companies have such high thresholds to use their APIs that they prevent potential customers from getting off the ground. But if deals like this can show them that lowering the thresholds is in their interest, they'll lower them for everyone.
- forza 16y agoI think it's fair from a hacker ethics perspective as long as it doesn't make it directly harder for others to do the same thing i.e. by being exclusive in some way.
- tptacek 16y agoI like how we can have this comment on the same day as a post titled "Ask HN: Is Y Combinator basically just communism?".