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> The strongest argument for YC is how few alums speak out against it. Almost all of the negative comments come from people who haven't done the program. I thi
by neilv 2y ago
> The strongest argument for YC is how few alums speak out against it. Almost all of the negative comments come from people who haven't done the program.
I think YC has merit, but I'm just going to push back on this particular logic:
1. The set of people who've done X is already selected for people who were willing to do X in the first place.
2. In business, burning bridges with an influential network in which you have an in... forfeits some advantage, and probably invites a lot of downside.
(On #2, an occasional person might decide it's a matter of principle, or, less-principled, do the math and decide they can get more individual brand mileage out of saying something provocatively negative. But that seems unlikely and rare. Related dynamics we've seen might help our intuition: how Hollywood almost universally shielded abusers for so long, and how it's very rare for a student wronged by a prestigious alma mater university to go public about it.)
So I think there are stronger arguments for YC.
- n2d4 2y agoMaybe that applies to people going to Gawker or whatever and writing an exposé on YC, but that's not what I'm talking about. There are very few people who, at the end of the batch in a private one-on-one conversation, say that joining YC was a mistake. That certainly wouldn't risk their career (neither would critiquing YC on HN, for that matter). Claiming that all human opinions are fake and based on self-interest is a very cynical view. Besides you could apply the same logic to big tech companies, or elite universities, or whatever, but there are plenty of Xooglers who say the company went to shit, or Harvard grads who say they regret the student debt.