3 ms·

It doesn’t deal with code, it deals with chat transcripts, and only those in the directories you explicitly choose to share (yes I know transcripts include some

by tomhow 3mo ago

It doesn’t deal with code, it deals with chat transcripts, and only those in the directories you explicitly choose to share (yes I know transcripts include some code but you’re not sharing a working app codebase or anything close to it). The entire purpose of Startup School for YC is to build great relationships with the most promising talent. The scale and cost of the event is vast, and the benefits for attendees are huge. It’s a three day event with main-stage interviews with several top figures in the tech world and many other intimate events with YC partners, industry experts and fellow attendees. Much of the effort in organizing the event is maximizing the chances that attendees will meet other attendees with things in common so they can build relationships and maybe work on important projects in the future. Of course, YC hopes to be able to fund the most promising startups that come out of this, but nobody is obligated to apply to YC or take YC funding if it’s offered. What I’m trying to convey here is that it’s in YC’s utmost interests to build trust and earn respect from the people who are participating in these programs, and there is no way in a million years that some code or implementation detail exposed in a chat transcript is going to be more valuable than building very positive, mutually trusting relationships with all participants and applicants over the long term.

TZubiri 3mo ago
>It doesn’t deal with code, it deals with chat transcripts, and only those in the directories you explicitly choose to share (yes I know transcripts include some code but you’re not sharing a working app codebase or anything close to it). What's more important, the code? or the source? It's the source. The mistake thousands of people are making is that the source no longer looks like code, and the target code now looks like what source code used to be. They are looking at the aesthetics instead of the fundamentals.
- tomhow 3mo ago
  You ignored the rest of my comment. The maximum theoretical benefit to YC from “stealing” IP or trade secrets from chat transcripts is immaterial, relative to the benefit to YC of finding good talent and building positive, trusting relationships with them over the long term. It's literally the hardest thing in business for investors and employers by far: finding good talent to invest in or employ, and earning/keeping their trust. YC spends unimaginable amounts of money and effort each year to keep doing that, as it has done for two decades. Startup School is just that latest and biggest example of that. It doesn't even pass basic logic that YC would steal some gem of an idea from someone's transcript and hand it to someone else to build. Everyone who is talented enough to build it is busy building products based on their own ideas, and the very best person to build a product is the person who had the idea to build it.
  - TZubiri 3mo ago
    One of the threat models is not YC itself stealing your IP. Which they are to some extent, but them using vendors that themselves train their models on your IP. Or vendors that use vendors that... >YC spends unimaginable amounts of money and effort each year to keep doing that, as it has done for two decades. Yeah, that or they built their reputation early on and are now coasting on that. It's an industry whose explicit objective is to build companies (build reputations) and then exit and sell them, would you be surprised if YC itself did that? >It doesn't even pass basic logic that YC would steal some gem of an idea from someone's transcript and hand it to someone else to build. More likely is the opposite, they get 100k startup applications and they know what ideas people are pursuing and should be avoided, and which might be worth looking into. The former become would target demographics for shovel selling as well, so the 1% that actually gets into YC might setup shop selling to the other 99%. It's theoretical, but these are all attacks that emerge from the basic violation of sharing your source code. To be clear, I don't think that YC employees are starting startups, the threat model is that they act through their picks, and they strengthen their picks at the expense of their non-picks. It's like a russian roulette of startups, which isn't necessarily a bad idea. >Everyone who is talented enough to build it is busy building products based on their own ideas, Like, I get that, but also don't overcorrect into the naïve take that market intelligence is worthless or doesn't exist, especially when that take is 20 years old, if you treat that as your strategic advantage over the population, it's more likely that it's going to be used to take advantage of you. Be moderate, share your idea, don't share everything. Share to individuals, don't share to massive data gathering systems that may use your data as training data for machine learning models. Basic stuff really.
    - tomhow 3mo ago
      The users have already shared their ideas with an AI company’s chatbot. The “IP” you’re worried about is already more than half the output of LLM chatbots and it could already be trained on. Everything you’re speculating about regarding YC’s potential to steal ideas, along with the notion that they are “coasting”, is easily disproven by what YC is doing, literally right now. Startup School 2026 is the most costly and elaborate event YC has ever presented. YC is hosting about 7500 people at the event, and entertaining them (meals, parties, small-group sessions and dinners) and paying for flights for many of them from elsewhere in the country and world. They recently did a similar thing in India, and are constantly running outreach events at colleges around the world. That’s in addition to running four YC accelerator batches per year, funding nearly 1000 companies annually (and hoping to grow that). This is the opposite of “coasting” and is completely at adds with any notion what YC really wants to do is steal IP or ideas. YC’s business collapses if it loses the trust of the most promising talent.

by tomhow 3mo ago

TZubiri 3mo ago

>It doesn’t deal with code, it deals with chat transcripts, and only those in the directories you explicitly choose to share (yes I know transcripts include some code but you’re not sharing a working app codebase or anything close to it). What's more important, the code? or the source? It's the source. The mistake thousands of people are making is that the source no longer looks like code, and the target code now looks like what source code used to be. They are looking at the aesthetics instead of the fundamentals.

tomhow 3mo ago
You ignored the rest of my comment. The maximum theoretical benefit to YC from “stealing” IP or trade secrets from chat transcripts is immaterial, relative to the benefit to YC of finding good talent and building positive, trusting relationships with them over the long term. It's literally the hardest thing in business for investors and employers by far: finding good talent to invest in or employ, and earning/keeping their trust. YC spends unimaginable amounts of money and effort each year to keep doing that, as it has done for two decades. Startup School is just that latest and biggest example of that. It doesn't even pass basic logic that YC would steal some gem of an idea from someone's transcript and hand it to someone else to build. Everyone who is talented enough to build it is busy building products based on their own ideas, and the very best person to build a product is the person who had the idea to build it.
- TZubiri 3mo ago
  One of the threat models is not YC itself stealing your IP. Which they are to some extent, but them using vendors that themselves train their models on your IP. Or vendors that use vendors that... >YC spends unimaginable amounts of money and effort each year to keep doing that, as it has done for two decades. Yeah, that or they built their reputation early on and are now coasting on that. It's an industry whose explicit objective is to build companies (build reputations) and then exit and sell them, would you be surprised if YC itself did that? >It doesn't even pass basic logic that YC would steal some gem of an idea from someone's transcript and hand it to someone else to build. More likely is the opposite, they get 100k startup applications and they know what ideas people are pursuing and should be avoided, and which might be worth looking into. The former become would target demographics for shovel selling as well, so the 1% that actually gets into YC might setup shop selling to the other 99%. It's theoretical, but these are all attacks that emerge from the basic violation of sharing your source code. To be clear, I don't think that YC employees are starting startups, the threat model is that they act through their picks, and they strengthen their picks at the expense of their non-picks. It's like a russian roulette of startups, which isn't necessarily a bad idea. >Everyone who is talented enough to build it is busy building products based on their own ideas, Like, I get that, but also don't overcorrect into the naïve take that market intelligence is worthless or doesn't exist, especially when that take is 20 years old, if you treat that as your strategic advantage over the population, it's more likely that it's going to be used to take advantage of you. Be moderate, share your idea, don't share everything. Share to individuals, don't share to massive data gathering systems that may use your data as training data for machine learning models. Basic stuff really.
  - tomhow 3mo ago
    The users have already shared their ideas with an AI company’s chatbot. The “IP” you’re worried about is already more than half the output of LLM chatbots and it could already be trained on. Everything you’re speculating about regarding YC’s potential to steal ideas, along with the notion that they are “coasting”, is easily disproven by what YC is doing, literally right now. Startup School 2026 is the most costly and elaborate event YC has ever presented. YC is hosting about 7500 people at the event, and entertaining them (meals, parties, small-group sessions and dinners) and paying for flights for many of them from elsewhere in the country and world. They recently did a similar thing in India, and are constantly running outreach events at colleges around the world. That’s in addition to running four YC accelerator batches per year, funding nearly 1000 companies annually (and hoping to grow that). This is the opposite of “coasting” and is completely at adds with any notion what YC really wants to do is steal IP or ideas. YC’s business collapses if it loses the trust of the most promising talent.