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> There are whole companies dedicated to this concept of piggy-backing junk. ... including a YC company called InstallMonetizer: https://news.ycombinator.com/i

by sheetjs 12y ago

> There are whole companies dedicated to this concept of piggy-backing junk. ... including a YC company called InstallMonetizer: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5092711 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5092711

jacquesm 12y ago
Fortunately they have 'watsi' too. Downvoters are invited to explain what's wrong with this comment, I see installmonetizer as one of the low points in the history of YC and watsi as the high point, possibly the high point in VC investing in the last decade or more.
- pavel_lishin 12y ago
  Spending your weekends volunteering at a soup kitchen doesn't give you the right to throw litter onto the highway. Just because YC has watsi doesn't mean they shouldn't have to explain why they're affiliated with InstallMonetizer, and justify their decision.
  - jacquesm 12y ago
    I agree with that in principle, but: YC invests in companies at an absolutely enormous rate, they have relatively few 'rotten apples' when you take into account that they encourage companies to pivot post investment and that they couldn't change what a company actually does even if they wanted to (they own a very small minority of the stock after all). If I were in YC/PGs shoes I would have dropped installmonetizer the second I found out what they did but then again, I don't run the most successful start-up accelerator on the planet for a good reason. In fact, I wouldn't have invested in them in the first place. But on the whole if you select for hackers driven to make money at any cost you can expect to get a rotten apple every now and then. Whether or not YC should have dropped installmonetizer once it became clear what they were up to (if that wasn't clear from the application alone) is something everybody has to decide for themselves, for me it is clear that they should have. Also, to their credit I haven't seen them invest in anything as shady as installmonetizer after that point so maybe some lessons were learned.

by sheetjs 12y ago

jacquesm 12y ago

Fortunately they have 'watsi' too. Downvoters are invited to explain what's wrong with this comment, I see installmonetizer as one of the low points in the history of YC and watsi as the high point, possibly the high point in VC investing in the last decade or more.

pavel_lishin 12y ago
Spending your weekends volunteering at a soup kitchen doesn't give you the right to throw litter onto the highway. Just because YC has watsi doesn't mean they shouldn't have to explain why they're affiliated with InstallMonetizer, and justify their decision.
- jacquesm 12y ago
  I agree with that in principle, but: YC invests in companies at an absolutely enormous rate, they have relatively few 'rotten apples' when you take into account that they encourage companies to pivot post investment and that they couldn't change what a company actually does even if they wanted to (they own a very small minority of the stock after all). If I were in YC/PGs shoes I would have dropped installmonetizer the second I found out what they did but then again, I don't run the most successful start-up accelerator on the planet for a good reason. In fact, I wouldn't have invested in them in the first place. But on the whole if you select for hackers driven to make money at any cost you can expect to get a rotten apple every now and then. Whether or not YC should have dropped installmonetizer once it became clear what they were up to (if that wasn't clear from the application alone) is something everybody has to decide for themselves, for me it is clear that they should have. Also, to their credit I haven't seen them invest in anything as shady as installmonetizer after that point so maybe some lessons were learned.