I really despise the way HN is moderated-- there are childish vendettas, there's filtering of inconvenient truths to the VCs and the startup world-- but I never

I really despise the way HN is moderated-- there are childish vendettas, there's filtering of inconvenient truths to the VCs and the startup world-- but I never thought PG was sexist or racist. In fact, I hate the fact that, despite being more progressive than most VCs (and willing to discuss these issues rather than equivocating) he's become a lightning rod. What The Information did to PG was almost criminal. The people who caricature us as being only interested in funding young hotshots forget that when we started, in 2005, young founders were not a privileged group but a marginalized one. VCs didn't want to fund them, and when they did they often as not tried to replace them with "adult supervision." The fact that young founders seem a privileged group now is partly due to our efforts. That's half-true, but I'd debate that point. From 1995 to 2005, VCs still liked to fund young founders-- but specifically because they were so clueless. They took advantage, worked them to the extreme, diluted their equity severely, and then often handed their companies off to their (usually middle-aged) friends. After 2005, the chickenhawking dynamic (see: http://michaelochurch.wordpress.com/2013/12/14/vc-istan-6-the-isms-of-venture-funded-technology/ http://michaelochurch.wordpress.com/2013/12/14/vc-istan-6-th...) has evolved and the new one is much kinder to young founders. I don't know if it's related to YC. But YC definitely gave young founders an edge that they didn't have before; now they have a backer who knows, through having seen so many companies evolve, how to avoid being scammed in the ways that young founders in the '90s were. It seems like YC's actual effect has been to replace a chickenhawking culture that was attracted to, but screwed, young founders with a chickenhawking culture that gives young founders a better chance of coming out on top. That's an improvement, objectively, but it also makes YC appear to own the transformed chickenhawking culture. It's like picking up some litter on the road and being held responsible for the nearby pieces that weren't cleaned up.