8 ms·

I don’t think some of the claims in this comment are true or in good faith. (We obviously don’t control HN or YC or journalists. If or when my comments on HN ar

by pc 5y ago

I don’t think some of the claims in this comment are true or in good faith. (We obviously don’t control HN or YC or journalists. If or when my comments on HN are ever ranked highly, it’s because they’re upvoted. The internal claims about Stripe are also inconsistent with the data around things like retention. Etc.) All of that said, I’d appreciate hearing from any founders who feel mistreated as part of an acquisition process. We make a fairly significant number of acquisitions and have never heard this directly before.

dataflow 5y ago
> We make a fairly significant number of acquisitions and have never heard this directly before. Isn't the comment about things you (purportedly) did personally? Have you "reached out about an acquisition, mined them for information playing along and then ghosted", or no? You clearly don't deny it but you object that you hadn't "heard" about bad things they claim... you did? For things you're the subject of, shouldn't it be easy to confirm or deny them just based on your own memory? It's not only a bizarre defense on its own, but it's an especially poor one when the claim is that you ghost people, and your reply is that they never tried to talk to you about it! Wouldn't it make more sense to just reject it and say you did not ghost people during acquisition talks, or fish for information under the guise of an acquisition, etc.? Also: > I don’t think some of the claims in this comment are true or in good faith. "Some" leaves a lot to the reader's imagination. Which ones are the ones that are true?
- jimkleiber 5y ago
  The challenge I see with some phrases like "mined them" and "ghosted" is that they can be very subjective statements. The person on the receiving end may perceive the actions as such, whereas the person on the giving end may seem them differently. I don't know what happened, just trying to point out that it is possible that a person felt slighted by certain actions and the person doing them may have no idea the other felt slighted and the person hasn't told them directly. But maybe they did, I don't know in this specific case.
  - dataflow 5y ago
    But in that case he could just deny them and then mention that if it came across differently, he'd love for them to reach out. Not just skip to the second part! Say if someone claims you stole their car (and the alternative could be that you borrowed it with someone else's permission, and they had no idea, so they felt it was stolen), would you reply with "I’d appreciate hearing from anyone who feels I stole their car", or would you first say "I never stole any car, please reach out to me if you know of any such incidents"? Wouldn't it be incredibly bizarre to ask them for a discussion session without first rejecting the premise?!
    - jimkleiber 5y ago
      I think in the example of stealing a car is more binary: stole it or did not steal it. Maybe it could have been borrowed the car or something, but there would probably still be a more objective person in car event. Whereas with ghosting, it could be not replying an email, could be not replying a text, could be some other thing the person missed and doesn't even know they missed. So it's hard to deny if the person isn't even aware they did it. With mining, it could have been asking questions either live or in an email and not knowing the other person felt tricked into sharing more than they had wanted to. I've taught a class called Emotional Self-Defense and one of the things I see the most is that the "attacker" often doesn't know they're attacking and the "victim" assumes it should be obvious the person is attacking. What I'm saying is that he may not have any idea that his actions caused that much pain to the person. I had an ex girlfriend who said to me once, "and you don't respect my boundaries!" And I said what? And she said "yeah, 3 weeks ago when you were juggling the soccer ball and you kicked it to me, I said I didn't wanna play, and then a few minutes later you kicked it to me anyway." I was dumbstruck. I had no idea that she felt so angry/violated by me kicking the soccer ball with her the second time. If I had known, I almost certainly would have stopped. I just didn't receive the signal that strongly. So I'm saying that may be the case here, too. It's also hard sometimes to tell someone in power that what they're doing is hurting or angering oneself.
      - dataflow 5y ago
        I get what you're saying about it being blurry but I don't buy that it affects the ability to reject it. He can quire simply reject it and then explain it might be a misunderstanding or something. Or say it might have happened unintentionally. Or whatever. There are several options here, and refusing to deny the claims doesn't bolster his case. And that's all kinda beside the point - note that the bad part isn't even the ghosting itself for us to quibble over, it's fishing for information under the guise of an acquisition, with or without ghosting. That should be far less blurry and easy to deny head-on, whatever you think of the ghosting.
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
- pc 5y ago
  I’m trying to not overstate my certainty. I have no idea what situation OP could be describing, and I have no recollection of anything along those lines, but I don’t want to definitively state that nothing like it happened over our decade of operation without knowing more about what’s actually being alleged. We obviously never intentionally ghost companies, “mine them for information”, etc. The ecosystem is small and we wouldn’t be able to invest in and acquire companies if we didn’t have a reputation for good behavior. (And we’ve invested in dozens.) But maybe some communication got dropped in some particular case or something? I don’t know.
  - dataflow 5y ago
    Ah okay thanks for clarifying. It's a strong anonymous accusation, so being clear about it on your end helps a lot. I imagine it'll be hard for anyone here to know what happened.
  - bambax 5y ago
    I don't know anything about anything and am one of the very few people here who never founded a $xB fintech, but this strikes me as weak: > The ecosystem is small and we wouldn’t be able to invest in and acquire companies if we didn’t have a reputation for good behavior If you're in a position of power (and money), people will return your calls, regardless of rumors. This is true in all fields, from recruiting to publishing to VC deals, etc. This is also a line of defense used by serial abusers who always (always!) claim that because they have had successful consensual relationships, there can't be cases where they abused the other party. > over our decade of operation Also weak. "We've done so many things. Seen so many people. It's been a long time. I don't recall. Things were different back then." - - - That said -- weak defense is just that -- it doesn't mean offense.
andrew_ 5y ago
Say "Bloody Mary" ten times in the mirror at midnight and she will appear...
temp7536 5y ago
I'm sorry but no. Patrick, we met with you once, Gaybrick and Claire multiple times and opened up a data room to you all. I then emailed you (and the others) three followups over a couple weeks only to see them opened but never replied. Your team then sent targeted cold emails to multiple people on our team. I've validated this experience with multiple founders. You also had Moritz and Sequoia renege on Finix's term sheet after they already had it signed and wired (I guess props to Sequoia for branding it as "giving it away")[1]. You've also had your team get diligence materials from Sequoia and nuke deals. You've clearly crushed it in the business and developer brand space, hats off to you. You want feedback - I (and the broader founder community) just wish you stop the dance of pretending and just admit you all are sharks, and it works for you! Just own it. But I will admit, the HN comment was a bit trolly and written in frustration. But you have to admit - you are documented as proofreading every one of PGs posts, are a huge LP in YC and are friends with a lot of people there. You can't believe that the conspiracy theories are purely in "bad faith".... And yes - this is out of place in HN comments, I'm sorry. But sadly there aren't very many other options. [1] - https://techcrunch.com/2020/03/09/sequoia-is-giving-away-21-million-to-a-payments-startup-it-funded-as-it-walks-away-from-deal/ https://techcrunch.com/2020/03/09/sequoia-is-giving-away-21-...
- wbharding 5y ago
  It bears repeating that exactly 10 minutes after temp7536's accusations were initially posted (2:45:57 UTC), account temp3728 posted (at 2:55:47 UTC) a two paragraph affirmation of temp7536's salacious accusations. Both of these comments were posted almost three hours after the initial post. So, in a 10 minute window 3 hours after the post, we are to believe a second commenter came to HN, saw temp7536's post (presumably after reading OP's narrative?), registered their own fake HN account, verified said account, and wrote a two paragraph post that almost exactly mirrored the original accusations of temp7536? Ok. I have better things to do than Sherlock Holmes a case involving an individual (pc) who I have never met or spoken to, but there is much to be desired in the credibility dept for temp7536 and temp3728.
- austenallred 5y ago
  > You also had Moritz and Sequoia renege on Finix's term sheet after they already had it signed and wired (I guess props to Sequoia for branding it as "giving it away")[1]. How is it reneging on a term sheet if they wire the money? That's fulfilling the terms of the term sheet (despite the fact that term sheets aren't binding), no?
donkleberry 5y ago
When you’re in top position on a Stripe-related post, that has nothing to do with your karma score. It’s because dang has a pin button that he usually uses for himself, but very often is used for exactly the situation you describe when it comes to YC portfolio or celebrities showing up or something (without visual feedback of such a pin, as every single other website with the capability provides). It’s pretty obvious if you keep an eye out for it This can undoubtedly be spun as “HN just trying to bring the right voice to the top of the discussion” but the alternative take is just as valid. It’s not bad faith feedback, it’s HN UX and practices confusing readers as usual
- dataflow 5y ago
  Are you talking about posts, or comments? Do HN celebs get comment boosted by virtue of that fact too? I would've thought it's only for posts.
  - dang 5y ago
    They're talking about comments. I'm not sure what you mean by HN celebs but no, they don't get comment boosted.
    - neom 5y ago
      Technically, you're a HN celeb who gets their comments boosted Daniel!
      - dang 5y ago
        I downweight them sometimes too.
        vasco 5y ago
        It's common to assume the masses are dumb and hiding moderation can make people do the right thing without being influenced by it. For example I imagine if the pin icon was visible there would be comments about it on every story it'd be used in, which you may want to avoid to focus on the topics at hand. With that put I think transparency beats this and a transparent system is more trustworthy and better understood by the users. Just 2c but keep doing the good work.
deleted 5y ago
[deleted]
choppaface 5y ago
I honestly do not see your participation in this thread as good faith. You apologized to the candidate in public—- good start, now do something of consequence in private. But any further involvement from you (especially trying to out the OP) is simply fanning the flamewar. Even HN moderation is helping fan the flames by adding stats and other commentary. This is why I find YC so utterly untrustworthy.
circlefavshape 5y ago
Hey Patrick, I hear you have an estate in Abbeyleix now, which means you have Notions and therefore are A Bad Man. Sorry! Those are just the facts :/

by pc 5y ago

dataflow 5y ago

> We make a fairly significant number of acquisitions and have never heard this directly before. Isn't the comment about things you (purportedly) did personally? Have you "reached out about an acquisition, mined them for information playing along and then ghosted", or no? You clearly don't deny it but you object that you hadn't "heard" about bad things they claim... you did? For things you're the subject of, shouldn't it be easy to confirm or deny them just based on your own memory? It's not only a bizarre defense on its own, but it's an especially poor one when the claim is that you ghost people, and your reply is that they never tried to talk to you about it! Wouldn't it make more sense to just reject it and say you did not ghost people during acquisition talks, or fish for information under the guise of an acquisition, etc.? Also: > I don’t think some of the claims in this comment are true or in good faith. "Some" leaves a lot to the reader's imagination. Which ones are the ones that are true?

jimkleiber 5y ago
The challenge I see with some phrases like "mined them" and "ghosted" is that they can be very subjective statements. The person on the receiving end may perceive the actions as such, whereas the person on the giving end may seem them differently. I don't know what happened, just trying to point out that it is possible that a person felt slighted by certain actions and the person doing them may have no idea the other felt slighted and the person hasn't told them directly. But maybe they did, I don't know in this specific case.
- dataflow 5y ago
  But in that case he could just deny them and then mention that if it came across differently, he'd love for them to reach out. Not just skip to the second part! Say if someone claims you stole their car (and the alternative could be that you borrowed it with someone else's permission, and they had no idea, so they felt it was stolen), would you reply with "I’d appreciate hearing from anyone who feels I stole their car", or would you first say "I never stole any car, please reach out to me if you know of any such incidents"? Wouldn't it be incredibly bizarre to ask them for a discussion session without first rejecting the premise?!
  - jimkleiber 5y ago
    I think in the example of stealing a car is more binary: stole it or did not steal it. Maybe it could have been borrowed the car or something, but there would probably still be a more objective person in car event. Whereas with ghosting, it could be not replying an email, could be not replying a text, could be some other thing the person missed and doesn't even know they missed. So it's hard to deny if the person isn't even aware they did it. With mining, it could have been asking questions either live or in an email and not knowing the other person felt tricked into sharing more than they had wanted to. I've taught a class called Emotional Self-Defense and one of the things I see the most is that the "attacker" often doesn't know they're attacking and the "victim" assumes it should be obvious the person is attacking. What I'm saying is that he may not have any idea that his actions caused that much pain to the person. I had an ex girlfriend who said to me once, "and you don't respect my boundaries!" And I said what? And she said "yeah, 3 weeks ago when you were juggling the soccer ball and you kicked it to me, I said I didn't wanna play, and then a few minutes later you kicked it to me anyway." I was dumbstruck. I had no idea that she felt so angry/violated by me kicking the soccer ball with her the second time. If I had known, I almost certainly would have stopped. I just didn't receive the signal that strongly. So I'm saying that may be the case here, too. It's also hard sometimes to tell someone in power that what they're doing is hurting or angering oneself.
    - dataflow 5y ago
      I get what you're saying about it being blurry but I don't buy that it affects the ability to reject it. He can quire simply reject it and then explain it might be a misunderstanding or something. Or say it might have happened unintentionally. Or whatever. There are several options here, and refusing to deny the claims doesn't bolster his case. And that's all kinda beside the point - note that the bad part isn't even the ghosting itself for us to quibble over, it's fishing for information under the guise of an acquisition, with or without ghosting. That should be far less blurry and easy to deny head-on, whatever you think of the ghosting.
deleted 5y ago
[deleted]
pc 5y ago
I’m trying to not overstate my certainty. I have no idea what situation OP could be describing, and I have no recollection of anything along those lines, but I don’t want to definitively state that nothing like it happened over our decade of operation without knowing more about what’s actually being alleged. We obviously never intentionally ghost companies, “mine them for information”, etc. The ecosystem is small and we wouldn’t be able to invest in and acquire companies if we didn’t have a reputation for good behavior. (And we’ve invested in dozens.) But maybe some communication got dropped in some particular case or something? I don’t know.
- dataflow 5y ago
  Ah okay thanks for clarifying. It's a strong anonymous accusation, so being clear about it on your end helps a lot. I imagine it'll be hard for anyone here to know what happened.
- bambax 5y ago
  I don't know anything about anything and am one of the very few people here who never founded a $xB fintech, but this strikes me as weak: > The ecosystem is small and we wouldn’t be able to invest in and acquire companies if we didn’t have a reputation for good behavior If you're in a position of power (and money), people will return your calls, regardless of rumors. This is true in all fields, from recruiting to publishing to VC deals, etc. This is also a line of defense used by serial abusers who always (always!) claim that because they have had successful consensual relationships, there can't be cases where they abused the other party. > over our decade of operation Also weak. "We've done so many things. Seen so many people. It's been a long time. I don't recall. Things were different back then." - - - That said -- weak defense is just that -- it doesn't mean offense.

andrew_ 5y ago

Say "Bloody Mary" ten times in the mirror at midnight and she will appear...

temp7536 5y ago

I'm sorry but no. Patrick, we met with you once, Gaybrick and Claire multiple times and opened up a data room to you all. I then emailed you (and the others) three followups over a couple weeks only to see them opened but never replied. Your team then sent targeted cold emails to multiple people on our team. I've validated this experience with multiple founders. You also had Moritz and Sequoia renege on Finix's term sheet after they already had it signed and wired (I guess props to Sequoia for branding it as "giving it away")[1]. You've also had your team get diligence materials from Sequoia and nuke deals. You've clearly crushed it in the business and developer brand space, hats off to you. You want feedback - I (and the broader founder community) just wish you stop the dance of pretending and just admit you all are sharks, and it works for you! Just own it. But I will admit, the HN comment was a bit trolly and written in frustration. But you have to admit - you are documented as proofreading every one of PGs posts, are a huge LP in YC and are friends with a lot of people there. You can't believe that the conspiracy theories are purely in "bad faith".... And yes - this is out of place in HN comments, I'm sorry. But sadly there aren't very many other options. [1] - https://techcrunch.com/2020/03/09/sequoia-is-giving-away-21-million-to-a-payments-startup-it-funded-as-it-walks-away-from-deal/ https://techcrunch.com/2020/03/09/sequoia-is-giving-away-21-...

wbharding 5y ago
It bears repeating that exactly 10 minutes after temp7536's accusations were initially posted (2:45:57 UTC), account temp3728 posted (at 2:55:47 UTC) a two paragraph affirmation of temp7536's salacious accusations. Both of these comments were posted almost three hours after the initial post. So, in a 10 minute window 3 hours after the post, we are to believe a second commenter came to HN, saw temp7536's post (presumably after reading OP's narrative?), registered their own fake HN account, verified said account, and wrote a two paragraph post that almost exactly mirrored the original accusations of temp7536? Ok. I have better things to do than Sherlock Holmes a case involving an individual (pc) who I have never met or spoken to, but there is much to be desired in the credibility dept for temp7536 and temp3728.
austenallred 5y ago
> You also had Moritz and Sequoia renege on Finix's term sheet after they already had it signed and wired (I guess props to Sequoia for branding it as "giving it away")[1]. How is it reneging on a term sheet if they wire the money? That's fulfilling the terms of the term sheet (despite the fact that term sheets aren't binding), no?

donkleberry 5y ago

When you’re in top position on a Stripe-related post, that has nothing to do with your karma score. It’s because dang has a pin button that he usually uses for himself, but very often is used for exactly the situation you describe when it comes to YC portfolio or celebrities showing up or something (without visual feedback of such a pin, as every single other website with the capability provides). It’s pretty obvious if you keep an eye out for it This can undoubtedly be spun as “HN just trying to bring the right voice to the top of the discussion” but the alternative take is just as valid. It’s not bad faith feedback, it’s HN UX and practices confusing readers as usual

dataflow 5y ago
Are you talking about posts, or comments? Do HN celebs get comment boosted by virtue of that fact too? I would've thought it's only for posts.
- dang 5y ago
  They're talking about comments. I'm not sure what you mean by HN celebs but no, they don't get comment boosted.
  - neom 5y ago
    Technically, you're a HN celeb who gets their comments boosted Daniel!
    - dang 5y ago
      I downweight them sometimes too.
      - vasco 5y ago
        It's common to assume the masses are dumb and hiding moderation can make people do the right thing without being influenced by it. For example I imagine if the pin icon was visible there would be comments about it on every story it'd be used in, which you may want to avoid to focus on the topics at hand. With that put I think transparency beats this and a transparent system is more trustworthy and better understood by the users. Just 2c but keep doing the good work.

deleted 5y ago

[deleted]

choppaface 5y ago

I honestly do not see your participation in this thread as good faith. You apologized to the candidate in public—- good start, now do something of consequence in private. But any further involvement from you (especially trying to out the OP) is simply fanning the flamewar. Even HN moderation is helping fan the flames by adding stats and other commentary. This is why I find YC so utterly untrustworthy.

circlefavshape 5y ago

Hey Patrick, I hear you have an estate in Abbeyleix now, which means you have Notions and therefore are A Bad Man. Sorry! Those are just the facts :/