7 ms·

I did an interview a couple years ago when Corgi was first hiring engineers. Nico and I ... did not click and it was probably the least smooth interview I've ev

by nfw2 3mo ago

I did an interview a couple years ago when Corgi was first hiring engineers. Nico and I ... did not click and it was probably the least smooth interview I've ever had despite it just being a phone screen. I wouldn't be that surprised if Nico genuinely thinks "we didn't copy the code" is a reasonable defense. It would be a clear cut rule, and extreme "shape rotator" types often have trouble with the fuzziness of things like law. In reality, copyright infringement is often more like the porn test, you know it when you see it.

throwawalien 3mo ago
I never made it to the interview phase because on the phone screen they mentioned they all work 7 days a week in office. nope nope nope nope.
- cmgriffing 3mo ago
  We should thank companies for warning us during the interview process that they are so separated from reality (especially in the AI era) If AI can’t make them recognize a work life balance has value then it’s easy to see they don’t believe the “force multiplier” BS they are peddling
  - nfw2 3mo ago
    They are worth 3 billion after two years so it seems like they are doing all right with their strategy although I'm old now and don't want to do that
    - manwithopinions 3mo ago
      They’re not really, it’s just the YC hype cycle. The business is selling insurance to other YC startups with some AI flair. They’re not even the first YC startup to do this, a previous YC insurance startup was acquired a few years ago for ~$1bn. So, they’re worth 3x the exit of the exact same company… because of what, AI? The fact that they’re cloning other software to release SaaS products is extremely bearish. Why are they wasting their time on this? A wildly successful $3bn startup would not spend their precious resources by launching a $10/m document sending SaaS. They’ll be doing down rounds soon enough. Could you imagine Paul Graham encouraging this?
      - mlnj 3mo ago
        Listened to the founder on 20VC episode talk endlessly about sleeping and showering in the office and comparing their insurance company to Alexander the Great and Napoleon. Silicon Valley is just so disconnected from reality.
        FridgeSeal 3mo ago
        Would pay good money to see Silicon Valley complete their disconnection from reality and drift off into the void. The rest of us would get some semblance of normality back if they did.
      - deleted 3mo ago
        [deleted]
      - aleqs 3mo ago
        A big part of the US VC operating model these days seems to be just rebuilding existing products with slight changes, then pushing all of their other startups to use that version of it. This is only going to accelerate with AI. Why pay some company you don't own to do thing for you, when you can just copy the company (maybe even improve it in some ways), seed it with with your large existing user base, then have it do the thing for you (while also generating profit from other customers and rapidly scaling in users and valuation itself). The reality is most of what most tech startups are doing is not actually hard and has no moat. The moat is in getting users/customers - connections/marketing/sales - product quality also matters of course, but there are plenty hyperscaler unicorns who's product is dogshit and vice versa.
    - manwithopinions 3mo ago
      Also, I should add, they’re growing fast because they will underwrite anyone for anything. They’re one “oops our AI underwriting has been taking on far too much risk” away from disaster. That they’re demanding 7 days a week from their employees while spending their time building a dataroom product instead of, I don’t know, improving their underwriting, is a bad sign. Normally getting insurance from a startup like Corgi would be a very bad idea because what’s to say they’ll be able to pay out claims? I assume other YC startups are happy because a) they can’t get insurance anywhere with good underwriting b) they figure YC will bail Corgi out when it goes wrong because seemingly every YC startup depends on them. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Risk_retention_group https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Risk_retention_group “Policyholders should be aware that certain Specialty Insurance Carriers may not be admitted insurers in the state in which the insured risk is located. Policies issued by non-admitted insurers, risk retention groups, captive insurers, and certain other Specialty Insurance Carriers may not be subject to all of the insurance laws and regulations of your state. State insurance insolvency guaranty funds may not be available for policies issued by non-admitted insurers, risk retention groups, captive insurance companies, offshore insurers, or other non-admitted Specialty Insurance Carriers. In the event of the insolvency of such a carrier, policyholders may not have access to state guaranty fund protection and may bear the risk of the carrier's inability to pay claims.” https://www.corgi.insure/disclaimers https://www.corgi.insure/disclaimers
      - petesergeant 3mo ago
        > Normally getting insurance from a startup like Corgi would be a very bad idea because what’s to say they’ll be able to pay out claims? Actually normally it’s fine because it’s rarely the startup selling insurance who’s doing the underwriting. Corgi is more worrying because they’re (apparently) underwriting too.
        manwithopinions 3mo ago
        My understanding is a normal insurance tech startup would be acting as a broker. A rare but sensible insurance tech startup would use external underwriters and reinsurance and provide insolvency protection. Corgi doesn’t have any external underwriters, doesn’t have any insolvency protection, doesn’t have any reinsurance. I think they’re bad on all 3 points, not just the underwriting?
    - fennecbutt 3mo ago
      Lmao tech money is fake. Look at how much AI companies are throwing around. Musk is personally worth 1T now supposedly. It's all virtual valuations. The stock market is poison but most people on here won't admit to that because they have their own interests in it. What a joke our species is lmao. We're still grabbing big sticks to hit each other with and worrying about our neighbors coming to take our rocks because we're all just monkeys still, even though we pretend we're not.
      - FireBeyond 3mo ago
        > Musk is personally worth 1T now supposedly. Not after all the SpaceX "settling": https://www.forbes.com/sites/mattdurot/2026/06/24/elon-musk-is-no-longer-a-trillionaire/ https://www.forbes.com/sites/mattdurot/2026/06/24/elon-musk-...
    - tclancy 3mo ago
      Is that how things work now? Well then, I m worth five billion nd say things should stop working that way. Persuaded?
  - alsetmusic 3mo ago
    I got LinkedIn notifications for both Anthropic and OpenAI with my exact job description, but at 3-4x the pay. I said hell no. They would want me to actually work. The job I have now is easy. Plus, they're slated for mass layoffs when the market realigns. I work a gov job that's protected from market layoffs and the security of that is too good to give up.
- rafram 3mo ago
  They're willing to admit "5 to 6 days a week" in writing [1]! Crazy stuff. Also a notably huge number of job openings, including for a head of HR [2]. Worrying signs, I would say. [1]: https://www.ycombinator.com/companies/corgi-insurance/jobs/X7cxVWI-senior-software-engineer-trucking-insurance https://www.ycombinator.com/companies/corgi-insurance/jobs/X... [2]: https://www.ycombinator.com/companies/corgi-insurance/jobs/YdccyAk-head-of-people https://www.ycombinator.com/companies/corgi-insurance/jobs/Y...
- LastTrain 3mo ago
  Why do you need 7 days a week from your engineers when AI easily replaces engineers?
palmotea 3mo ago
> It would be a clear cut rule, and extreme "shape rotator" types... It had to look that slang up: https://roonscape.ai/p/a-song-of-shapes-and-words https://roonscape.ai/p/a-song-of-shapes-and-words. > ...often have trouble with the fuzziness of things like law. In reality, copyright infringement is often more like the porn test, you know it when you see it. I'd say it's more like the fuzziness defeats most of the software-style "exploits" those types gravitate towards. The edges of the laws aren't impossibly sharp and executed by dumb machines, so you can't sneak though "gaps" that would be there if those things were true. For instance: you can crash a machine by DoSing it, but you can't crash a court case the same way: the judge will look at you and your truckload of motions and hold you in contempt.
- sseagull 3mo ago
  Obligatory XKCD https://xkcd.com/1494/ https://xkcd.com/1494/
- gilleain 3mo ago
  A very clear example of this is the 'Sovereign Citizen', who have bizarre beliefs around how to interact with courts. As far as I understand it, there are some 'cheat codes' people believe (incorrectly) are effective in literally getting you out of jail free. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sovereign_citizen_movement https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sovereign_citizen_movement > Another common belief among sovereign citizens is that they can opt out of the purported contract, making themselves immune from the laws they do not wish to follow, by declining to "consent": when confronted by police officers or other officials, sovereign citizens typically attempt to negate their authority by saying, "I do not consent" Like, why would this be true, and if it was, why would law enforcement and courts go along with it? I find it very odd.
  - nailer 3mo ago
    > Like, why would this be true Steel-manning the sovereign citizens movement (which I don't believe in): they believe authority comes from the consent of the populace, which is a true statement and in many countries founding documents, they mistakenly think that means the law doesn't apply to them when they as an individual do not consent. They basically don't get that democracy is the tyranny of the many.
johndhi 3mo ago
is "we didn't copy the code" NOTA
philipdavis 3mo ago
didnt click Genuinely Just curious, did you write this with llm?

by nfw2 3mo ago

throwawalien 3mo ago

I never made it to the interview phase because on the phone screen they mentioned they all work 7 days a week in office. nope nope nope nope.

cmgriffing 3mo ago
We should thank companies for warning us during the interview process that they are so separated from reality (especially in the AI era) If AI can’t make them recognize a work life balance has value then it’s easy to see they don’t believe the “force multiplier” BS they are peddling
- nfw2 3mo ago
  They are worth 3 billion after two years so it seems like they are doing all right with their strategy although I'm old now and don't want to do that
  - manwithopinions 3mo ago
    They’re not really, it’s just the YC hype cycle. The business is selling insurance to other YC startups with some AI flair. They’re not even the first YC startup to do this, a previous YC insurance startup was acquired a few years ago for ~$1bn. So, they’re worth 3x the exit of the exact same company… because of what, AI? The fact that they’re cloning other software to release SaaS products is extremely bearish. Why are they wasting their time on this? A wildly successful $3bn startup would not spend their precious resources by launching a $10/m document sending SaaS. They’ll be doing down rounds soon enough. Could you imagine Paul Graham encouraging this?
    - mlnj 3mo ago
      Listened to the founder on 20VC episode talk endlessly about sleeping and showering in the office and comparing their insurance company to Alexander the Great and Napoleon. Silicon Valley is just so disconnected from reality.
      - FridgeSeal 3mo ago
        Would pay good money to see Silicon Valley complete their disconnection from reality and drift off into the void. The rest of us would get some semblance of normality back if they did.
    - deleted 3mo ago
      [deleted]
    - aleqs 3mo ago
      A big part of the US VC operating model these days seems to be just rebuilding existing products with slight changes, then pushing all of their other startups to use that version of it. This is only going to accelerate with AI. Why pay some company you don't own to do thing for you, when you can just copy the company (maybe even improve it in some ways), seed it with with your large existing user base, then have it do the thing for you (while also generating profit from other customers and rapidly scaling in users and valuation itself). The reality is most of what most tech startups are doing is not actually hard and has no moat. The moat is in getting users/customers - connections/marketing/sales - product quality also matters of course, but there are plenty hyperscaler unicorns who's product is dogshit and vice versa.
  - manwithopinions 3mo ago
    Also, I should add, they’re growing fast because they will underwrite anyone for anything. They’re one “oops our AI underwriting has been taking on far too much risk” away from disaster. That they’re demanding 7 days a week from their employees while spending their time building a dataroom product instead of, I don’t know, improving their underwriting, is a bad sign. Normally getting insurance from a startup like Corgi would be a very bad idea because what’s to say they’ll be able to pay out claims? I assume other YC startups are happy because a) they can’t get insurance anywhere with good underwriting b) they figure YC will bail Corgi out when it goes wrong because seemingly every YC startup depends on them. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Risk_retention_group https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Risk_retention_group “Policyholders should be aware that certain Specialty Insurance Carriers may not be admitted insurers in the state in which the insured risk is located. Policies issued by non-admitted insurers, risk retention groups, captive insurers, and certain other Specialty Insurance Carriers may not be subject to all of the insurance laws and regulations of your state. State insurance insolvency guaranty funds may not be available for policies issued by non-admitted insurers, risk retention groups, captive insurance companies, offshore insurers, or other non-admitted Specialty Insurance Carriers. In the event of the insolvency of such a carrier, policyholders may not have access to state guaranty fund protection and may bear the risk of the carrier's inability to pay claims.” https://www.corgi.insure/disclaimers https://www.corgi.insure/disclaimers
    - petesergeant 3mo ago
      > Normally getting insurance from a startup like Corgi would be a very bad idea because what’s to say they’ll be able to pay out claims? Actually normally it’s fine because it’s rarely the startup selling insurance who’s doing the underwriting. Corgi is more worrying because they’re (apparently) underwriting too.
      - manwithopinions 3mo ago
        My understanding is a normal insurance tech startup would be acting as a broker. A rare but sensible insurance tech startup would use external underwriters and reinsurance and provide insolvency protection. Corgi doesn’t have any external underwriters, doesn’t have any insolvency protection, doesn’t have any reinsurance. I think they’re bad on all 3 points, not just the underwriting?
  - fennecbutt 3mo ago
    Lmao tech money is fake. Look at how much AI companies are throwing around. Musk is personally worth 1T now supposedly. It's all virtual valuations. The stock market is poison but most people on here won't admit to that because they have their own interests in it. What a joke our species is lmao. We're still grabbing big sticks to hit each other with and worrying about our neighbors coming to take our rocks because we're all just monkeys still, even though we pretend we're not.
    - FireBeyond 3mo ago
      > Musk is personally worth 1T now supposedly. Not after all the SpaceX "settling": https://www.forbes.com/sites/mattdurot/2026/06/24/elon-musk-is-no-longer-a-trillionaire/ https://www.forbes.com/sites/mattdurot/2026/06/24/elon-musk-...
  - tclancy 3mo ago
    Is that how things work now? Well then, I m worth five billion nd say things should stop working that way. Persuaded?
- alsetmusic 3mo ago
  I got LinkedIn notifications for both Anthropic and OpenAI with my exact job description, but at 3-4x the pay. I said hell no. They would want me to actually work. The job I have now is easy. Plus, they're slated for mass layoffs when the market realigns. I work a gov job that's protected from market layoffs and the security of that is too good to give up.
rafram 3mo ago
They're willing to admit "5 to 6 days a week" in writing [1]! Crazy stuff. Also a notably huge number of job openings, including for a head of HR [2]. Worrying signs, I would say. [1]: https://www.ycombinator.com/companies/corgi-insurance/jobs/X7cxVWI-senior-software-engineer-trucking-insurance https://www.ycombinator.com/companies/corgi-insurance/jobs/X... [2]: https://www.ycombinator.com/companies/corgi-insurance/jobs/YdccyAk-head-of-people https://www.ycombinator.com/companies/corgi-insurance/jobs/Y...
LastTrain 3mo ago
Why do you need 7 days a week from your engineers when AI easily replaces engineers?

palmotea 3mo ago

> It would be a clear cut rule, and extreme "shape rotator" types... It had to look that slang up: https://roonscape.ai/p/a-song-of-shapes-and-words https://roonscape.ai/p/a-song-of-shapes-and-words. > ...often have trouble with the fuzziness of things like law. In reality, copyright infringement is often more like the porn test, you know it when you see it. I'd say it's more like the fuzziness defeats most of the software-style "exploits" those types gravitate towards. The edges of the laws aren't impossibly sharp and executed by dumb machines, so you can't sneak though "gaps" that would be there if those things were true. For instance: you can crash a machine by DoSing it, but you can't crash a court case the same way: the judge will look at you and your truckload of motions and hold you in contempt.

sseagull 3mo ago
Obligatory XKCD https://xkcd.com/1494/ https://xkcd.com/1494/
gilleain 3mo ago
A very clear example of this is the 'Sovereign Citizen', who have bizarre beliefs around how to interact with courts. As far as I understand it, there are some 'cheat codes' people believe (incorrectly) are effective in literally getting you out of jail free. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sovereign_citizen_movement https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sovereign_citizen_movement > Another common belief among sovereign citizens is that they can opt out of the purported contract, making themselves immune from the laws they do not wish to follow, by declining to "consent": when confronted by police officers or other officials, sovereign citizens typically attempt to negate their authority by saying, "I do not consent" Like, why would this be true, and if it was, why would law enforcement and courts go along with it? I find it very odd.
- nailer 3mo ago
  > Like, why would this be true Steel-manning the sovereign citizens movement (which I don't believe in): they believe authority comes from the consent of the populace, which is a true statement and in many countries founding documents, they mistakenly think that means the law doesn't apply to them when they as an individual do not consent. They basically don't get that democracy is the tyranny of the many.

johndhi 3mo ago

is "we didn't copy the code" NOTA

philipdavis 3mo ago

didnt click Genuinely Just curious, did you write this with llm?