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Public fights can occasionally be net positive for one of the participants, but your arguments will be publicly scrutinized and they better be watertight. If th
by aerosmile 5y ago
Public fights can occasionally be net positive for one of the participants, but your arguments will be publicly scrutinized and they better be watertight. If the logic you presented is your best work, then I can easily see why you've experienced some trouble in getting people to support you.
Let's start with the very first argument you presented: getting rejected by YC is a clear proof of collusion.
Getting rejected by YC happens to tens of thousands of applicants each batch. Your chances of getting accepted increase disproportionally if you can show progress since the rejection. To react the way you did is a contrarian move. And it kind of fits the pattern - to publicly insult every VC on Stripe's cap table is also a contrarian move. Not to mention that you also made it clear to all your future potential talent that there's this thing about you not being liked by the VC community in Silicon Valley.
I will skip all the little jumps to conclusions that you also presented throughout your thread, and will instead focus on the big picture here. The whole time I was reading your thread, I was waiting for the triumphant finish (eg: today we're announcing that we stole Stripe's biggest customer). Instead, all I heard was that Stripe is unbeatable, which sounded quite depressing from your company's point of view. I wonder how this will make future fundraising or deal closing any easier. Another contrarian move.
I am not in a position to criticize you because clearly you've gotten very far and something that you're doing must be working. But whatever it is, it's super contrarian. So rather than presenting the Stripe-Bolt competition in the light of a mobster movie, I think a Rambo analogy would be more appropriate - a traumatized but highly skilled fighter declaring war on everyone and their grandmother.
- DarylZero 5y agoI don't think you're using the word "contrarian" correctly.
- reilly3000 5y ago
- r-w 5y agoOr if we're keeping with the movie references, "I do not think that means what you think it means."
- aerosmile 5y ago"a person who opposes or rejects popular opinion." [1] That meaning is exactly that I was looking for. Many people, myself included, believe he's wrong. But what the hell do we know? It feels odd to be giving business advice to a self-made billionaire. [1] https://www.google.com/search?q=contrarian+meaning https://www.google.com/search?q=contrarian+meaning
- DarylZero 5y agoSeemed like you were focusing less on "contradicting popular opinion" and more on "offending powerful people" which is a related but different concept.
- seanieb 5y agopersecution complex is probably more accurate.
- gorgoiler 5y agoAhem, on triumphalism, I would recommend re-reading the very start of the thread. > Today we’re a successful company with 600 employees, billions in GMV, and growing rapidly
- aerosmile 5y agoI agree that was a strong opening, and if turns out that this whole ordeal was a net positive event for Bolt, then it will have been entirely due to that one sentence. I imagine quite a few people on HN had never heard of Bolt before, and that's now changed for about 100k people at least (likely many more if you take other platforms into account). Even so, I still think the closing could have been better. His last words are an accusation, and he portrays a landscape where it's hard for Stripe competitors to win. There actually was an opportunity to say something like: "And yet, if there's anything I've learned, it's that in the end a great product can overcome all adversity. That's what enabled us to become the first unicorn startup in the world to have introduced a 4-day work week for all of our 600 employees."
- nextaccountic 5y agoYou started with the weakest argument, that was based all hearsay and had no smoking gun. It was first only because the Twitter thread told the story in chronological order. And then.. you stopped there? For me the strongest argument is that hours after they reached #1 on HN, Stripe posted, got #1 themselves, then Bolt's own post somehow disappeared, suggesting foul play. Twice, in two separate occasions, this is alleged to have happened. This is both pretty damning for HN itself (and in this case, @dang has some explaining to do), and pretty easy to confirm or refute with Wayback machine and such. edit: but it appears.. Stripe post was earlier than Bolt's own post? https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30068406 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30068406 Were Bolt posts even removed? And if they were removed, for which reason, each of them?
- dang 5y agoAll of what he said about those HN posts is false. I'm going to post something soon with all the details. It just takes a long time to put together with all the correct links. Edit: finally - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30070287 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30070287
- sombremesa 5y agoThanks for addressing this. I think your approach of radical transparency goes a long way to quell paranoia around how HN works.