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Not allegedly - Uber owned up to it but refused to punish any of the staff involved, saying only that they were "overzealous". http://money.cnn.com/2014/01/24/

Not allegedly - Uber owned up to it but refused to punish any of the staff involved, saying only that they were "overzealous". http://money.cnn.com/2014/01/24/technology/social/uber-gett/ http://money.cnn.com/2014/01/24/technology/social/uber-gett/ At this point Uber can't reasonably claim that these were rogue employees. It's pretty obvious to everyone that this is officially sanctioned. [edit] Side note: this is not the first time a YC company has been caught engaging in highly unethical business behavior (see: AirBnb marketing). What is YC, and other investors, doing to curb this kind of behavior? Or is this level of abuse tolerated because money? [edit2] Bah, brain farted, Uber is indeed not a YC company.

minimaxir 12y ago
YC has addressed instances of egregriously bad marketing, such as the InstallMonetizer incident: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5092711 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5092711 Although, many companies that use baity "growth hacking" strategies are indeed YC, but that's a seperate issue.
- makomk 12y ago
  Oh yeah, they "addressed" that all right. pg argued it was OK that a company they'd supported and helped fund was paying software makers to bundle unwanted software into installers and tricking users into installing it by, amongst other techniques, disguising the prompt to install the crap as a EULA acceptance screen. (But hey, it's no big deal because the screen "has a decline as well as an accept button, and if the user declines, no software is installed" - doesn't matter that the decline button's carefully designed to make users think it'll cancel whatever installation they were actually intending to do.)
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onan_barbarian 12y ago
see also: "A little bit naughty" There's always been a bit of ambiguity about the sort of rule-breaking ("hacking") that is and isn't encouraged in these sort of start-ups. One person's hack is another person's unethical behavior. I know a couple folks who founded a YC company and self-reviewed their awesome iPhone app, acquiring some imaginary children in the process...
austinheap 12y ago
At the accelerator I was in, this kind of behavior was encouraged. Not to this same degree of "unethical" but we had 'courses' on how to do this effectively. It's called being scrapy, right? (lulz) And to answer your question, it's completely tolerated. Just look at the iOS store and the massive botnets that used to plague it. Every major company hired botnets to game the charts. Welcome to the Valley. Edit: sorry, they called this "growth hacking".
selmnoo 12y ago
Uber is not a YC company. Though, YC staff (including Sam Altman) do tend to speak highly of it: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8100101 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8100101. pg also used to effusively praise Uber: "Uber is so obviously a good thing that you can measure how corrupt cities are by how hard they try to suppress it" -- https://twitter.com/paulg/status/222462460978937856 https://twitter.com/paulg/status/222462460978937856

minimaxir 12y ago

YC has addressed instances of egregriously bad marketing, such as the InstallMonetizer incident: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5092711 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5092711 Although, many companies that use baity "growth hacking" strategies are indeed YC, but that's a seperate issue.

makomk 12y ago
Oh yeah, they "addressed" that all right. pg argued it was OK that a company they'd supported and helped fund was paying software makers to bundle unwanted software into installers and tricking users into installing it by, amongst other techniques, disguising the prompt to install the crap as a EULA acceptance screen. (But hey, it's no big deal because the screen "has a decline as well as an accept button, and if the user declines, no software is installed" - doesn't matter that the decline button's carefully designed to make users think it'll cancel whatever installation they were actually intending to do.)

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onan_barbarian 12y ago

see also: "A little bit naughty" There's always been a bit of ambiguity about the sort of rule-breaking ("hacking") that is and isn't encouraged in these sort of start-ups. One person's hack is another person's unethical behavior. I know a couple folks who founded a YC company and self-reviewed their awesome iPhone app, acquiring some imaginary children in the process...

austinheap 12y ago

At the accelerator I was in, this kind of behavior was encouraged. Not to this same degree of "unethical" but we had 'courses' on how to do this effectively. It's called being scrapy, right? (lulz) And to answer your question, it's completely tolerated. Just look at the iOS store and the massive botnets that used to plague it. Every major company hired botnets to game the charts. Welcome to the Valley. Edit: sorry, they called this "growth hacking".

selmnoo 12y ago

Uber is not a YC company. Though, YC staff (including Sam Altman) do tend to speak highly of it: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8100101 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8100101. pg also used to effusively praise Uber: "Uber is so obviously a good thing that you can measure how corrupt cities are by how hard they try to suppress it" -- https://twitter.com/paulg/status/222462460978937856 https://twitter.com/paulg/status/222462460978937856