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Y... ikes! It's about time Y Combinator has executives who aren't so busy with politics. It gives the whole incubator, startup scene, etc, a bad name. The goo

Y... ikes! It's about time Y Combinator has executives who aren't so busy with politics. It gives the whole incubator, startup scene, etc, a bad name. The good ol' days are over. I still have in my mind Y Combinator of Paul Graham (a man wise with his words), but given that we've already had even Sam Altman in control of it. I'm guessing YC nowadays is not that different from private equity/VCs like A16z, which enjoy having their fingers on everything. Typically, it is stuff they don't know much about and look plain stupid. I hope PG can bring the good ol' days back someday, when it was about entrepreneurship, having people laser-focused on building disruptive companies.

tootie 3y ago
The actual tweet was a few days ago. I can't believe he wasn't instantly fired. I know firing a CEO is a bit complicated, but this should have warranted a quick response. Has YC even issued a statement? Has Tan apologized?
- thiago_fm 3y ago
  No idea, I have a similar thought. But I'm not from America, where people are free to say whatever stupid thing they want, no matter how high stakes their job is.
- maeil 3y ago
  No repercussions for violent threats to innocent people when made by higherups in SV tech is par for the course nowadays. Take OpenAI's Head of Research (quite the public role given they're a research company) openly calling for genocide in Gaza, asking to "finish them", "More! No mercy!" including civilians, over a series of 80 deranged tweets. [1] Zero repercussions, still happily heading research at a company whose supposed objective is developing AGI for the benefit of mankind. Also very quickly scrubbed off of HN [2]. [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39124666 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39124666 [2] https://web.archive.org/web/20231226171217/https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38773385 https://web.archive.org/web/20231226171217/https://news.ycom...
  - lukan 3y ago
    "openly calling for genocide in Gaza, asking to "finish them", "More! No mercy!" including civilians" Can you share a quote, where he literally does that? I only read, that he is talking about Hamas. And explicitely not about civilians.
    - albedoa 3y ago
      The post you are responding to linked to the archived tweets.
      - lukan 3y ago
        Yes, but I did not see any of the claims of demanding to kill civilians. They were still way over the line and he apologized. But I did not see any of the claims of "openly calling for genocide in Gaza". Did you? You may link some quotes then. Possible I missed them, but I rather think, this was the usual hyperbole. "innocent civilians" was the only questionable phrase, but still not at all a clear demand to kill civilians, rather a doubt whether armed civilians, who want to kill jews, should count as civilians.
        albedoa 3y ago
        Wait are you defining all open calls for genocide in Gaza to be the strictly verbatim phrase "I am openly calling for genocide in Gaza"? You are out of your depth here.
        lukan 3y ago
        Let's make it simple: Can you share a quote here, that you think was a open call for genocide in Gaza? Then we can debate concretely that and not something meta.
        albedoa 3y ago
        Nobody is debating or wanting to debate you. Certainly you are used to this.
- tim333 3y ago
  Tan has apologized: >“I apologize to the Board of Supervisors for my comments late last night in a post,” Tan wrote. “There is no place, no excuse and no reason for this type of speech and charged language in discourse. I am sorry for my words and regret my poor decision. I love San Francisco. I know the community will hold me accountable and keep focused on our true mission: making San Francisco a vibrant, prosperous and safe place.” Having seen him talk on video he seems like a decent guy who is not very good at dealing with conficts. See eg https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y4yMc99fpfY&t=630s https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y4yMc99fpfY&t=630s
amadeuspagel 3y ago
> GRAHAM: No, no, no, politics. The problems with San Francisco are entirely due to a small number of terrible politicians. It’s all because Ed Lee died. The mayor, Ed Lee, was a reasonable person. Up till the point where Ed Lee died, San Francisco seemed like a utopia. It was like when Gates left Microsoft, and things rapidly reverted to the mean. Although in San Francisco’s case, way below the mean, and so it’s not that it didn’t take that much to ruin San Francisco. It’s really, if you just replaced about five supervisors, San Francisco would be instantly a fabulously better city. > COWEN: Isn’t it the voters you need to replace? Those people got elected, reelected. > GRAHAM: Well, the reason San Francisco fundamentally is so broken is that the supervisors have so much power, and supervisor elections, you can win by a couple hundred votes. All you need to do is have this hard core of crazy left-wing supporters who will absolutely support you, no matter what, and turn out to vote. > Everybody else is like, “Oh, local election doesn’t matter. I’m not going to bother.” [laughs] It’s a uniquely weird situation that wasn’t really visible. It was always there, but it wasn’t visible until Ed Lee died. Now, we’ve reverted to what that situation produces, which is a disaster. https://conversationswithtyler.com/episodes/paul-graham/ https://conversationswithtyler.com/episodes/paul-graham/
- micromacrofoot 3y ago
  the sage wisdom of "the problem with politics is that the people who get the most votes win"
  - nemothekid 3y ago
    I get you are being sarcastic, but the real problem is people don't vote and you see this at every level of government office. Other than the president, it's hard to engage people (which I don't really fault them for) and so you end up with politicians - all across the field - who do nothing but pander to the most extreme voters.
    - micromacrofoot 3y ago
      That's not what he's saying in the quote though, he's mad that the people who are engaged are people that don't agree with him and dismisses voters as "crazy" He even goes as far to call this "broken" — it's literally democracy.
etc-hosts 3y ago
Capitalism runs every aspect of our lives. It's impossible for commentary from a person who controls a vast amount of capital to not be political.
startupsfail 3y ago
It is admirable that Gary Tan loves his home in SF so much. And that he is engaged into making SF better. But SF, getting wasted, engaging into politics is not SV. Wish we could disentangle flies from sausages and move YC office back to Mountain View, where it belongs.
JohnFen 3y ago
> It gives the whole incubator, startup scene, etc, a bad name. And that scene already has a bad name. And let's not forget that he's also an EA acolyte. Every time I think that the image of SV couldn't get much worse, it does.
- ajmurmann 3y ago
  I always hear people use EA as a negative term now. Is there actual philosophical criticism of EA or is this just because SBF subscribed to it?
deleted 3y ago
[deleted]
sidibe 3y ago
As if PG isn't doing the same things on Twitter. I notice both of them are always grovelling to Musk trying to get his retweets or quotes
ajmurmann 3y ago
"If those techies don't like SF politics, maybe they should get involved in their local community!" "No! Not like that!"
762236 3y ago
They don't want to be involved with politics. But they're the type of people that have agency, and San Francisco is in horrible shape, so they feel compelled to help turn the city around.
- EasyMark 3y ago
  San Fran could be turned around in a few years if they cracked down on crime, especially low level crime, homelessness, and revamped zoning laws and regulations to be advantageous to builders instead of NIMBYs.
  - 762236 3y ago
    Right, and since the progressives in power disagree with this, Garry is getting involved to try to get people elected that do agree.

tootie 3y ago

The actual tweet was a few days ago. I can't believe he wasn't instantly fired. I know firing a CEO is a bit complicated, but this should have warranted a quick response. Has YC even issued a statement? Has Tan apologized?

thiago_fm 3y ago
No idea, I have a similar thought. But I'm not from America, where people are free to say whatever stupid thing they want, no matter how high stakes their job is.
maeil 3y ago
No repercussions for violent threats to innocent people when made by higherups in SV tech is par for the course nowadays. Take OpenAI's Head of Research (quite the public role given they're a research company) openly calling for genocide in Gaza, asking to "finish them", "More! No mercy!" including civilians, over a series of 80 deranged tweets. [1] Zero repercussions, still happily heading research at a company whose supposed objective is developing AGI for the benefit of mankind. Also very quickly scrubbed off of HN [2]. [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39124666 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39124666 [2] https://web.archive.org/web/20231226171217/https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38773385 https://web.archive.org/web/20231226171217/https://news.ycom...
- lukan 3y ago
  "openly calling for genocide in Gaza, asking to "finish them", "More! No mercy!" including civilians" Can you share a quote, where he literally does that? I only read, that he is talking about Hamas. And explicitely not about civilians.
  - albedoa 3y ago
    The post you are responding to linked to the archived tweets.
    - lukan 3y ago
      Yes, but I did not see any of the claims of demanding to kill civilians. They were still way over the line and he apologized. But I did not see any of the claims of "openly calling for genocide in Gaza". Did you? You may link some quotes then. Possible I missed them, but I rather think, this was the usual hyperbole. "innocent civilians" was the only questionable phrase, but still not at all a clear demand to kill civilians, rather a doubt whether armed civilians, who want to kill jews, should count as civilians.
      - albedoa 3y ago
        Wait are you defining all open calls for genocide in Gaza to be the strictly verbatim phrase "I am openly calling for genocide in Gaza"? You are out of your depth here.
        lukan 3y ago
        Let's make it simple: Can you share a quote here, that you think was a open call for genocide in Gaza? Then we can debate concretely that and not something meta.
        albedoa 3y ago
        Nobody is debating or wanting to debate you. Certainly you are used to this.
tim333 3y ago
Tan has apologized: >“I apologize to the Board of Supervisors for my comments late last night in a post,” Tan wrote. “There is no place, no excuse and no reason for this type of speech and charged language in discourse. I am sorry for my words and regret my poor decision. I love San Francisco. I know the community will hold me accountable and keep focused on our true mission: making San Francisco a vibrant, prosperous and safe place.” Having seen him talk on video he seems like a decent guy who is not very good at dealing with conficts. See eg https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y4yMc99fpfY&t=630s https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y4yMc99fpfY&t=630s

amadeuspagel 3y ago

> GRAHAM: No, no, no, politics. The problems with San Francisco are entirely due to a small number of terrible politicians. It’s all because Ed Lee died. The mayor, Ed Lee, was a reasonable person. Up till the point where Ed Lee died, San Francisco seemed like a utopia. It was like when Gates left Microsoft, and things rapidly reverted to the mean. Although in San Francisco’s case, way below the mean, and so it’s not that it didn’t take that much to ruin San Francisco. It’s really, if you just replaced about five supervisors, San Francisco would be instantly a fabulously better city. > COWEN: Isn’t it the voters you need to replace? Those people got elected, reelected. > GRAHAM: Well, the reason San Francisco fundamentally is so broken is that the supervisors have so much power, and supervisor elections, you can win by a couple hundred votes. All you need to do is have this hard core of crazy left-wing supporters who will absolutely support you, no matter what, and turn out to vote. > Everybody else is like, “Oh, local election doesn’t matter. I’m not going to bother.” [laughs] It’s a uniquely weird situation that wasn’t really visible. It was always there, but it wasn’t visible until Ed Lee died. Now, we’ve reverted to what that situation produces, which is a disaster. https://conversationswithtyler.com/episodes/paul-graham/ https://conversationswithtyler.com/episodes/paul-graham/

micromacrofoot 3y ago
the sage wisdom of "the problem with politics is that the people who get the most votes win"
- nemothekid 3y ago
  I get you are being sarcastic, but the real problem is people don't vote and you see this at every level of government office. Other than the president, it's hard to engage people (which I don't really fault them for) and so you end up with politicians - all across the field - who do nothing but pander to the most extreme voters.
  - micromacrofoot 3y ago
    That's not what he's saying in the quote though, he's mad that the people who are engaged are people that don't agree with him and dismisses voters as "crazy" He even goes as far to call this "broken" — it's literally democracy.

etc-hosts 3y ago

Capitalism runs every aspect of our lives. It's impossible for commentary from a person who controls a vast amount of capital to not be political.

startupsfail 3y ago

It is admirable that Gary Tan loves his home in SF so much. And that he is engaged into making SF better. But SF, getting wasted, engaging into politics is not SV. Wish we could disentangle flies from sausages and move YC office back to Mountain View, where it belongs.

JohnFen 3y ago

> It gives the whole incubator, startup scene, etc, a bad name. And that scene already has a bad name. And let's not forget that he's also an EA acolyte. Every time I think that the image of SV couldn't get much worse, it does.

ajmurmann 3y ago
I always hear people use EA as a negative term now. Is there actual philosophical criticism of EA or is this just because SBF subscribed to it?

deleted 3y ago

[deleted]

sidibe 3y ago

As if PG isn't doing the same things on Twitter. I notice both of them are always grovelling to Musk trying to get his retweets or quotes

ajmurmann 3y ago

"If those techies don't like SF politics, maybe they should get involved in their local community!" "No! Not like that!"

762236 3y ago

They don't want to be involved with politics. But they're the type of people that have agency, and San Francisco is in horrible shape, so they feel compelled to help turn the city around.

EasyMark 3y ago
San Fran could be turned around in a few years if they cracked down on crime, especially low level crime, homelessness, and revamped zoning laws and regulations to be advantageous to builders instead of NIMBYs.
- 762236 3y ago
  Right, and since the progressives in power disagree with this, Garry is getting involved to try to get people elected that do agree.