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Paul, thank you for adding your point of view, and I understand that it was a bad surprise to hear the bad news to late. But if I understood correctly: 1. he

Paul, thank you for adding your point of view, and I understand that it was a bad surprise to hear the bad news to late. But if I understood correctly: 1. he was not planning on applying to YC, you asked him to 2. he had a good living situation and local contacts, and you asked him to move to SV 3. he had a functioning company wit income and co-founders, and you asked him to do something (move to SV) that blew up the company As he makes all these sacrifices, in a very short schedule, you decided that you no longer wanted to fund him, as he turned up, suitcase in hand. It is fine that you did not want to fund him into your group, and that you have well-tested criteria about co-founders. But the guy made sacrifices for you and YC, and from what I understand, you / YC dumped him in the last minute. To me, relationships are built on moments of truth. (Not my phrase, I heard it from the CEO of a health insurance company.) What do you do when things are going badly, rather things are going well. Perhaps you are being modest, but I cannot see any mention of anything you did to help him, now that he was in a foreign city with no connections and no co-founders, trying to follow your instructions. "Apply for the next YC" does not count as help, and the ability to mention that you had accepted him previously does not count as help either (although I am sure he used it in his self-introductions). Good on him for finding funding, and of course he is a good entrepreneur for picking himself up and continuing, and you are a good spotter of entrepreneurs for selecting him in the first place. But to me, this story does not reflect well on YC.

pg 16y ago
No, you have the story wrong. We didn't push him to apply to YC. And he definitely didn't split up the company for us. He hadn't yet done it when he arrived in SF, and when we learned he was planning to, we advised him not to.
- idiopathic 16y ago
  I am sure I do have the story wrong, if only because I was not there. I just went on what was posted so, could the original author of the story either correct the story, or correct PG? For "We didn't push to apply to YC", the original posting had said "I hadn't really considered an incubator like YC because we already had a product, customers, and whatnot and I thought I really just needed cash to hire a bunch of people. But one of the guys at breakfast really liked what we were doing and wrote an intro email to Harj, one of the partners at YC. It was mid-May so the application deadline for the Summer 2010 session had already passed. But Harj and I had coffee the next day, and he liked what he saw so he invited me to come interview for late acceptance." And for "he definitely didn't split up the company for us", I was going on "So the day before YC started, I sent Paul and the gang an email letting them know that my team was changing. I didn't think it would be a huge problem. I (naively) thought that they'd just give me advice on how to navigate the new situation. But alas, Paul was not happy with the changes and told me it might put us in jeopardy of getting funded by them." In other words he did not say that you had told him the company should stay put, you had told him you would not fund him, now that the company had split up in trying to fulfil YC's requirement for SV location. By the way, I am entirely aware of a third possibility, i.e. that you are both right, and that two different people can have correct but different memories of the same situation. But the story as it was written did not make YC look good, even though the author is promoting it with cheeriness as coming through adversity.
  - NewMonarch 16y ago
    That's a battle I just don't care about winning. Times were crazy, and missteps and miscommunications may or may not have happened. But I've got nothing but love for these people. Going forward, I'm way more interested in being "a guy with $1.5m looking for top people to build an amazing company with" than "the guy that got kicked out of YC". Thank for going to bat for me, though! :)
  - pg 16y ago
    "In other words he did not say that you had told him the company should stay put, you had told him you would not fund him, now that the company had split up in trying to fulfil YC's requirement for SV location." You have misinterpreted what he wrote. Specifically the phrase "now that the company had split up" is false. The company had not yet split up. He had (at most) a verbal agreement with his cofounders that they would split up the company in the future, but they had not acted on it yet. Our advice was not to.
    - idiopathic 16y ago
      My apologies for misinterpreting.

pg 16y ago

No, you have the story wrong. We didn't push him to apply to YC. And he definitely didn't split up the company for us. He hadn't yet done it when he arrived in SF, and when we learned he was planning to, we advised him not to.

idiopathic 16y ago
I am sure I do have the story wrong, if only because I was not there. I just went on what was posted so, could the original author of the story either correct the story, or correct PG? For "We didn't push to apply to YC", the original posting had said "I hadn't really considered an incubator like YC because we already had a product, customers, and whatnot and I thought I really just needed cash to hire a bunch of people. But one of the guys at breakfast really liked what we were doing and wrote an intro email to Harj, one of the partners at YC. It was mid-May so the application deadline for the Summer 2010 session had already passed. But Harj and I had coffee the next day, and he liked what he saw so he invited me to come interview for late acceptance." And for "he definitely didn't split up the company for us", I was going on "So the day before YC started, I sent Paul and the gang an email letting them know that my team was changing. I didn't think it would be a huge problem. I (naively) thought that they'd just give me advice on how to navigate the new situation. But alas, Paul was not happy with the changes and told me it might put us in jeopardy of getting funded by them." In other words he did not say that you had told him the company should stay put, you had told him you would not fund him, now that the company had split up in trying to fulfil YC's requirement for SV location. By the way, I am entirely aware of a third possibility, i.e. that you are both right, and that two different people can have correct but different memories of the same situation. But the story as it was written did not make YC look good, even though the author is promoting it with cheeriness as coming through adversity.
- NewMonarch 16y ago
  That's a battle I just don't care about winning. Times were crazy, and missteps and miscommunications may or may not have happened. But I've got nothing but love for these people. Going forward, I'm way more interested in being "a guy with $1.5m looking for top people to build an amazing company with" than "the guy that got kicked out of YC". Thank for going to bat for me, though! :)
- pg 16y ago
  "In other words he did not say that you had told him the company should stay put, you had told him you would not fund him, now that the company had split up in trying to fulfil YC's requirement for SV location." You have misinterpreted what he wrote. Specifically the phrase "now that the company had split up" is false. The company had not yet split up. He had (at most) a verbal agreement with his cofounders that they would split up the company in the future, but they had not acted on it yet. Our advice was not to.
  - idiopathic 16y ago
    My apologies for misinterpreting.