+1. Also a founder of an $XB fintech. Exact same story. Patrick + John dangled an acquisition to get a look inside, and ended up re-trading on the terms. Then proceeded to target 2 of our team members to recruit. Fast forward a few years, and now they have deployed a team to directly copy one of our products.
Amongst their L2 team, Patrick and Will are described as the "killers". I guess maybe a bit of duplicity is required to build a company of that size...
As much as the parent comment strained credibility, this double-down (posted exactly 10 minutes after the original) breaks it. Seriously, how many $XB fintech founders are out there, waiting to tell their salacious tales about one of the most transparent and accountable individuals on HN?
It's OK, come out $XB fintech founders, it's safe for your temp accounts here...at least until the moderators get here and start checking the IP addresses.
It's not that surprising there are many founders lurking on HN. Many people who are famous in the tech world comment here once in a while. It's not a stretch to imagine that a lot of people from that demographic are active but silent users/consumers.
Two unrelated co-founders of multi-billion dollar fintech making anonymous accounts to comment here within 10 minutes of each other seems extremely unlikely to happen organically. Consider that the second one is a reply comment to the first. What would have to be true for this to be organic is:
1. The first person arrives organically, which is plausible.
2. The second person sees their comment within 10 minutes of it being posted.
3. Decides that they are going to respond, and respond anonymously.
4. Makes an anonymous account.
5. Writes the comment
All within 10 minutes. Consider further that if this were legit, and you were the founder of a multi billion dollar tech company, would you write any comment like this that quickly? Wouldn't you spend a while reading exactly what it was you were saying to make sure you couldn't be identified, or didn't say the wrong thing? I certainly would.
It's not necessarily implausible that Patrick is secretly an asshole. But it is pretty implausible that these two comments were organic and independent.
I find it unlikely, but not extremely so given the environment (HN). It's very plausible to me that these comments are organic and independent.
We have already had Patrick Collison and Brian Armstrong comment on this post (That I know of). I'm sure that many other high profile people in tech have since seen it as well.
The timeframe is somewhat suss, but I don't find it unbelievable.
E: other people also corroborate somewhat similar stories
I don't understand your point here... Active users being disproportionately represented by people commenting is probably correct, but it doesn't provide any useful information about the minority of users who don't comment often.
I'm saying that an account being mostly inactive (In terms of commenting) is not at all surprising.
Someone could have been actively browsing HN for months/years without commenting, so I don't think comment activity is a good indicator of credibility when lurking is the default behaviour for almost all users.
I wouldn't be surprised if the number of comments per user followed a power law distribution.
He's not saying its an indicator of credibility. He's speaking to the probability of two infrequent commenters commenting. The density of frequent commenters in all comments is very high.
It's not that unlikely - a lot of us in SV are on HN all of the time. It's the default 'waiting for something' site to check (along with Twitter). If you saw a negative story about a friend you'd be more likely to comment.
Ya I don't find it to be at all implausible that two such people could be browsing HN. I just find it to be implausible that they commented within 10 minutes of each other just by chance.
By that logic, couldn't you just undermine the credibility of all temp accounts by creating your own temp accounts to enthusiastically agree with them?
> By that logic, couldn't you just undermine the credibility of all temp accounts by creating your own temp accounts to enthusiastically agree with them?
False-flag sock-puppetry seems like an interesting combination. I'll have to remember that one.
That was one of the tricks used by Russian trolls throughout the 2016 election and Trump presidency.
Sock puppets obviously sock puppets agreeing with “the other side” so you would convince yourself whatever “side” you were on was obviously correct if the other side needed sock puppets.
Fintech is worth trillions. A trillion is a thousand billions. HN/YC is the de facto hub for those. These comments are doubtful (given the money and the strong emotions involved I wouldn't trust a single one of them, positive or otherwise), but this isn't the best arguments against them.
I mean considering blockchain I think it’s a safe bet there’s a lot more $XB fintechs than you seem to think. Technically X can be 1, mind you
Note that I did not say whether this was a good or bad thing, I just think you’re overthinking billion dollar fintech startup scarcity given a single bitcoin is basically a billion dollars. Those folks are also more likely to identify themselves as fintech during an introduction in my experience, and Stripe undoubtedly plays in the crypto pool, so it fits
This sounds like typical tech infighting, sadly. We shouldn't normalize this stuff, but we do. I really hope more companies hold their leaders to a governing, conscious culture that they actually follow themselves.
Maybe they saying it's already the pattern and want to not continue it? (Like, if we read the comment in best light like guidelines say). And, Stripe has lied to me as well but it was a small issue.
By example, if I walk through a maximum security prison with no power, holding ten pounds of cocaine, typically I will get murdered. This doesn't mean that murder is a thing we should consider to be normal.
Typical is about commonality. Normal is about evaluation of decency.
Consider most topics in a theater of war to see the stark difference between what is common and what is decent.
Umm.. No? I think you're inferring one thing when I meant another. I'm saying that this SHOULD NOT be "the typical". Read the entire sentence, please: "We shouldn't normalize this stuff, but we do."
And please don't write condescending, inflammatory remarks. It offers nothing.
Amongst their L2 team, Patrick and Will are described as the "killers". I guess maybe a bit of duplicity is required to build a company of that size...