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> PearAI evidently forked an OSS code editor, then later got funding from Y Combinator for it. More specifically PearAI forked the OSS code editor Continue, wh

> PearAI evidently forked an OSS code editor, then later got funding from Y Combinator for it. More specifically PearAI forked the OSS code editor Continue, which was itself funded by YC, and got YC funding for it. Also the editor they forked is itself a fork of VS Code, but is not to be confused with Void Editor, which is a third YC funded VS Code fork with AI features. It's YC funded VS Code forks with AI all the way down.

aniviacat 2y ago
> OSS code editor Continue Are you talking about continue.dev? That's not an editor itself, nor is if a fork of VS Code; it's an extension for VS Code (and JetBrains).
- jsheard 2y ago
  My mistake, I haven't used Continue and was led to believe they have their own VS Code distro. PearAI forked VS Code and forked Continues VS Code extension and smushed them together then. They also just wired Continues code up to Claude/GPT4 so the models aren't novel either.
  - satvikpendem 2y ago
    Maybe you're thinking of Cursor, which did fork VSCode.
    - hbn 2y ago
      Also of note, someone linked a video from 3 months ago where one of the co-founders was talking about using both Cursor and Continue. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X0OylwLzBQw&t=257s https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X0OylwLzBQw&t=257s Which I suppose isn't necessarily a gotcha, it's totally possible to be a user of software and figure out ways it could be improved. But the way they pitched themselves was they're building an AI code editor, whereas it seems like they're just making some changes to a free, open-source project. If I had any guess, the reason they got accepted is from their YouTube followings, and this was essentially a marketing experiment. These guys have audiences of young aspiring developers who could be potential customers if their favorite youtuber were to start claiming they "built" an AI code editor. Not a crazy idea but certainly doesn't smell of an attempt to make an honest and good product.
bluelightning2k 2y ago
Well said! That last sentence was very elegant.
programmarchy 2y ago
Don't see a problem with YC "dutching" and spreading their bets across multiple forks/teams.
- minimaxir 2y ago
  Due to YC's large batch sizes and the consolidation of industries such as AI, increasing numbers of YC startups are now directly competing with each other.
  - JohnMakin 2y ago
    When 98% of your "product" is a thin wrapper around chatGPT, you will of course end up competing against every other product that is a thin wrapper around chatGPT.
    - wmf 2y ago
      Not really. The medical ChatGPT wrappers don't compete with the legal ChatGPT wrappers or the code editor ChatGPT wrappers. It has been argued (ad nauseam) that ChatGPT itself competes with all the wrappers, not that the wrappers compete with each other.
      - JohnMakin 2y ago
        > . It has been argued (ad nauseam) that ChatGPT itself competes with all the wrappers, not that the wrappers compete with each other. This makes more sense now that I think about it.
      - zgeor 2y ago
        They don't compete right now, but surely the architecture of the system will be quite similar, or solve very similar types of challenges. So it should become easier to jump domains when these solutions mature.
        tempusalaria 2y ago
wg0 2y ago
So fork of the fork got funded. Interesting. Now I believe it is true that "you don't have to have even a product"
- yuppiepuppie 2y ago
  This is crazy. And then I hear about solid products/companies that don’t get any/very little funding at all because it has no “AI” and it baffles the mind.
  - IggleSniggle 2y ago
    Funders are betting on founders. They see somebody willing to take shortcuts and ride hype trains, turn good faith projects and pass them off as their own innovation, and the see the kind of sociopathic organization that has the potential to "become the next Uber." They aren't funding the viability of the product, they are funding for a take of future earnings of the morally bankrupt or the righteous will of the hopelessly naive. In either case, it's all about how effectively they can affix a leash. Rent-seeking over value-creation.
    - fasa99 2y ago
      YC filters for companies for gorillion dollar missions / solve gorillion dollar problems. A mission that is, "I have an AI, input is business plan, output is entire IT infrastructure" is what YC sees here. i.e. programming as a field (quite a cost center) is no longer needed, ironically. Because of that the bar is low. Honestly if anyone is reading this, if you find a very clever novel way to go after this, surely you would be funded
- _heimdall 2y ago
  This sounds like the preamble to a Michael Lewis story to the next tech bubble.
benatkin 2y ago
To that I say “fork yeah”, the old GitHub slogan. I haven’t seen Continue complaining about it. It’s far less toxic than Sentry or Hashicorp which are on the other side of the issue. Pear could have been a bit less blatant I guess, but I think it’s fine that they took advantage of the license. Edit: I just realized the old t-shirt slogan of GitHub was “Fork you.” Even better.
- EdwardDiego 2y ago
  Is Sentry based on FOSS?
  - benatkin 2y ago
    It was open source for about 10 years. They built themselves a name by being open source. Then they went and changed their license to a non-OSI-approved license. https://blog.sentry.io/relicensing-sentry/ https://blog.sentry.io/relicensing-sentry/ Not everyone went along with it, but a lot did.
beAbU 2y ago
This is an interesting business model. Continue building on top of YC-funded forks, and you basically end up with a product that was funded by billions, but your own contribution to it was minimal. I wonder if it's possible to get funding for a fork of an already funded fork that you launched recently. Might even be an easy money glitch: every couple of years or so you fork your YC funded code editor, get YC funding for the new fork, and cruise on that money for a while. (all of the above is said tongue in cheek)
- ignoramous 2y ago
  > ...an interesting business model. Continue building on top of YC-funded forks, and you basically end up with a product that was funded by billions, but your own contribution to it was minimal Don't give blockchain bros any ideas...
  - pilgrim0 2y ago
    Forkchain? Proof of Fork? Hmmm… there’s something there
Narhem 2y ago
Seems like YC should pair more of these smaller companies together, I honestly don’t know if that would help or not. Most YC funded projects aren’t really profitable to begin with. It’s like somewhere in between getting grant funding for a university project and real corporate work.
- fakedang 2y ago
  I mean, this was precisely PG's genius - taking the right set of unwashed nerds, pairing them up appropriately and then mentoring the end result. That model gave birth to Reddit and Auctomatic. I don't get it either - why spend $2m on 4 YC companies under different group partners, creating a hunger games of sorts, instead of convincing all of them to combine their talent for $500k. Sure, egos will be bruised and they might fight over who's boss, but the chances of the final product succeeding would be much higher.
  - Freedom2 2y ago
    Not enough people give credit to PG or PT for their genius in disrupting markets and making the world overall a happier, better place.
fakedang 2y ago
Tell us of the time you hacked a real-life (non-computer) system

aniviacat 2y ago

> OSS code editor Continue Are you talking about continue.dev? That's not an editor itself, nor is if a fork of VS Code; it's an extension for VS Code (and JetBrains).

jsheard 2y ago
My mistake, I haven't used Continue and was led to believe they have their own VS Code distro. PearAI forked VS Code and forked Continues VS Code extension and smushed them together then. They also just wired Continues code up to Claude/GPT4 so the models aren't novel either.
- satvikpendem 2y ago
  Maybe you're thinking of Cursor, which did fork VSCode.
  - hbn 2y ago
    Also of note, someone linked a video from 3 months ago where one of the co-founders was talking about using both Cursor and Continue. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X0OylwLzBQw&t=257s https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X0OylwLzBQw&t=257s Which I suppose isn't necessarily a gotcha, it's totally possible to be a user of software and figure out ways it could be improved. But the way they pitched themselves was they're building an AI code editor, whereas it seems like they're just making some changes to a free, open-source project. If I had any guess, the reason they got accepted is from their YouTube followings, and this was essentially a marketing experiment. These guys have audiences of young aspiring developers who could be potential customers if their favorite youtuber were to start claiming they "built" an AI code editor. Not a crazy idea but certainly doesn't smell of an attempt to make an honest and good product.

bluelightning2k 2y ago

Well said! That last sentence was very elegant.

programmarchy 2y ago

Don't see a problem with YC "dutching" and spreading their bets across multiple forks/teams.

minimaxir 2y ago
Due to YC's large batch sizes and the consolidation of industries such as AI, increasing numbers of YC startups are now directly competing with each other.
- JohnMakin 2y ago
  When 98% of your "product" is a thin wrapper around chatGPT, you will of course end up competing against every other product that is a thin wrapper around chatGPT.
  - wmf 2y ago
    Not really. The medical ChatGPT wrappers don't compete with the legal ChatGPT wrappers or the code editor ChatGPT wrappers. It has been argued (ad nauseam) that ChatGPT itself competes with all the wrappers, not that the wrappers compete with each other.
    - JohnMakin 2y ago
      > . It has been argued (ad nauseam) that ChatGPT itself competes with all the wrappers, not that the wrappers compete with each other. This makes more sense now that I think about it.
    - zgeor 2y ago
      They don't compete right now, but surely the architecture of the system will be quite similar, or solve very similar types of challenges. So it should become easier to jump domains when these solutions mature.
      - tempusalaria 2y ago

wg0 2y ago

So fork of the fork got funded. Interesting. Now I believe it is true that "you don't have to have even a product"

yuppiepuppie 2y ago
This is crazy. And then I hear about solid products/companies that don’t get any/very little funding at all because it has no “AI” and it baffles the mind.
- IggleSniggle 2y ago
  Funders are betting on founders. They see somebody willing to take shortcuts and ride hype trains, turn good faith projects and pass them off as their own innovation, and the see the kind of sociopathic organization that has the potential to "become the next Uber." They aren't funding the viability of the product, they are funding for a take of future earnings of the morally bankrupt or the righteous will of the hopelessly naive. In either case, it's all about how effectively they can affix a leash. Rent-seeking over value-creation.
  - fasa99 2y ago
    YC filters for companies for gorillion dollar missions / solve gorillion dollar problems. A mission that is, "I have an AI, input is business plan, output is entire IT infrastructure" is what YC sees here. i.e. programming as a field (quite a cost center) is no longer needed, ironically. Because of that the bar is low. Honestly if anyone is reading this, if you find a very clever novel way to go after this, surely you would be funded
_heimdall 2y ago
This sounds like the preamble to a Michael Lewis story to the next tech bubble.

benatkin 2y ago

To that I say “fork yeah”, the old GitHub slogan. I haven’t seen Continue complaining about it. It’s far less toxic than Sentry or Hashicorp which are on the other side of the issue. Pear could have been a bit less blatant I guess, but I think it’s fine that they took advantage of the license. Edit: I just realized the old t-shirt slogan of GitHub was “Fork you.” Even better.

EdwardDiego 2y ago
Is Sentry based on FOSS?
- benatkin 2y ago
  It was open source for about 10 years. They built themselves a name by being open source. Then they went and changed their license to a non-OSI-approved license. https://blog.sentry.io/relicensing-sentry/ https://blog.sentry.io/relicensing-sentry/ Not everyone went along with it, but a lot did.

beAbU 2y ago

This is an interesting business model. Continue building on top of YC-funded forks, and you basically end up with a product that was funded by billions, but your own contribution to it was minimal. I wonder if it's possible to get funding for a fork of an already funded fork that you launched recently. Might even be an easy money glitch: every couple of years or so you fork your YC funded code editor, get YC funding for the new fork, and cruise on that money for a while. (all of the above is said tongue in cheek)

ignoramous 2y ago
> ...an interesting business model. Continue building on top of YC-funded forks, and you basically end up with a product that was funded by billions, but your own contribution to it was minimal Don't give blockchain bros any ideas...
- pilgrim0 2y ago
  Forkchain? Proof of Fork? Hmmm… there’s something there

Narhem 2y ago

Seems like YC should pair more of these smaller companies together, I honestly don’t know if that would help or not. Most YC funded projects aren’t really profitable to begin with. It’s like somewhere in between getting grant funding for a university project and real corporate work.

fakedang 2y ago
I mean, this was precisely PG's genius - taking the right set of unwashed nerds, pairing them up appropriately and then mentoring the end result. That model gave birth to Reddit and Auctomatic. I don't get it either - why spend $2m on 4 YC companies under different group partners, creating a hunger games of sorts, instead of convincing all of them to combine their talent for $500k. Sure, egos will be bruised and they might fight over who's boss, but the chances of the final product succeeding would be much higher.
- Freedom2 2y ago
  Not enough people give credit to PG or PT for their genius in disrupting markets and making the world overall a happier, better place.

fakedang 2y ago

Tell us of the time you hacked a real-life (non-computer) system