
Tell HN: Winners of Apply HN for YC Fellowship 3 - kevin
Last month, we decided to reserve a few spots in the next Fellowship batch (F3) for the Hacker News community to decide who they’d like to fund. Startups applied publicly via HN and the community “interviewed” and voted for their favorites.<p>Context: 
<a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;news.ycombinator.com&#x2F;item?id=11440627" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;news.ycombinator.com&#x2F;item?id=11440627</a><p>We ran a poll for the top applications and the voting was so close that we decided to fund one extra startup. Here are the winners:<p>AutoMicroFarm (264 points): <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;news.ycombinator.com&#x2F;item?id=11454342" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;news.ycombinator.com&#x2F;item?id=11454342</a><p>Feynman Nano (208 points): <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;news.ycombinator.com&#x2F;item?id=11443122" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;news.ycombinator.com&#x2F;item?id=11443122</a><p>Casepad (200 points): <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;news.ycombinator.com&#x2F;item?id=11452884" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;news.ycombinator.com&#x2F;item?id=11452884</a><p>I’ve talked to the founders of these three startups on the phone already and I’m really excited about working with all of them. We’ve disclosed all the vote totals in the original poll thread (<a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;news.ycombinator.com&#x2F;item?id=11615639" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;news.ycombinator.com&#x2F;item?id=11615639</a>). Of course, the application that got the most votes isn’t on the final list and we’ll discuss that in the thread below.<p>We received 343 applications via Apply HN and over 1700 comments were generated across those posts. I was quite impressed by the quality and depth of the discussions on these applications and really loved the moments when HNers would take the time to provide quality feedback to the founders on their applications.<p>Thank you to everyone for participating in our little experiment. It takes a lot of bravery put your passion out there to be judged publicly and it takes a remarkable community to treat that courage with kindness and respect. It makes me very proud to be part of HN.<p>While we haven’t definitively decided whether we’ll do this again at this point (we’ll want to see how the companies do in the batch), I’m delighted and optimistic about what the community accomplished here.<p>We’ve already received a lot of great feedback from many of you on how to do this better, but please feel free to share more below.
======
cperciva
I've had a bit longer to think about this than the rest of you -- I discovered
that the vote totals were being inadvertently leaked earlier today -- and I
have to say that I'm impressed with the quality of the results. Leaving
pinboard out of the picture[1][2], I think the voting selected a group of
companies with tremendous potential: AutoMicroFarm has the potential to
develop scalable technology which completely changes how food is produced,
Feynman Nano has the potential to save hundreds of thousands of lives, and
Casepad has the potential to make a huge industry dramatically more
efficient[3].

I hope YC does something like this again in the future, but I'd suggest a
different approach: Rather than asking HN to help select _startups to fund_ ,
I'd suggest asking HN to help select _startups to interview_. This would solve
the problem of needing an out-of-band mechanism to determine if an application
is "real" or not; worst case, YC would end up paying travel expenses for some
companies they decide not to fund. I suspect that the advantage of having
extra eyeballs ensure that they don't overlook promising startups[4] would
easily justify this -- not to mention the possibility of saving YC lots of
time on in-house reviewing.

The one biggest danger I see with this is the potential for vote brigading; I
suspect that we would have had more of that if it was announced at the start
that votes would be a significant deciding factor. One possible way of solving
this would be to limit voting choices, e.g., ask each person to pick one out
of a small subset, so who only turn up because they want to support a
particular candidate would usually end up filtering themselves out. I
suggested this to Dan, but he thought that there wouldn't be enough voters to
make this feasible; I'm not sure I agree with him.

Obviously I have no idea how this experiment is being viewed from YC's
perspective -- and it sounds like YC won't know how they view it for a while
yet either -- but as an external observer I'd say that this was a very
interesting and very successful experiment.

[1] I'm sure that most people who voted for pinboard did not do so because
they thought it would be a good investment. This gets back to the "it's not
really clear what YC is trying to accomplish with YC Fellowships" problem
which I've mentioned in earlier threads, but the original call was to "fund
startups", not "fund your friends".

[2] I think that YC could gain a lot by creating some other mechanism to bring
people like Maciej into the system -- something like an "honorary YC founder"
status. But I don't think funding is the answer here.

[3] I'm a Canadian and not particularly familiar with the US legal system; but
I've seen enough of it to know that (a) there's a huge amount of money there,
and (b) they desperately need an infusion of technological competence.

[4] I'd be interested to know if any of the three had applied to YC via the
normal route: Did HN identify good startups which YC missed, or would YC have
funded these three anyway?

~~~
Alex3917
> I'm sure that most people who voted for pinboard did not do so because they
> thought it would be a good investment.

I voted for Maciej fully believing that he had no intention of building a
billion dollar startup and just wanted the 20k. That said part of the reason I
voted for him is that I thought it could could be a good opportunity for YC
anyway, albeit risky, in addition to just being entertaining.

I also think they made the right call not to fund him, given Kevin's
explanation.

~~~
cperciva
If this had been "YC is giving away money! Pick someone you think YC should
give $20k to!" then I would _absolutely_ have voted for Pinboard. And I would
have submitted Tarsnap, too.

But they were looking for more than that, so I voted based on the question
they asked -- who should they _fund_ , not simply who should they _give money
to_.

~~~
idlewords
And yet I bet you voted with the expectation that winners would be chosen
based on the criteria laid out in the original ApplyHN post.

~~~
dogecoinbase
If it's unsurprising that YC picks based on their gut and not on any hard
criteria... it shouldn't be. Surprise, almost all white dudes again!

~~~
vtlynch
This entire ordeal has shown us the thin skin of VCs and VC culture.

If HN/YC wanted to do the right thing, they should have taken some time to
assess removing Pinboard BEFORE voting ended. Instead, what they did was game
their own system: They likely sensed Pinboard could be trouble from the
beginning, but hoped they would not win. They attempted to achieve that result
by letting the voting play out, and THEN disqualified Pinboard when the voting
results were not in their favor.

------
gilrain
I voted for Pinboard as a member of this community, even when I likely would
not have voted normally, because Maciej is a smart, charismatic founder who I
knew would do something brilliant with the opportunity. I'm sure there are
many HN members who voted similarly, which very well might look like a
comparatively odd pattern.

I'm sad that the community choice was not allowed to be made by the community,
and doubly sad that the majority of us who voted for Pinboard, in good faith
and within the spirit of the event, will not be able to enjoy what Maciej
would have done.

Congratulations to the winners, nonetheless; this wasn't their fault.

~~~
trowawee
Seconding this. I voted for Pinboard because A) I use and genuinely love the
service, and I was excited to see what Maciej could do with the money and B)
because Maciej's statement of semi-purpose:

> I am hoping to attract a certain protest vote of the silent majority who
> enjoy this community, but are uneasy about the values of its founders and
> more broadly, Silicon Valley.

accurately reflects my feelings towards HN/SV, and I think having a dose of
skepticism in the fold would be good for YC.

~~~
nxzero
Pinboard & the community should just do it without YC/SV.

~~~
idlewords
I anticipated this outcome by becoming profitable eight years ago.

But I still want my $20K.

~~~
rev_bird
I'm trying to figure out a way to articulate why "I still want my $20K" seems
to me.

The way this whole thing was handled stinks, and I'm sorry you got screwed by
a poorly thought-out "contest." But it seems like the YCF deal isn't solely
about the money -- they're trying to find companies to _work_ with. Honestly,
did you... want that? Or just the $20,000 that keeps getting mentioned?

~~~
idlewords
YC's values are so diametrically opposed to my own that I thought it would be
interesting for everyone to have me go through the program.

As for my demands to get paid, I had a clever idea about how to use the money,
and I'm miffed that I won't get a chance to do it.

~~~
brhsiao
You're saying (a) YC's values are diametrically opposed to yours, (b) your
call with Kevin wasn't successful, and (c) YCF isn't designed for companies
like yours—but _adhering rigidly to the original guidelines_ you still ought
to get your bag of cash.

Basically you tried gaming the system, with your fanbase who voted for you
despite your comments like "I will go through YC like a bowling ball," and now
you're protesting that YC won't let you. You don't even like YC. May I ask,
out of curiosity, why you're doing this?

~~~
idlewords
It's odd to criticize me for gaming the system given the name of this website.

~~~
jaredmck
Tell me about a time you hacked a system.

~~~
jhayward
I think you should realize that pinboard's very nature and existence is a
wonderful hack of the SV and "web 2.0" mindset and ecosystem.

------
colinbartlett
The original hypothesis was:

> If Hacker News could fund startups, what startups would it fund?

The answer was clear and overwehlming: The people chose an understated
business model helmed by a charismatic leader who they passionately believe
in. We choose an antiestablishment founder over the status quo.

You asked the question and you didn't like the answer. It's your house so
you're within your rights but I can't say I'm pleased with the way this was
decided.

~~~
license2e
The question also came with a few stipulations, and the winner did not like
them.

This was never about pleasing the HN community.

------
phantom_oracle
You know, it is ironic that the 1 industry funding innovation (venture
capital) is the 1 sorely lacking any innovation at all. It's always just the
case of former-founders pooling their cash into a fund, then asking for more
money from pension-funds, etc. and they then become "X fund" or "Y Capital" or
"Z Ventures", etc. The game always follows this type of rotational pattern
but...

Based on that, I'd like to tell you guys at Y Combinator that even though you
are very entrenched in the happenings of the Valley, you are also probably the
only VC-like company doing innovative and risky things like this.

I don't think I've ever heard of a VC or other-type organization funding
companies based purely on a pseudonymous-community of "up" votes.

With that being said, at least we will see someone attempt to commercialize
small-scale aquaponics, so something good/interesting did come out of this
experiment. And not to be biased, I hope the other 2 do just as well.

~~~
rev_bird
I can't tell if this is too harsh, but it seems like you're praising the
contest that was advertised, not the one we got. They _didn 't_ fund companies
"based purely on a pseudonymous-community of 'up' votes." When they realized
the community wanted something too risky for them, they bailed, and picked the
"winners" themselves.

~~~
tlrobinson
It turns out when you let people pseudonymously vote for things you get
research vessels named Boaty McBoatface and similar (which I think would be
awesome BTW [http://mobile.nytimes.com/2016/03/22/world/europe/boaty-
mcbo...](http://mobile.nytimes.com/2016/03/22/world/europe/boaty-mcboatface-
what-you-get-when-you-let-the-internet-decide.html) )

~~~
dang
FWIW, that wasn't the issue in this case. We knew about that possibility and
planned for it and even called it by that name. But Kevin and I decided not to
treat Maciej's application as a troll. The earnest comments he posted were
what convinced us of that, and I don't think we were wrong there.

I admit to being flummoxed by the combination of trollish and serious elements
--it basically does a denial of service on my brain; if it were stage hypnosis
I'd be squawking like a chicken. But I'm starting to think one could have
taken all the jokes out of this and much the same thing would still have
happened. If that's so, then the troll aspect is a red herring.

~~~
cperciva
_I admit to being flummoxed by the combination of trollish and serious
elements--it basically does a denial of service on my brain_

For very good reason: Trolls often pretend to be serious, but serious people
pretending to be trolls is incredibly rare.

~~~
tptacek
This sounds like something Paul Graham would say. It's only missing the words
"it turns out that".

~~~
cperciva
Now I'm blushing.

~~~
idlewords
I think you're just drunk.

------
toyg
I'm afraid the whole process lost all credibility. Please, do not repeat it.
It's just disenfranchising for the community as a whole: it doesn't matter
what we vote for, if YC will decide on their own as they would normally do.

~~~
theli0nheart
This summarizes why this all rubs me the wrong way. YC already has a well-
oiled machine that vets startups. The whole point of the YCF was ostensibly to
try something new. If you're only going to give money to people after an
"interview" which can be the sole eliminating factor, what's the point of a
popular vote at all?

------
OoTheNigerian
I've thought about this a bit and see where both parties are coming from.

For Kevin, due to the "trollish" behavior of Maciej during this competition,
Kevin was (validly) very suspicious of Maciej's intention for participating in
the program. Of course previous history of Maciej rallying against all YC
stands for did not help assuage the fears :)

For Maciej, the rules are the rules. he (fairly) believes you do not have to
like someone to keep your end of an agreement.

Here's my position. As this is an EXPERIMENT, YC should have taken the risk.
Worst case, they would have had to kick him out of the program. But everyone
will see they have been fair. Seen to be fair is a quite important.

I have "clashed" with Maciej before [1] however, i see him as some one who
only has a hard bark and will be quite cook in person or once you know him.
Dont't be too worried Kevin.

Of course, your house your rules. But still..

I hope YC can rescind and take Pinboard in (I know... I know..:).

[1] [http://oonwoye.com/2011/03/09/maciej-of-pinboard-in-
nigerian...](http://oonwoye.com/2011/03/09/maciej-of-pinboard-in-nigerians-
demand-an-apology/)

~~~
cperciva
_For Maciej, the rules are the rules. he (fairly) believes you do not have to
like someone to keep your end of an agreement._

Except that he's inventing rules ("whoever gets the most votes wins $20,000!")
which were explicitly not there, while ignoring other rules ("Can I ask people
to upvote my submission? No.").

~~~
OoTheNigerian
Fair enough.

But like someone said re: raising money from VC (was it PG?) don't listen to
the reason, listen to the answer.

Kevin is uncomfortable with Maciej and took his decision based on that. As it
would not seem politically connect to give that as his reason, he began
looking for "good reasons" to justify it.

Is this conflict that can keep dividing us worth the 20k to YC? I would guess
no.

They could and should sort this out. Kevin should understand that these HN YCF
coys "belong to the community". If Maciej goes in and try to mess it up the
community will (as my people say) "treat his fuck up".

~~~
cperciva
_Kevin is uncomfortable with Maciej and took his decision based on that. As it
would not seem politically connect to give that as his reason, he began
looking for "good reasons" to justify it._

My interpretation of events is rather different: Maciej cheated and got
caught, but Dan and/or Kevin were concerned about the reaction if the
submission which received the most votes was excluded based on the vote-
rigging alone; so they went out of their way to try to find a way to include
him anyway.

~~~
tptacek
Even on tilt the way you are right now, you know this isn't true, and that
this was a very slimy comment to have written. I'm surprised.

~~~
cperciva
_on tilt the way you are right now_

I got increasingly irritated with his faux innocence as the evening
progressed. I should probably have stopped around midnight.

 _you know this isn 't true_

My turn to be surprised. Which part isn't true? It seemed true to me when I
wrote it at 2 AM, and it seems true to me when I'm reading it again now at 8
AM (curse these early morning meetings!).

~~~
tptacek
Is there a way for us to have this conversation without each of your comments
adding to the list of specious accusations you're making? There's nothing
"faux" about his innocence.

~~~
cperciva
Ok, you win. As the evening progressed, I got increasingly annoyed with _the
way that he gave every outward appearance of acting like a dishonest troll,
despite the fact that he is actually as pure as the driven snow and never had
anything but the best interests of YC at heart_. Happy?

------
theuttick
I would like to thank everyone for the feedback and the discussion.

I've been plugging away at CADWOLF for a while now to get an MVP going and I
am really just a few weeks from a solid code base. The feedback I got let me
know that I was headed in a valid direction. This whole experience was great.

On a side note, I'll be referring to the company as "the one that came in
fourth" for a while. I also may be setting a record for YC rejections. Is
there a solid number on that somewhere?

~~~
sandGorgon
Can't wait to see what you come up with. I encourage you to apply to YC ...
But make sure you are able to communicate what you are doing ;)

~~~
theuttick
Thanks, I've got 3 or 4 YC rejections and now 2 fellowship rejections (single
founder). Finding a co-founder in Houston is not easy.

I believe that my YC applications were better written than the very limited
writeup we got here, but I should revisit that before I release the robot army
to avenge me.

~~~
sandGorgon
I slightly disagree with how you think you have written. The problem is that
HN and YC are highly technical. Most of us already know that web based
CAD/numerical analysis is invaluable... What everyone is trying to figure out
is YOUR approach. And there was not enough detail in it. You are constantly
focusing on the bigger picture - which everybody has already granted.

You're in what I like to call "the nuclear fusion problem" \- how the hell do
you think you can pull it off ?

If I were you, I would talk about the innovation in the JS based symbolic
solver (and that's pretty much what I would focus on from an implementation
POV) and how you will use THAT to disrupt several industries.

------
josh_carterPDX
I've been sitting here trying to digest everything that has happened since we
applied for this endeavor. And while we're disappointed we didn't get many
votes, it was a proud moment for us to be among the top 20 companies out of so
many that applied. I really mean that. We never thought our platform, that
hasn't even launched yet, would get this much attention and we thank EVERYONE
who voted for us.

The feedback we got from this process was very valuable and we even got some
great beta users signed up. However, we likely wouldn't go through something
like this again.

This was a bit of a distraction for us to be quite honest. We spent a lot of
time working to craft a great pitch and responding to the feedback we got
(despite some obvious trolling) in the best way we could.

I get why some people are/were upset though. Anytime you include such a robust
community into a decision making process, you're just asking for trouble.
You're not going to please everyone and even if everything goes the way you
thought, you'll still be met with skepticism. This is especially true for a
site like HN in which there are clear "regulars" who understand the nuances
within this community.

I'm not saying that's a bad thing. I've been an outside observer for a long
time and get tremendous value from the posts here. It's a site I check
regularly many times a day.

All-in-all, it's an indictment of the community when you witness how the
process plays out. This is not dissimilar to our own US presidential race
happening today. You get people that say dumb shit, people who make outlandish
claims, and people end up feeling disenfranchised. Long live democracy! :)

------
baron816
Even though Krewe wasn't chosen, I'm grateful for the opportunity to
participate in this.

I really wish I had the opportunity to "re-pitch" Krewe. I was one of the
first to apply, and I don't think I did it in the right way. It was clear from
the comments that people had a really poor idea of what it is. So my
suggestion for next time: have founders fill out a form so everything gets
formatted correctly.

------
argonaut
What I find disappointing about the conversation here is that, in typical HN
fashion, many people just assumed that this _experiment_ was like one of those
contests where you sign the legal "terms and conditions." As if the process
was simply mechanistic.

As I understand, this could not be further from how this works. It was always
obvious to me that votes would only be one objective factor among many
subjective factors.

The discussion around Pinboard was somewhat polarized and tended to focus on
the wrong aspects. I was partly guilty in that, but it's not great when the
question mark is over whether or not you're serious, rather than over your
business (having a question mark over your business is totally fine! that's
the right kind of risk). And it was always obvious to me that the YC partners
would do a final pass on selection.

~~~
tptacek
It's comments like this that are the reason YC's communications here are so
upsetting. Pinboard isn't a joke. It's how the guy pays his rent. Not only
that, but it's a valuable and important service. I use it every day. Less than
I use Google, but more than I use Wikipedia.

~~~
kevin
No one communicated that Pinboard, the company, was a joke. I feel quite the
opposite.

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11441978](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11441978)

~~~
tptacek
I think you mean to say, "no one intended to communicate that Pinboard, the
company, was a joke."

------
tomplace
Tom from Utiliz here. While dissapointed to miss out we were pumped to get
into the final 20. The Q&A was enlightening and enjoyable. Good luck to the
winners and thanks to Kevin and Dan.

~~~
wj
I am a little surprised not to get into the top 20 as my submission got more
votes and comments (and I thought they were quality ones) than AutoMicroFarm
but their product sounds awesome so I wish them the best.

I'm also thankful to YC for doing this and to the people who took the time to
read and comment on my business. That extra runway and the YC advice would
have been a nice bonus though.

------
david927
Brodlist would like to deeply thank Kevin and Dan for doing this. It not only
gave us great feedback but we found it a lot of fun as well. The winners
deserve their spot and I'm looking forward to seeing great things come from
all three.

Thanks again, guys.

------
dang
A word about why Pinboard is not included. We spent a long time thinking about
this, since the original application did sound trollish, but comments like
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11442027](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11442027),
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11590386](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11590386),
and
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11590315](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11590315)
made us think it was also serious. Had we thought it was merely a joke, of
course we'd have disqualified it. We'd referred to that as the Boaty
McBoatface scenario when planning the experiment and deliberately included a
measure of moderator review as a way of filtering such applications out. But
we wanted to give the benefit of the doubt. We like Maciej's writing as much
as the rest of HN does, think Pinboard is a fine company, and Kevin was
excited by the prospect of working with it. So we decided to include it in the
runoff, knowing that its pre-existing popularity would probably make it a
winner. That last part isn't necessarily a bad thing; popularity is a good
property for a founder and company to have.

But then two things happened. First, Kevin and Maciej had the good-faith
conversation described at
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11441978](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11441978),
and Kevin reluctantly concluded that Maciej doesn’t want to participate in the
program as intended. I don't know the details and can't speak for Kevin, but
that's his call to make as the partner who runs YCF, and I know he hoped and
expected it to go the other way. Getting into a YC batch isn't a cash
prize—it's a close working relationship, and that's something that has to be
right on both sides or it won't work. Both Kevin and I wanted it to work (if
we hadn't, we'd simply have dropped Pinboard from the runoff and said why),
and I felt sure that a good-faith conversation would be enough to bridge any
remaining gap. It turned not to be, which is disappointing.

Second, we found evidence of vote brigading, something we'd disqualify others
for. I don't believe that Maciej organized a voting ring (actually I don't
believe he'd give it a second's thought), but when we dug into the data we
found that the votes for Pinboard look dramatically different from the votes
for the other startups. I presume this is the effect of Pinboard's
(deservedly) large audience being asked to promote the post, e.g. at
[https://twitter.com/Pinboard/status/727255170594131968](https://twitter.com/Pinboard/status/727255170594131968)
and
[https://twitter.com/Pinboard/status/719599297604390912](https://twitter.com/Pinboard/status/719599297604390912).
We didn't know about those links earlier; we only found out about them from
user complaints after the runoff was posted. But we would and did disqualify
people for soliciting votes on a small scale, so it wouldn't be right to allow
soliciting them on a large one.

We're sad about this. As I said, Kevin and I both really wanted it to work--I
thought it would be good for HN and Kevin admires Pinboard. We also appreciate
that humor and irony and "a variety of publicity stunts"
([https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11443463](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11443463))
are Maciej's style, and he was simply practicing it. That part is not a
problem--as readers, we enjoy it too, and creative cleverness has always been
prized on HN. I both take Maciej at his word that he wasn't trolling and Kevin
at his word that he tried to find a way to accept Pinboard into YCF and in the
end just couldn't.

We're going to have a community discussion about things that didn't go so well
with this first Apply HN experiment, but I'm not sure I'd put this in that
category. I'm glad that we chose to believe the serious parts of what Maciej
posted. I think it was the right call, I still believe them, and under similar
circumstances would do the same again. It's not always easy to tell the joking
bits apart from the serious bits, but that goes with the territory.

~~~
kevin
Regarding Pinboard, the simple answer is he won the votes, he won the poll,
but he made me feel uncomfortable in the end. I went into my good-faith phone
call with him very much wanting this to work out and I was disappointed to
come out of it tense and with less energy than when I went in. It’s touchy
feely, I know, but the truth.

The thing with YC is startups can’t do the program in a vacuum. Even with the
remote nature of the Fellowship, the founders affect the partners they work
with and the other founders they work alongside, both in their batch and among
the alumni community. We made the decision to call all the startups we’d
consider taking on through Apply HN and make a decision on fit. I know that’s
changing the rules at the last second, but we didn’t realize this until
Pinboard entered the fray. I'm actually grateful for the head's up. Like all
our experiments at YC, we design them to adapt as things happen, and they
certainly did here.

I made the same phone calls with the other founders and they felt completely
different. I wasn’t looking for gratitude or devotion or deference. My minimum
was connection, my ideal was simpatico—evidence that I could spend a lot of
time with the founder, which is what’s needed to make this relationship work
well. Unfortunately, I couldn’t find a good rapport with Maciej. Regardless of
the vote situation, I’d make the same decision.

Maciej is clearly brilliant and quite witty and knows how to build and direct
a passionate following. Pinboard is unique and I’m glad it exists. More
opinionated software should exist in the world. Even though we couldn’t find
rapport together, I sincerely wish him and his startup the very best.

~~~
zellyn
"He made me feel uncomfortable" is like slide 3 of every "unconscious bias"
training workshop ever. As we slowly try to claw our way out from a deservedly
terrible reputation in our industry, high-profile retentions for, basically,
"lack of culture fit" send a dark message to every person in existence who
fears they might not leave you "energized".

I realize it's inadvisable to wade into this discussion, but this just leaves
me indignant and disappointed on behalf of my whole industry and profession.

~~~
staunch
This is the Achilles's Heal of YC's application process. The human "culture
fit" test, where in (literally) just a few minutes they evaluate the founders
as people.

The reason this experiment was so interesting was that it would bypass their
biased human filtering and let in people based purely on their merit.

Not accepting Pinboard undermines the entire experiment. Pinboard could likely
be a huge company with YC's help, and it would be fucking hilarious to watch.

Let Pinboard in and do the experiment again. He's smart and he's not crazy.
Any founder able to win the votes is someone you can work with. Consider it a
diversity program, which it would be.

------
Suncho
Hi guys. Alex from Gresham Dollar (now Greshm Dollar) here. It was a pleasure
to share my project with all of you. Great questions and lively discussion
from the HN community. Thanks to all of you who participated.

Thanks to HN and YC for putting this together. I doubt I would have been
noticed if I'd applied in the conventional way.

Congratulations and good luck to the three startups who are getting funded!

Back to work.

~~~
hsod
Keep at it. Your idea is crazy in the best possible way and I truly hope it
works out. I voted for you.

------
wcchandler
I'm really rooting for AutoMicroFarm. I'm in the process of moving from the
Triangle area, with a large interest in aquaponics. It's very surreal how
similar our paths could have been...

------
pdeuchler
How did YC not see this Pinboard thing coming?

Obviously when you put something valuable up to an internet vote someone,
somewhere is going to manipulate the results in some sort of fashion. Did
anyone honestly think the opposite was going to happen? Did people honestly
think the internet was going to play fair for the first time in history? That
an online vote was going to be taken seriously?

And how do you respond like this after Maciej explicitly said it was a protest
vote? How could you not see this turning Maciej/Pinboard into a martyr? You're
only adding fuel to the fire and proving everything he says about Silicon
Valley right.

This whole thing was played so obviously wrong from the beginning it feels
like a publicity stunt. How can people who practically control this industry
understand the internet so poorly? I'm honestly at a loss for words.

~~~
cperciva
_Did people honestly think the internet was going to play fair for the first
time in history? That an online vote was going to be taken seriously?_

Of course not. And if you read the original announcement, it was very clear:
"to answer one question I know will come up: Upvotes are an important factor
but they're too brittle to rely on exclusively; doing so would encourage the
wrong kind of trying to game the system."

Maciej tried to game the system, and got the answer he deserved: "Nice try,
but we told you that we weren't going to let you do that". Actually, I think
he got more than he deserved: If I had been in Kevin's place I wouldn't have
bothered with the ad-hoc phone interview.

~~~
pdeuchler
From that same post:

 _So we 're going to gauge community interest both by upvotes and comments,
and in case of doubt I'll make the final call—or better, figure out a way to
put the final call to the community._

Pinboard was the most discussed entrant as well as the highest voted. I also
don't think it's foolish of me to think that a ranking based on "discussion"
or "comments" is just a glorified poll with more subjectivity, and just as
vulnerable to manipulation (if not more).

It was also implied a value judgement would only be made in case of doubt,
seems like Pinboard was doubtless the front runner. Very unfortunate they
didn't manage to put the final call to the community though.

As an aside, i'd just like to echo how odd it is to see people on _Hacker
News_ advocate against people gaming the system

~~~
cperciva
_Pinboard was the most discussed entrant as well as the highest voted_

I'll concede that it could be misunderstood, but I'm sure that by "comments"
they meant the _content_ of the discussion, not just the _number of comments_.

------
danieltillett
Congratulations to everyone who made the final 20 and especially to the three
winners. It was a really interesting, if some what flawed, experiment. Being
able to get access to the raw pitch data is really invaluable.

------
rdl
Offering Pinboard $20k but NOT a YCF slot seems like the most unambiguously
correct thing to do. Sadly, I do not have $20k to give.

(and then the correct thing for him to do is either politely turn it down, or
donate it to a charity or something of mutual agreeableness)

~~~
cperciva
I disagree. Offering him $20k would simply be rewarding him for being
obnoxious. I refuse to accept that he honestly believed that YC was running a
$20k contest to see who could solicit the most votes via twitter, but that's
exactly what he's pretending that this was.

~~~
toyg
As opposed to a $20k contest to see who could solicit the most votes via word-
of-mouth in the Bay Area? Because that would have been totally fine, of
course.

 _> rewarding him for being obnoxious._

What about rewarding _honest HN community members who voted for him in good
faith_? Ignoring their wishes is a big slap in the face; we've been reminded
that we're all just plebes and real power will always lie with Big (White) Men
and their gut feelings.

~~~
cperciva
_As opposed to a $20k contest to see who could solicit the most votes via
word-of-mouth in the Bay Area? Because that would have been totally fine, of
course._

Of course not. But I haven't seen any evidence that anyone was doing that.

 _honest HN community members who voted for him in good faith?_

How many such people exist? I don't think anyone knows. Unfortunately the vote
spam which he solicited via twitter overwhelmed any other signal.

Even if this was supposed to be entirely decided on the basis of votes --
which is explicitly not what was planned from the start -- when people cheat
they normally get disqualified. You don't say "this Olympic athlete took
steroids, but maybe he should keep his medal... after all, he might have won
even without the drugs".

~~~
thaumaturgy
> > _honest HN community members who voted for him in good faith?_

> _How many such people exist?_

 _raises hand_

Hi, my account is 3000 days old today, only a little less old than your own. I
went back and checked and it turns out that I didn't vote for Pinboard, but
that's largely because I hadn't been active on HN in quite a while and I
didn't think it was necessary. I did voice support for Maciej in the comments
there.

I genuinely wanted to see him go through the program ("like a bowling ball
through a python"), and not just for entertainment purposes. I think it would
have been a valuable cross-pollination for everyone involved.

I've generally felt that HN -- and to a greater degree, YC -- aren't
particularly welcoming towards people like me. I got fed up enough that I
wrote a news reader to mine HN for articles just so that I wouldn't be tempted
to visit HN as often, and when that broke a while back, I never bothered to
fix it. Literally the only reason I'm here now is because Maciej mentioned it
on his Twitter account. I've always been an outsider here. Seeing YC accept
another, more successful outsider would have been nice.

This fiasco has all the scent of cliqueish hostility towards Maciej, you have
been non-stop and relentlessly accusing him of being a troll (and you're smart
enough to know better than to claim to know someone's psychology better than
they do over the internet), and the results stink like a US election.

~~~
cperciva
_raises hand_

To be clear, I'm not saying that such people do not exist. I'm saying that
there's no effective way to estimate their number.

~~~
tanderson92
Sure there is. The way has been outlined by `beeboop' and `killwhitey' in this
thread, and subsequently by myself. The question have not been answered: if
the concern is vote-brigading then the correct result can be determined by
looking at accounts that are more than 30 days old.

If the outcome is the same then the twitter-promoting explanation is simply a
smokescreen.

~~~
cperciva
There are plenty of people with old accounts who would not have voted for
pinboard -- or, for that matter, even been aware that there was a poll
happening -- if he had not actively solicited votes on twitter.

~~~
thaumaturgy
...I was about halfway into rebutting this when I realized, you know what,
you're right.

I would not have cared at all about some contest on HN for a YC acceptance if
it weren't for him mentioning it on Twitter. In fact, I would not have even
known it was happening.

And now that I've seen the way both HN and YC has handled this throughout,
including the attitude you've had towards his application since the beginning,
I wish that he hadn't mentioned it on Twitter at all and my nearly 6-month-
long streak of forgetting that HN exists had continued unbroken.

We could probably keep sparring over this, but the results are clearly not
going to change and HN does not look any more like a community I want to be a
part of than it did so many months ago.

------
idlewords
How many points did Pinboard get?

~~~
firloop
Vote totals are live again on the runoff thread:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11615639](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11615639)

~~~
trowawee
Tiny difference in the count, really.

------
algirau
Feyman Nano is not doing anything new or innovative. In the materials world
this is old technology with a very old spin.

------
synaesthesisx
Feynman Nano sounds awesome - anything with the potential to save lives is
fantastic. Good for them!

------
nickpsecurity
I didn't see this set coming outside Casepad. Interesting. Will be more
interesting to see how they do from here on out. One little benefit was that I
had never heard of aquaponics until now. That's really neat stuff.

------
vishalkgupta
Vishal from WedWell here. Really appreciated the input from everyone who
commented, and the votes. We're charging forward. Hopefully you'll see us in
the next YC round ;)

Overall liked having an open forum for people to give feedback on our idea. We
used some of that feedback to evolve the product, we even got some new clients
from HN.

Changes for next year? I'd love the final run off to be a bit more like the
final four, where you pit one start-up against another until there are only a
few standing. Then YC can pick from the cream of the crop.

Thanks again

------
namenotrequired
Congratulations to the winners!

------
xigency
Disappointed not to see Pikii!

------
thisisgarbage
Here's some great feedback: how about we let the winners win and the losers
lose?

