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Tell HN: Winners of Apply HN for YC Fellowship 3

196 points by kevin 10y ago

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. Context: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11440627 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11440627 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: AutoMicroFarm (264 points): https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11454342 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11454342 Feynman Nano (208 points): https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11443122 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11443122 Casepad (200 points): https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11452884 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11452884 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 (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11615639 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11615639). Of course, the application that got the most votes isn’t on the final list and we’ll discuss that in the thread below. 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. 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. 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. 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.

dang 10y ago
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.
- beeboop 10y ago
  If you removed votes from all accounts newer than the day you announced this entire program, what would the tally be? If I had to guess it would have still won.
- minimaxir 10y ago
  Thanks for the transparency as always, Dan. It's well appreciated.
  - ThisIs_MyName 10y ago
    >transparency I hope this is sarcasm.
- idlewords 10y ago
  I call shenanigans. The way this experiment was presented, the Hacker News community would be allowed to select two YC Fellowship recipients. According to the announcement, "all the interviewing and evaluating will be done in regular HN threads." But that's not what happened here. I won the voting by a yuuuge margin, and then the vote was nullified in a vape-filled room after it became clear that Hacker News might have its own agenda, separate from YC. Accusations of soliciting votes by tweeting the HN threads would carry weight with me if there had been any published guidelines about what kind of publicity was allowed. But rules about "vote brigading" on HN are intentionally kept secret. People have repeatedly accused me of trolling, but I don't think it's me who just trolled you all. I want my twenty grand.
  - cperciva 10y ago
    According to the announcement, "all the interviewing and evaluating will be done in regular HN threads." According to the same announcement, "We can talk about this in the comments, but 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." They said from the start that votes alone would not decide the results.
gilrain 10y ago
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 10y ago
  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 10y ago
    Pinboard & the community should just do it without YC/SV.
    - idlewords 10y ago
      I anticipated this outcome by becoming profitable eight years ago. But I still want my $20K.
      - paulsutter 10y ago
        Try Kickstarter. Seriously.
        idlewords 10y ago
phantom_oracle 10y ago
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 10y ago
  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.
  - cperciva 10y ago
    Except that's not what was advertised. In fact, the announcement said explicitly that they weren't going to fund companies purely based on voting.
    - idlewords 10y ago
      You're being kind of disingenuous. The announcement said that all evaluation would take place in open HN threads, but it didn't.
      - cperciva 10y ago
        You're right, they were more generous than the original announcement suggested. If I had been in Kevin's shoes I would have rejected pinboard based on the content of the thread rather than holding an ad-hoc phone interview to give you a chance to redeem yourself.
thisisgarbage 10y ago
Here's some great feedback: how about we let the winners win and the losers lose?
idlewords 10y ago
How many points did Pinboard get?
- firloop 10y ago
  Vote totals are live again on the runoff thread: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11615639 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11615639
  - trowawee 10y ago
    Tiny difference in the count, really.
- aaronbrethorst 10y ago
  More than all three companies that were funded, combined. Ahem.
  - Kiro 10y ago
    So what happened?
    - cperciva 10y ago
      He tried to stack the deck by asking his 30,000 twitter followers to vote for him. He got caught. YC decided to be generous and interview him rather than disqualifying him completely. After the interview, YC decided not to invest in his company.
      - lemming 10y ago
        Just to be clear, your opinion is that Maciej deliberately and knowingly cheated?
        cperciva 10y ago
        My opinion is that if you use performance-enhancing drugs, you lose Olympic medals, even if it only happened because you accidentally took the wrong cold medicine while in a foreign country (see Silken Laumann). Maciej should have known that soliciting votes via twitter was against the rules; whether he did know is irrelevant to whether he should be excluded.
baron816 10y ago
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.
namenotrequired 10y ago
Congratulations to the winners!
david927 10y ago
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.
cperciva 10y ago
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?
toyg 10y ago
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 10y ago
  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?
- CameronBanga 10y ago
  Couldn't agree more with this statement.
wcchandler 10y ago
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...
colinbartlett 10y ago
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 10y ago
  The question also came with a few stipulations, and the winner did not like them. This was never about pleasing the HN community.
- deleted 10y ago
  [deleted]
- SherlockeHolmes 10y ago
  I've figured YC out as soon as I finished reading a few good books on it. I especially loved the journey Justin and co. went through in their frantic search for something (seemingly anything would've done) to sell. HN does not equal YC, regardless of whoever is at its helm. Just as the well being of the 1 percent does not equal the well being of the human species.
tomplace 10y ago
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.
- danieltillett 10y ago
  Tom keep going. I don’t think you really need funding to build your business and you would be much better off bootstrapping.
- wj 10y ago
  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.
theuttick 10y ago
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 10y ago
  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 10y ago
    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 10y ago
      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.
argonaut 10y ago
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 10y ago
  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.
  - Gargoyle 10y ago
    Pinboard's YCF application being perceived as a joke is due entirely to Pinboard's YCF application. YC has no responsibility for that at all.
  - kevin 10y ago
    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 10y ago
      I think you mean to say, "no one intended to communicate that Pinboard, the company, was a joke."
algirau 10y ago
Feyman Nano is not doing anything new or innovative. In the materials world this is old technology with a very old spin.
nickpsecurity 10y ago
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.
josh_carterPDX 10y ago
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! :)
Suncho 10y ago
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 10y ago
  Keep at it. Your idea is crazy in the best possible way and I truly hope it works out. I voted for you.
pdeuchler 10y ago
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 10y ago
  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 10y ago
    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
danieltillett 10y ago
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.
deleted 10y ago
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rdl 10y ago
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 10y ago
  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 10y ago
    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 10y ago
      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".
      - 10y ago
OoTheNigerian 10y ago
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-nigerians-demand-an-apology/ http://oonwoye.com/2011/03/09/maciej-of-pinboard-in-nigerian...
- maaaats 10y ago
  Except that he multiple times, even in this thread, has shown that he only wanted the money and not be a part og YC. So it's really on him.
- cperciva 10y ago
  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 10y ago
    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".
synaesthesisx 10y ago
Feynman Nano sounds awesome - anything with the potential to save lives is fantastic. Good for them!
vishalkgupta 10y ago
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
xigency 10y ago
Disappointed not to see Pikii!
deleted 10y ago
[deleted]

196 points by kevin 10y ago

dang 10y ago

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.

beeboop 10y ago
If you removed votes from all accounts newer than the day you announced this entire program, what would the tally be? If I had to guess it would have still won.
minimaxir 10y ago
Thanks for the transparency as always, Dan. It's well appreciated.
- ThisIs_MyName 10y ago
  >transparency I hope this is sarcasm.
idlewords 10y ago
I call shenanigans. The way this experiment was presented, the Hacker News community would be allowed to select two YC Fellowship recipients. According to the announcement, "all the interviewing and evaluating will be done in regular HN threads." But that's not what happened here. I won the voting by a yuuuge margin, and then the vote was nullified in a vape-filled room after it became clear that Hacker News might have its own agenda, separate from YC. Accusations of soliciting votes by tweeting the HN threads would carry weight with me if there had been any published guidelines about what kind of publicity was allowed. But rules about "vote brigading" on HN are intentionally kept secret. People have repeatedly accused me of trolling, but I don't think it's me who just trolled you all. I want my twenty grand.
- cperciva 10y ago
  According to the announcement, "all the interviewing and evaluating will be done in regular HN threads." According to the same announcement, "We can talk about this in the comments, but 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." They said from the start that votes alone would not decide the results.

gilrain 10y ago

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 10y ago
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 10y ago
  Pinboard & the community should just do it without YC/SV.
  - idlewords 10y ago
    I anticipated this outcome by becoming profitable eight years ago. But I still want my $20K.
    - paulsutter 10y ago
      Try Kickstarter. Seriously.
      - idlewords 10y ago

phantom_oracle 10y ago

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 10y ago
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.
- cperciva 10y ago
  Except that's not what was advertised. In fact, the announcement said explicitly that they weren't going to fund companies purely based on voting.
  - idlewords 10y ago
    You're being kind of disingenuous. The announcement said that all evaluation would take place in open HN threads, but it didn't.
    - cperciva 10y ago
      You're right, they were more generous than the original announcement suggested. If I had been in Kevin's shoes I would have rejected pinboard based on the content of the thread rather than holding an ad-hoc phone interview to give you a chance to redeem yourself.

thisisgarbage 10y ago

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

idlewords 10y ago

How many points did Pinboard get?

firloop 10y ago
Vote totals are live again on the runoff thread: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11615639 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11615639
- trowawee 10y ago
  Tiny difference in the count, really.
aaronbrethorst 10y ago
More than all three companies that were funded, combined. Ahem.
- Kiro 10y ago
  So what happened?
  - cperciva 10y ago
    He tried to stack the deck by asking his 30,000 twitter followers to vote for him. He got caught. YC decided to be generous and interview him rather than disqualifying him completely. After the interview, YC decided not to invest in his company.
    - lemming 10y ago
      Just to be clear, your opinion is that Maciej deliberately and knowingly cheated?
      - cperciva 10y ago
        My opinion is that if you use performance-enhancing drugs, you lose Olympic medals, even if it only happened because you accidentally took the wrong cold medicine while in a foreign country (see Silken Laumann). Maciej should have known that soliciting votes via twitter was against the rules; whether he did know is irrelevant to whether he should be excluded.

baron816 10y ago

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.

namenotrequired 10y ago

Congratulations to the winners!

david927 10y ago

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.

cperciva 10y ago

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?

toyg 10y ago

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 10y ago
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?
CameronBanga 10y ago
Couldn't agree more with this statement.

wcchandler 10y ago

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...

colinbartlett 10y ago

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 10y ago
The question also came with a few stipulations, and the winner did not like them. This was never about pleasing the HN community.
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SherlockeHolmes 10y ago
I've figured YC out as soon as I finished reading a few good books on it. I especially loved the journey Justin and co. went through in their frantic search for something (seemingly anything would've done) to sell. HN does not equal YC, regardless of whoever is at its helm. Just as the well being of the 1 percent does not equal the well being of the human species.

tomplace 10y ago

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.

danieltillett 10y ago
Tom keep going. I don’t think you really need funding to build your business and you would be much better off bootstrapping.
wj 10y ago
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.

theuttick 10y ago

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 10y ago
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 10y ago
  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 10y ago
    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.

argonaut 10y ago

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 10y ago
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.
- Gargoyle 10y ago
  Pinboard's YCF application being perceived as a joke is due entirely to Pinboard's YCF application. YC has no responsibility for that at all.
- kevin 10y ago
  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 10y ago
    I think you mean to say, "no one intended to communicate that Pinboard, the company, was a joke."

algirau 10y ago

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

nickpsecurity 10y ago

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.

josh_carterPDX 10y ago

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! :)

Suncho 10y ago

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 10y ago
Keep at it. Your idea is crazy in the best possible way and I truly hope it works out. I voted for you.

pdeuchler 10y ago

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 10y ago
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 10y ago
  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

danieltillett 10y ago

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.

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rdl 10y ago

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 10y ago
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 10y ago
  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 10y ago
    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".
    - 10y ago

OoTheNigerian 10y ago

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-nigerians-demand-an-apology/ http://oonwoye.com/2011/03/09/maciej-of-pinboard-in-nigerian...

maaaats 10y ago
Except that he multiple times, even in this thread, has shown that he only wanted the money and not be a part og YC. So it's really on him.
cperciva 10y ago
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 10y ago
  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".

synaesthesisx 10y ago

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

vishalkgupta 10y ago

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

xigency 10y ago

Disappointed not to see Pikii!

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