Why YC went to DC

https://www.ycombinator.com/blog/why-yc-went-to-dc/

by todsacerdoti • 2 years ago

263 379 2 years ago

Same reason we all do: lobbying.

AlexErrant• 2 years ago

Open source AI models allow for greater transparency, collaboration, and innovation by making the underlying code publicly accessible and modifiable.

I feel like open models do virtually nothing for transparency, collaboration, or innovation, and are only modifiable in that they can be fine-tuned. It's "open source" training processes and data that will lead to "transparency, collaboration, and innovation", and I'm unaware of any large company that does this.

Am I wrong?

dbish2• 2 years ago

Correct. Worse is that there are models being touted as "open source" that don't allow for a bunch of different uses and specify their own custom licensing (look at what Falcon originally had, Meta's models with specific commercial carveouts, etc.), we need an rms of the new age to call these fake OSS approaches out as they feel more like they are being done to get the OSS marketing shine, without actually being free and open.

Your "source" is not open nor is it transparent if training code, original dataset, model architecture details, and training methodology are not all there.

Xunjin• 2 years ago

As someone layman in that field I do agree with you, would love inputs from specialists in the area.

lolinder3• 2 years ago

You're correct if you're focused exclusively on the work surrounding building foundation models to begin with. But if you take a broader view, having open models that we can legally fine tune and hack with locally has created a large and ever-growing community of builders and innovators that could not exist without these open models. Just take a look at projects like InvokeAI [0] in the image space or especially llama.cpp [1] in the text generation space. These projects are large, have lots of contributors, move very fast, and drive a lot of innovation and collaboration in applying AI to various domains in a way that simply wouldn't be possible without the open models.

[0] https://github.com/invoke-ai/InvokeAI

[1] https://github.com/ggerganov/llama.cpp

no_wizard4• 2 years ago

Taking the broader view of this nature feels like an attempt to change the narrative.

The entire point of having transparency is around building those foundations so they don’t inherit the biases of humans, for starters. Right now, we have zero introspection into this and no ability to improve upon it with the widely deployed models being used today, and that has already created problematic situations, let alone situations that are problematic and not known yet.

Transparency around this is a very good thing to prevent AI from inheriting negative human ideas and biases, and broadens access to improve training data that benefits everyone

reaperman• 2 years ago

Closest to this would be https://www.eleuther.ai whose training data is largely public and training processes are openly discussed, planned, and evaluated on their Discord server. Much of their training dataset is available at https://the-eye.eu (their onion link is considered "primary", however, due to copyright concerns)

sillysaurusx5• 2 years ago

Is our dataset still available? I thought it was taken offline.

Where do you go under that link to get it?

E.g. https://the-eye.eu/public/AI/pile/readme.txt says it’s gone (and "old news"? I disagree).

siliconc0w• 2 years ago

If you need more things to fix:

* Software R&D Amortization - taxes on make-believe profits

* Patent law - protect small businesses from patent trolls

* Automate government-driven compliance standards - enable small businesses to sell into large companies/government entities, automatic certification when using pre-approved cloud solutions.

* Healthcare insurance - employees of SMBs automatically get access to medicare

superfrank• 2 years ago

Can you remind me what the issue with software R&D amortization (or point me to something that explains it)? I remember reading about the issue in the past and thinking it was a problem, but I've forgotten all the details.

romanhn• 2 years ago

I assume they're referring to Section 174 changes. Here's a primer: https://blog.pragmaticengineer.com/section-174

candiddevmike5• 2 years ago

* Automate government-driven compliance standards - enable small businesses to sell into large companies/government entities, automatic certification when using pre-approved cloud solutions.

I don't see how this will end well. I appreciate the reasoning behind it, but this is not a good solution.

I'd prefer to see more "startup friendly" compliance frameworks that don't require tens to hundreds of thousands of dollars and make both the startup and their customers satisfied with the outcome. Something like a SOC2-lite that isn't so onerous but still provides a decent snapshot of their current situation from a third party's perspective.

SR2Z• 2 years ago

Yeah, the only thing worse than the current status quo would be giving some SV startups a privileged position as gatekeepers for regulatory compliance (the Watershed strategy).

stackskipton8• 2 years ago

I'd also prefer to see these standards go away. I haven't seen any proof they are providing meaningful security at any company I've been at and several of them have had massive hacks despite being SOC2 on paper. They also eat up InfoSec time instead of being productive on meaningful stuff like "Hey, are patching everything?"

Most of these compliance just seem like barber licenses. A way for existing entities entrench themselves.

pclmulqdq• 2 years ago

Try ISO 27001. Everyone says it's more onerous, but for startups, it's actually a lighter lift. It is a lot worse for big companies than SOC2, but it's a lot easier for startups.

jrockway4• 2 years ago

Did we even fix Section 174 yet?

1auralynn• 2 years ago

No.

jandrewrogers2• 2 years ago

Of these, the Section 174 debacle (software R&D amortization) is arguably the problem that needs to be addressed most urgently.

guyfromfargo• 2 years ago

Completely agree. I am a bootstrapped SaaS owner and we cleared about $1M in revenue, $1,200 in profit, and $90k in taxes.

Bootstrapping a tech company in a post Section 174 world doesn’t even seem feasible. I can’t believe this issue isn’t being taken more seriously.

nurple5• 2 years ago

Couldn't agree more. In the SMEs that I've been involved with, this has had a huge chilling effect on both hiring and innovation. I think that the change is a primary contributing factor to the layoffs and offshoring that have seized the market ever since.

I'm not convinced that this wasn't the intent of the change in the first place.

hosh• 2 years ago

It's kinda nuts how little this is taken seriously on HN.

When combined with:

- Pressure to make use of office spaces again, away from remote work

- The AI bubble

- The layoffs that started before section 174 that demonstrated how headcounts had inflated

- The collapse of Silicon Valley Bank last year

... it is not looking good for software engineers in the US.

raincole3• 2 years ago

Could someone elaborate this for an uninformed like me? Does it mean if you (a company) pay $1M as salary this year, only $0.2M can be treated as cost?

giancarlostoro2• 2 years ago

The house passed a bill, but the senate is working on their own version. I havent looked too deeply at either proposal, I just hope it doesnt make it even worse. I am waiting till the final proposal gets voted on.

downrightmike2• 2 years ago

Healthcare insurance - employees of SMBs automatically get access to medicare

This puts you in the same company of abusing the system as Walmart, the nation's biggest welfare queen.

Employers should just have to give health benefits. You want workers, you pay benefits. Period. Maybe then you all will get on board for a single payer system. Its what you want, but only in fits and starts. quit fucking around already.

stetrain4• 2 years ago

I really don't want my at-will employment status to be the arbiter of whether an unforeseen health issue will bankrupt me. Tying either private insurance or public insurance eligibility to your employer seems like a bad pattern we should be trying to get away from.

bko2• 2 years ago

What if someone doesn't offer enough to his employer to justify the healthcare coverage? They should just not be able to work legally?

philwelch3• 2 years ago

I’ve never understood the idea that employers like Walmart are “abusing the system” or “welfare queens”. If Walmart employees were capable of getting jobs that paid enough that they weren’t eligible for public assistance, they wouldn’t work for Walmart. Conversely, if Walmart didn’t employ those people, they would be an even greater burden on the welfare state.

tick_tock_tick• 2 years ago

Fuck that employers should be legally barred from offering health benefits. Combining the two might have been one of the worst things to happen the health system in this country.

jaypeg25• 2 years ago

Amortization (174) probably isn't getting fixed this year.

dbancajas• 2 years ago

Can you expand on the last one? Is there no market (providers/demand) for this right now?

robertlagrant5• 2 years ago

Automate government-driven compliance standards - enable small businesses to sell into large companies/government entities, automatic certification when using pre-approved cloud solutions.

This is something the market can solve. You can't lobby it into existence.

Justsignedup2• 2 years ago

How about health insurance not being tied to profits. Startups pay the full brunt of health insurance since they don't have real profits they have nothing to write off. Meanwhile large orgs get to write off a ton of profits as Healthcare costs for employees.

So startups tend to have real garbage insurance. As someone older with kids startups are getting more and more prohibitive because I need that Healthcare. Maybe startups should be a young man's game. Maybe not.

miah_• 2 years ago

"Maybe startups should be a young man's game."

No. Anybody of any age should be able to take part in labor, otherwise you're arguing for ageism.

lol768• 2 years ago

Radical suggestion (maybe I'm too British): health insurance not being tied to employment or work whatsoever?

nradov7• 2 years ago

There is no particular linkage between health insurance and profits. Small businesses such as early-stage startups tend to have worse and more expensive employee health plans because they lack the scale to go self-insured or to negotiate lower premiums with payers for fully-insured plans. Profitable small businesses face the same problem.

cde-v• 2 years ago

Accounting regs are meant to reflect reality, not enable shitty startups

araes• 2 years ago

While you're there, try to help the Army National Guard Incentive Management System, or GIMS, not have multi-year downtimes, while the corporate sector wrings their hands over minutes. It's funny, yet hurtful to read. They exist in different universes.

the system crashed in late 2018 and was inoperable for about 10 months; another 10-month outage occurred in 2021. While the system was down, bonuses had to be filed through a complicated manual process, creating a backlog that states are still trying to fix. (2023 story) [1]
Two adjutants general, top commanders in their respective states, described discovering their staff tracking enlistment bonuses on dry-erase boards or through email traffic and handwritten notes. [1]

Sorry, your bonus is goin around on somebody's handwritten note somewhere. Also, see if you can maybe do something about that VA medical data system. Heard they still hate it last reference.

[1] https://www.military.com/daily-news/2023/10/27/soldiers-unpa...

eru• 2 years ago

* Healthcare insurance - employees of SMBs automatically get access to medicare

Perhaps better decouple healthcare insurance from employment status? (Perhaps remove the tax dodge where companies can buy health insurance cheaper than individuals can?)

reducesuffering3• 2 years ago

to disastrous effects, in the form of social media harms
There are many reasons to be optimistic about AI

Without a modicum of awareness.

Paul G [0] and Sam Altman both have recognized the potential dangers.[1]

[0] https://x.com/paulg/status/1651613807779667968

[1] https://blog.samaltman.com/machine-intelligence-part-1

alexfromapex• 2 years ago

It was funny how the closing statement was admiring rugged individualism too when that philosophy is encouraging a lot of the damaging effects similar to how social media has been harming the world.

simonw• 2 years ago

This new essay by Jack Clark, who was at OpenAI when they made the decision not to release GPT-2 for safety reasons five years ago, feels relevant: https://importai.substack.com/p/import-ai-375-gpt-2-five-yea...

[...] history shows that once we assign power to governments, they're loathe to subsequently give that power back to the people. Policy is a ratchet and things tend to accrete over time. That means whatever power we assign governments today represents the floor of their power in the future - so we should be extremely cautious in assigning them power because I guarantee we will not be able to take it back.

ralegh2• 2 years ago

Well said, also applies to many human dynamics - friendships, relationships, work relationships, etc. Ceding power is a ratchet and you either put your foot down to start with or it grinds away.

redserk• 2 years ago

Hard disagree.

Healthy relationships include negotiating when potential boundaries are in question, or if things change that require re-aligning boundaries.

It's reasonable to give more to the other party from time-to-time, and reasonable to discuss with the other party if it becomes a point where it feels unfair.

Instead we (Americans) take an unnecessarily adversarial stance against what our government could do, ensuring it is perpetually unprepared.

no_wizard4• 2 years ago

I don’t disagree with this assessment but it’s also a narrow view[0] that allows the problem to persist in the first place.

Rather, I’d like to see what positive oversight would look like, but that has not been put forth by any of these organizations thus far. It all comes down to “trust us” which is also hard to stomach

[0]: most often but not exclusively held by Americans (of which i am one). We collectively fail to imagine government being a positive force and what that would look like.

vundercind2• 2 years ago

This is a relatively new and carefully cultivated state of things.

I mean, the early phases of this era are a half-century old at this point, but it’s not like it’s a law of nature that at least half the population of the US and about half the politicians must regard government as rarely-useful. It didn’t used to be that way. It’s not an American trait in some holistic historical sense.

martin293• 2 years ago

Why did they decide not to release GPT-2? I haven't heard about it.

versteegen• 2 years ago

Largely because they feared that large language models would be useful for large scale disinformation, election interference, impersonation, automated phishing, etc.

https://openai.com/index/better-language-models/ See "Policy Implications" and down.

yqx• 2 years ago

I'm curious what history Jack Clark is referring to here.

If I think of the last thirty years of policy in most of Europe and the US I'm thinking of a strong trend of deregulation and giving more powers to markets, removing international trade barriers and so on.

That seems to be a dynamic opposite to the one the quoted article is suggesting.

rurp2• 2 years ago

Right, and many of those deregulation moves turned out poorly in hindsight. Governments have ratcheted up control in some cases, but stating that it is a universal law is patently false, although it sounds good as a quip.

Regulations are kind of like security practices. When done well they are often taken for granted, but poor ones get a lot of negative attention. I'm glad that I don't have to wonder if the cereal I buy at a store is filled with rat poison. I'm fine if the government never relinquishes the power to oversee that.

Unfortunately the current leaders in the latest AI craze have not inspired much confidence that they will act responsibly in the future. Maybe if different people were running these companies it would make sense for the government to keep out of it, but in this world we're going to need some reasonable regulation.

nurple5• 2 years ago

Deregulation is not returning power to the people, it's bestowing carte blanche privatization of profits to corpos, in the wake of near complete regulatory capture, while they dump the negative externalities on the public.

pdonis3• 2 years ago

If I think of the last thirty years of policy in most of Europe and the US I'm thinking of a strong trend of deregulation and giving more powers to markets

That's been the PR spin, but it's not actually true. It's a smoke screen to help governments avoid actual accountability.

For example, the crash of 2008 was blamed on too much market and not enough regulation, but in fact it was the opposite: regulatory thumbs on the scale, for example the US government wanting to encourage home ownership and skewing the mortage market and the money supply and requiring lenders to accept more default risk, and governments implicitly giving a "too big to fail" guarantee to large financial institutions and then being extremely arbitrary in when that implicit guarantee was broken. A true free market would never have produced such a thing.

removing international trade barriers and so on.

Globalization of trade has been going on for much longer than the last 30 years. If anything, the last 30 years have seen more of things like trade wars (for example between the US and China) and other disruptions to smooth international trade.

cma• 2 years ago

Other examples: governments regulated/restricted women's ability to vote and it was given up almost everywhere and didn't act as a ratchet.

badestrand• 2 years ago

At least for Europe this is wrong. I mean yes, there are new trade treaties but internally EU regulations and at least for Germany its regulations increase by the day. Just this year the personal tax declaration form got 10 or so additional pages. And the new supply chain law needs medium to large companies to prove that all their purchases are morally correct (sorry not sure how to phrase this properly). And I don't even follow new laws closely.

PaulDavisThe1st• 2 years ago

You know the other thing that is a ratchet?

Experience.

It is true that sometimes you learn something at time T2 that invalidates something you learned at time T1 (T2 > T1), and thus you do need a de-ratcheting system of some sort.

But what actually drives the ratchet is experience with current policy (or lack thereof). "Oh, we had no plans to deal with X, and we got screwed, so lets add policy for X".

The ratcheting aspect of policy reflects the ratcheting aspect of societal experience accumulation.

oglop• 2 years ago

What a pretentious way to say something simple.

mrb• 2 years ago

"This year, we’ll fund more than 500 companies out of 50,000 applications, and almost all of them are related to AI in some way."

So, what this means: that in 2024, if you want to get VC capital, your startup must be related to AI.

candiddevmike5• 2 years ago

It's like VR in 2018. I'd love to see a Silicon Valley season for the current tech environment.

jrockway4• 2 years ago

I think 2018 was the year of FinTech, which translates mostly to "altcoins".

I was looking for a job in the summer of 2018 and that's what all the ads were for. Ended up working for an ISP though, which was nice.

rshah_452• 2 years ago

Season 9 Erlich: "Oh my god. It's an AI play. That's the frothiest space in the Valley right now. Nobody understands it but everyone wants in. Any idiot could walk into a fucking room, utter the letters A and I, and VCs would hurl bricks of cash at them.”.

sneak4• 2 years ago

VR won’t touch every aspect of society and government and corporate operations in five years.

AI will.

threeseed3• 2 years ago

The current tech environment is very different from 6 months ago.

Now most VCs are actually somewhat cautious about AI largely because they over-invested in companies at ridiculous high valuations and aren't seeing the ROI. Especially with many companies simply not seeing the promised benefits from deploying AI.

YC is actually the one that is out of touch with reality.

dylan604• 2 years ago

Hasn't this been true for several years now in practice if not in writing?

jandrewrogers2• 2 years ago

Definitely not, there are several other topical areas that currently have significant VC appetite.

If anything, the enormous amount of social media attention on AI has made it easier to raise VC in other trending areas because all of the low-quality "me too" startups have gotten pulled into the fashionable AI orbit. This has significantly improved the signal-to-noise ratio in these non-AI areas because the legions of trend-jumping founders are all doing AI, the startups that remain tend to be founded by people with substantial investment and expertise in their domain without regard for fashion. This is good for VCs and for founders.

marcosdumay• 2 years ago

made it easier to raise VC in other trending areas because all of the low-quality "me too" startups have gotten pulled into the fashionable AI orbit

You are trying to say "adding IA to the pitch won't improve a founder's chances", but what you are saying is "granting money to founders that didn't add AI to their pitch improves a smart VC's chances".

waprin• 2 years ago

What’s ironic is that Michael Seibel has discussed many times on the YC podcast that you should avoid building whatever’s hot for VCs because their attention tends to change every year but you’ll be stuck building for a decade.

2020 was remote work, 2021 was web3, now we have the big LLM boom.

Honestly it seems there’s a lot of advantages to “riding a wave” and a lot of advantages to being contrarian. But if raising money is your priority I do think you should ride the wave. Being contrarian sounds romantic, but don’t expect funding from people who disagree with you.

The most charitable thing I’d say about YCs AI focus is it’s hard to think of a startup idea that couldn’t benefit from AI in some way.

serial_dev• 2 years ago

On the other hand, I can see how basically any product can have some useful features backed by AI. I never felt that with web3.

deadwindsails• 2 years ago

What’s ironic is that Michael Seibel

unfortunately Michael is no longer running things and it shows in the lack of long-term vision vs. hypecasting

Garry has had this rep for a long time-disappointing to see this changing of guard

fendy3002• 2 years ago

Tbf I feel remote work really improved significantly in the past years, though I don't know if the contribution from those startups matters or not. Web3 and blockchain is a moot, there's little to no practical reason to have them.

AI though, will be very useful, at least a good one. Theoretically, AI can swim in a good ocean of company documentations and save time searching. They can help doctors diagnose a ct scan faster (if not already).

infobot• 2 years ago

true but you have to participate at all costs in whatever's hot for engineers and consumers, and that is definitely AI

password4321• 2 years ago

Raise (this year: AI!) then pivot

threeseed3• 2 years ago

Here is Michael and Dalton talking couple of weeks ago about how new technologies create new businesses.

Basically starting with the technology and then finding problems.

The very opposite of what YC has been promoting all these years.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KxjPgGLVJSg

bko2• 2 years ago

I love the constant flex of their tiny acceptance rate. "We only accept 1% of applicants. Btw everyone should apply!"

The collective man hours wasted on appe every year for what is essentially a lottery is insane.

xyst4• 2 years ago

Gary is out of touch.

light_triad2• 2 years ago

It's the same as selective universities telling every student that they should apply regardless of their chance. It makes sense they would do this since it's completely open.

It's not really a lottery, more like a messy matching algorithm for supply and demand. They give everyone a shot since they look at everything, but getting in is not evenly distributed :)

muzani• 2 years ago

Filling the form wasn't too hard. It's probably the kind of thing every founder should know and be able to answer. It's easier than most job applications. Definitely easier than college applications... if you wanted to compare it to college, getting financial aid has a tiny acceptance rate as well. YC is bundling the education and the financial aid.

Rejection isn't hard either. If you're a founder, you'll be rejected by VCs all the time, and many early stage investors offer far lower amounts and far worse advice. You'll be rejected by your product - MVPs often have to be reworked and pivoted. And then you'll face some more rejection when doing sales and product interviews.

I think it's important to be transparent about the rate though, but also important to make it clear that the low rate doesn't mean they're trying to push people away.

biztos3• 2 years ago

For us, the application process was a big help in getting focus and better defining what we propose to build. And not getting in has led us to find some other, potentially much better programs which we will apply to. We don’t regret the effort at all.

My only complaint is that keeping everyone hanging on until May 29, ready to clear our plates in June, and then giving absolutely zero feedback for the rejection, was the sort of blatantly self-interested and founder-unfriendly move that, I suppose, it’s good to remember happens a lot in VC Land.

TrackerFF• 2 years ago

I'd like to see the application dataset. 50000 applicants is a lot.

My guess would be: 90% of applicants are foreigners, maybe a fair bit of spam.

The rest 10% are domestic, and of those that were chosen, there's a lot of Stanford alma mater.

gaws• 2 years ago

I love the constant flex of their tiny acceptance rate. "We only accept 1% of applicants. Btw everyone should apply!"

I've seen this mindset among people promoting open positions at desirable companies that don't hire often. In most cases, applying is a waste of time because the company already made its decision to fill the position with an internal candidate.

xyst4• 2 years ago

yup, just throw the term AI into your deck and the VC fund grinders will at least give it a second look.

light_triad2• 2 years ago

It makes sense that startup folks will gravitate to where there's VC interest as they always have (including the fakers and scammers). But regardless of the current hype cycle the same rules still apply: the reasons why you're doing the startup, if you're an expert in the space, whether you can build a 10x solution, your access to early adopters, your unique point of view on the market. AI is just a new set of tools to generate more value for your specific users, if applied in a unique way that makes a significant difference.

elicash• 2 years ago

Or throw in a random AI feature to satisfy investors.

noitpmeder• 2 years ago

Is anyone else depressed by that statistic? Is tech now eclipsed for the foreseeable future by AI?

philipwhiuk• 2 years ago

They've always followed the buzzword. It was mobile, then cloud, then VR, then blockchain, now AI.

temp202406043• 2 years ago

Nope that doesn’t necessarily follow.

bowsamic2• 2 years ago

Yes it does, just purely logically

eganist2• 2 years ago

I was hopeful YC coming to DC would've meant YC would've been tapping into DC's startup scene.

Wishful thinking. Linked is the more common reason (lobbying), but I'm looking forward to more institutions recognizing the talent we have in the DC region.

tptacek2• 2 years ago

There's talent in every region, and I think it should be a priority to figure out ways to unlock it without re-siting companies in SFBA and NYC, but it's worth noting here that YC's SFBA-centricity is not an outcome of their belief that there's no talent outside SFBA. It's the opposite: they assume they're importing that talent to the area.

The YC SFBA thing is about network effects from companies working in close proximity, and about the investor market (1) believing the same thing and (2) having themselves an even more significant network effect that keeps them all in the same area.

FactKnower69• 2 years ago

woah, locking your investments into a single geographic area, how innovative and forward thinking! especially for a tech company! I really hope nothing bad happens that reduces the value of in-person networking or shared commercial office space, or God forbid someone invents a gadget that lets people work from places other than where they live

stackskipton8• 2 years ago

As someone who was in DC area but isn't any more, talent in DC area is not anything to write home about. We have a ton of talent on paper because government requires gobs of tech workers and prefers they have advanced degrees but since it's just boring enterprise work, the spark of innovation is snuffed out quickly.

Most of startups in the area are catering to the government. There are already VC/PE/Startup accelerators more equipped for the unique market.

benslavin4• 2 years ago

Having lived in the DC area for almost two decades, I don't agree. There are absolutely pockets that match your description but, if that's all you see I think you might be stuck in a bubble. I see so much more. There are cool companies that have been and are being built here (I was going to list them, but the Washingtonian "DC Tech Titans" list has lots of good examples), many not B2G... and people who still have 'the spark' (and many more who I think could rekindle it).

There's also a hugely educated workforce, many of whom don't love their daily grind (hiring opportunity). There's a creative community in DC and even more so if you include the greater DMV or mid-Atlantic. A ton of compute and infrastructure (including us-east-1) is based here, which has its own benefits for businesses.

In my opinion, one of the things that would benefit the region is a less conservative (read: more risk-tolerant) investment community. YC isn't the only way to get that done, but I think it would be a helpful catalyst.

whimsicalism11• 2 years ago

I grew up in DC. Are we pretending like its a tech hotspot now? I missed the memo

benslavin4• 2 years ago

There's still movement in the region. Anzu-Green today announced a $100 million fund [1] and two weeks ago Andreessen Horowitz announced they're opening a DC office this quarter [2].

Both seem to be targeting B2G investments.

[1] https://finance.yahoo.com/news/dc-tech-lobbying-shop-raising... [2] https://www.bizjournals.com/washington/news/2024/05/22/andre... (sorry about the paywall, but it's the original reporting)

eganist2• 2 years ago

Thanks, this is still awesome to read.

willsmith72• 2 years ago

little tech? i don't buy it. the entire point of YC is growth

dang2• 2 years ago

Growth starts little.

dredmorbius• 2 years ago

Save for elephants and blue whales ;-)

dbish2• 2 years ago

It is interesting that you have current YC head lobbying for small and open, while previous lobbies for large and private and is a big driver in why the government wants to regulate so much already.

Thought experiment, if YC had not allowed for or jump started OpenAI would they even have to be lobbying now for openness and “little tech” (at least for AI side of things)?

Is this the appropriate saying now https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hoist_with_his_own_petard

zh3• 2 years ago

Somewhat with you on this one, I assumed the title was YC (being big tech) were upping their lobbying game - it was after reading it that I came to your point of view.

gpsx• 2 years ago

I am assuming YC will be lobbying on their own interests, which, at least for typical VCs is getting some of their small companies to go big, rather than promoting success among all their companies. They probably won't be lobbying for the companies that do not get/take VC funding, which are the less capatilized ones that probably need more representation. And, their interests with go big or go bust doesn't always align with the funded companies' interests, since optimizing for their portfolio of many is different from optimizing for the founders' portifolio of one.

kemitchell2• 2 years ago

The line about being the voice of "little tech" rubbed me pretty hard the wrong way. Nothing's stopping me or my clients from contacting senators, reps, and regulators, joining political organizations, or signing open letters. We have our own voices. Some of us know enough to use them.

It's hard to tell what, exactly, the position on "open source AI" was. It's presented here in glittering generalities. Given the many conversations I've had on-theme with not-public-tech-co people, I don't think it's fair to say all of "little tech" has one view or position, when you really get down to details. I rather doubt the whole YC-o-Verse sees it all one way, either, given its burgeoning size.

More broadly, I'd expect positioning off as "little tech" to flop. Policy players know how to follow the money. They know "Big Tech" brings the money that buys startups—they've read about it in exec summaries of the committee reports. They're also plenty aware that startups get founded by, and recruit from, a lot of the same pools of people. They've been lobbied by various policy groups speaking for smaller tech companies, often funded by the bigger tech companies, for years. If they dig just a little bit, they'll see the barriers to entry, and resulting big-co dependencies, for small-cos doing AI work.

There's bipartisan support for "going after Big Tech" competition-wise. I don't think the pols need a tech-co splinter group as reinforcement there. Unless and until IPO becomes the main path of successful ascent again—perpetually private isn't popular—I don't have great arguments against generalizing startups to Big Tech Farm League. There are plenty of gripes up from startups against the Great Houses, especially from investors. But that's feudalism for you.

Compare, say, DHH's lobbying. 37signals had the Bezos investment, but it was an unusual deal, not within the usual system. Speaking from a different place.

Bjorkbat• 2 years ago

I'm tempted to be cynical about this, especially since me and Garry Tan really don't seem to have the same political alignment, but I'm honestly pretty glad this happened. The tech community (outside of big tech) ought to be more politically active rather than complain when senile politicians get behind a law that doesn't make sense. I want to say there are about as many software developers in the US as there are farmers, and yet the latter has enormous political power, while we have virtually none. I mean, imagine if we could get the federal government to subsidize us in the same way it subsidizes corn farmers.

Don't get me wrong, I kind of fear what laws and legislation a tech voting bloc would pass, but I'm also optimistic that we could push forward some genuinely progressive legislation as well. Maybe we could pass laws that encourage more housing development. Perhaps some bureaucratic reforms similar to the ones that occurred in Estonia, the kind that result in major cost reductions without any loss in quality of service. Universal healthcare? Those slightly strange policy ideas we like to talk about that are clearly progressive, even "socialist", but are also palatable to libertarians?

Mixed feelings about lobby for open source AI, but nonetheless, glad it happened. Hope to see more of it.

doron2• 2 years ago

It's well and good to advocate for change within the industry (large and small) but realistically, all of this is missing the forest for trees, or equating symptom with the cause.

The only way out of this long term, is to take money out of politics, repeal citizens united, revolving doors and other methods of lining politicians' pockets.

HideousKojima• 2 years ago

repeal citizens united

So you think it should be illegal to make documentaries critical of Hillary Clinton? Because that's what Citizens United was about, but most people who are against Citizens United don't seem to understand what the case was actually about.

whimsicalism11• 2 years ago

I'm pretty unsure about CU, but the context is the film was created by a political action committee to get standing so they could challenge election law, it's not like they were a bona-fide commercial film-maker (which is why the FEC blocked the film in the first place)

downrightmike2• 2 years ago

You don't even get it.

whimsicalism11• 2 years ago

It is frankly challenging to reconcile 1st amendment protections and a CU repeal. I'm not sure what the solution is, but think recent events should show that govt can abuse campaign finance law to pick winners and losers in the town square.

ethbr113• 2 years ago

It is frankly challenging to reconcile 1st amendment protections and a CU repeal. I'm not sure what the solution is, [...]

Reconciliation: Companies aren't human entities.

Non-human entities aren't entitled to 1st amendment protections.

Campaign finance is equally simple: run your campaign on public funding. Give all candidates who meet a threshold equal amounts of money.

I have yet to hear a convincing argument about what benefit a democracy receives from campaigns having different amounts of funding. That feels like the tail wagging the dog (your supporters fund you, so you can spend that money to buy more supporters).

anon291• 2 years ago

After some research I realized that since 2010 at least (probably true if you go back a bit, but I didn't) EVERY SINGLE PRESIDENTIAL CAMPAIGN has been fined for major violations of campaign finance laws (usually related to in-kind contributions, or expenses FEC decides to make election expenses later on).

In other words, it seems impossible to run for president without breaking the law.

This is not okay. One of the issues here is that by making candidates break a law, you basically now have some kind of weird leverage over them. You can make threats to prosecute or fine further and thus have them by the proverbial balls. You also naturally push away people who would be wanting to follow the law, which I argue is sorely needed in Washington DC.

This opens the door to a lot of bad bad bad blackmail opportunities.

If no party and no candidate is able to stage a presidential campaign without being fined, ranging from Trump's chaotic, high energy campaigns to Clinton's 'proper' campaign with lots of decorum to Biden's bring-back-normal campaign, then I think something is seriously the matter with campaign finance laws.

Ideally, fines are a rare occurrence.

Sources:

1. https://www.cnn.com/2022/03/30/politics/clinton-dnc-steele-d...

2. https://www.politico.com/story/2013/01/obama-2008-campaign-f...

3. https://www.cnn.com/2010/POLITICS/07/17/biden.campaign.fine/... (Biden's 2010 campaign... 2020 campaigns seem to be under investigation)

3. Of course, everyone knows about Trump

ajcp• 2 years ago

While I agree toward the harm it's done, Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission is a Supreme Court ruling; you can't "repeal" those. It must either be reversed/overturned by the Supreme Court or a constitutional amendment be made by the states. Those are both extremely hard and rare.

BrenBarn2• 2 years ago

Well, I think even that may be missing a bit of forest. How about: institute far more redistributive tax policies to prevent individuals or companies from gaining undue market power by becoming extremely wealthy.

probably_wrong3• 2 years ago

Apologies for the negative tone:

First, let’s prioritize open source models and more tailored AI applications to shape the competitive landscape and create real opportunities for startups.

How does YC square this statement with the fact that their ex-president closed their models with the explicit intention of slowing down competitors [1]? Or is the argument "we want politicians to discourage people like us from doing what we did"?

[1] https://www.theverge.com/2023/3/15/23640180/openai-gpt-4-lau...

jrockway4• 2 years ago

I mean, they parted ways long ago, and pg released a statement recently as to the nature of that breakup. People and organizations can change their mind.

probably_wrong3• 2 years ago

Yes. But AFAIK the official reason for the breakup was "we wanted him to pick a lane" and not "we disagreed with his defintion of the word 'open'".

I cannot say whether YC changed their mind because I don't know what their mind is. Therefore I commented with the hope of an official answer.

avarun• 2 years ago

Link to said statement?

threeseed3• 2 years ago

YC is an investor in OpenAI as is Paul Graham's wife.

They still have strong connections to OpenAI.

benreesman• 2 years ago

Late is better than never in my view, and in spite of whatever happened in the past I will support the people doing the right thing today.

I’m likewise a little wary given some of the history, so maybe a little “wait and see” is in order, but this sounds like a really positive thing to be doing.

sneak4• 2 years ago

YC isn’t one person and organizations don’t have to be monolithic or consistent.

Matticus_Rex4• 2 years ago

"How does YC square this statement about the organization's current stances with the fact that someone who doesn't work there anymore but who had previously communicated similar stances has now apparently changed his mind?"

Why would they need to square anything there? There's nothing contradictory about a former exec not matching the current values of a company.

raincole3• 2 years ago

How can YC be responsible for something their former executive does?

And more importantly, doing one thing while advocating a policy prohibit the exact thing isn't necessarily wrong. If the tax rate is 20%, and I advocate a 25% tax while not paying the extra 5% until the law is passed, I would say there isn't any contradiction in my actions.

sneak4• 2 years ago

We need decisive action to compel more interoperability by the largest firms and curb self-preferencing so we restore competition and innovation, similar to measures called for in the American Innovation and Choice Online Act that Big Tech lobbying killed at the eleventh hour in 2021. At the end of the day, we need an open and neutral app ecosystem where consumers and developers can maintain a direct relationship.

Cure this, and the rest will follow. Two companies gating access to the app market is what is destroying competition at its core.

islewis• 2 years ago

First, let’s prioritize open source models and more tailored AI applications to shape the competitive landscape and create real opportunities for startups

My read on this is YC believes that small companies will (are?) be locked out of the AI arms race, and are pushing for legal action to hold the door open for them.

Pushing disruptive technologies has made YC insane hoards of wealth- the fact that they feel like they need government intervention for this to continue is scary. It feels like a canary in the coal mine in regards to who is in control of AI's future.

lmeyerov• 2 years ago

He is referring to laws like SB1047 that will make open source model makers liable for who uses them, and may scare companies like Meta from releasing any more. E.g., preventing the release of llama 3 400b, which might be the first GPT4-grade OSS release.

Locked out maybe, but more about 'not closing the door' vs 'keeping the door open'.

zer00eyz7• 2 years ago

And finally, we need more steps like the FTC’s recent move to ban all employee noncompetes (no carve outs, no limitations, no exceptions).

YOU need to be out there beating the drum for a major exception to this. With out laws to ban raiding (and we dont have those on the federal level) this is a bad policy. It means that google doesn't have to aquire-hire your team, they can just poach all of them wholesale.

Second, we need to prioritize forceful remedies to foster competition

If history does show us something its that outside a pure monopoly (ATT) these business have a shelf life. Roll the clock back 60 years, US Steel had the same market share as apple. ATT was a thing (and as a monopoly got smacked). But no one talks about GE or IBM or RCA as major players in tech... and they were tech giants of their day.

I am all for restrictions on these sorts of enterprises. But the bigger major step we can take is taxing them appropriately, not letting them all get the pass they have. Shift the tax burden to the largest players and you make room at the bottom and solve a host of other issues.

As for the rest of these proposals, it sounds like a lot of bureaucracy. I feel like we need to revisit our history and re-read our Orwell desperately, were literally repeating the mistakes of the past.

whimsicalism11• 2 years ago

I would strongly oppose any governmental attempt to ban poaching/cold-calling and would see it as a blatant power grab for owners against workers. If you want to retain your team, match the offer.

worik• 2 years ago

No thanks. (I am not in the USA, I am in a country where on-competes must be paid for and short)

Exemptions and carve out will be used for (and politically paid for, with the mind bending official bribery system the USA runs in politics) by the powerful to consolidate their power. Small firms have a lot of power over their employees.

Small firms have to give their employees a reason to work for them, money is part of the picture, and small companies have to be well capitalised to pay competitive salaries. But small companies need to be places people want to work.

Giving employees the power to contract an employee into not quitting is a recipe for very bad behaviour.

In my experience the best and the worst employers are small firms. We need more of the best and fewer of the worst, laws that incentivise being bad do not help

zer00eyz7• 2 years ago

IF your in the EU:

https://www.squirepattonboggs.com/-/media/files/insights/pub...

Raiding is something they frown on there. They go so far as to call it anticompetitive.

hanniabu2• 2 years ago

this is a bad policy. It means that google doesn't have to aquire-hire your team, they can just poach all of them wholesale.

It's called a free market, pay up

thefaux• 2 years ago

Please explain how certain players having more or less unlimited capital advantage that allows them to snuff out any potential competition leads to more aggregate freedom.

dlkf• 2 years ago

It means that google doesn't have to aquire-hire your team, they can just poach all of them wholesale.

Imagine a skilled worker taking a new job that pays better. What a nightmare scenario.

zer00eyz7• 2 years ago

This isnt about workers.

Let's say tomorrow that you find a better way to do search. It's going to crush google, and MS.

You hire a team, smart people the VC's throw money at you. Everyone is happy. Your growing and the next darling of tech.

Google comes in and offers to buy you out. You decline cause you know that they are blockbuster and your Netflix.

In retaliation google hires all your staff, and sends them to the roof to rest and vest.

Thats great for the dozen people who got a great deal from google. It's bad for the rest of the world.

tcgv2• 2 years ago

An individual's immediate remuneration is not the only variable in the discussion. There's a balance of power in play, in which smaller companies are on the weaker side when large corporations are left unchecked. Sure, in the short term, it's always better to get a higher paycheck. But we also need to see if this is sustainable in the long run. If Big Corps can easily undermine competition progress will be impaired, the market will eventually become less diverse, leading to fewer jobs and lower salary pressure.

biftek• 2 years ago

It means that google doesn't have to aquire-hire your team, they can just poach all of them wholesale.

Doesn't California already ban non competes? The industry has seemingly thrived there and I've never heard of it being a problem.

zer00eyz7• 2 years ago

In CA there is also a ban on raiding:

"California law protects employers from raiding by competitors. An employee or competitor may not take a large proportion of your employees with the intent of driving you out of business. You must prove the employee or competitor had bad intent. Evidence of intent includes emails, texts, and witness testimony about what the bad employee or competitor did or said when soliciting your employees."

From: https://www.hg.org/legal-articles/stealing-employees-in-cali....

asoneth• 2 years ago

I'm curious how you define "raiding"? I could imagine cases where a well-capitalized company hires all the members of a competitor's team at 2x salary only to fire them six months later with the goal of destroying their competition.

But other than that I'm not sure I see a problem. If a company "can just poach all of [your team] wholesale" then they were probably being under-compensated to begin with and are better off at their new company. After all, the primary point of banning noncompetes is to protect employees from employers who use noncompetes to suppress their wages. The increased competition is a nice ancillary benefit, not the primary motivation.

animal_spirits• 2 years ago

lots of small companies are reliant on the cheap prices big tech companies offer. by taxing big companies all that does is shift the burden of costs to the small business, making it harder for them to grow.

JohnFen3• 2 years ago

The race to the bottom in terms of pricing is destroying a lot of value in many industries and in the longer term is harmful to everyone who isn't already a big company.

People and small companies kicking that addiction will be painful, yes, but important to everyone having a healthier life.

Projectiboga• 2 years ago

Maybe limit the non-compete to very high income employees, but have a carve out if they are let go during one of those big layoffs.

esbranson• 2 years ago

With out laws to ban raiding … this is a bad policy.

"At will" employment explicitly allows raiding.

"If you liked it then you should have put a ring on it." (IOW otherwise use an employment contract.)

luma3• 2 years ago

Why should healthcare be tied to employment?

"Quit fucking around" and institute a national, single-payer plan that covers everyone, like every other modern industrialized country.

bumby18• 2 years ago

"Quit fucking around" and institute a national, single-payer plan that covers everyone, like every other modern industrialized country.

Except we're not starting from a blank slate. So short of heavy-handed, dictatorial decisions how would you propose to get to a single-payer plan that covers everyone? You'll have to work with the existing hospital infrastructure, insurance companies, and citizens who don't want a single-payer system. They all get a say, too. People who act like its a straightforward solution don't really understand the problem. But to avoid sounding overly cynical, I'll throw out a couple of recommendations.

1) Expand the VA system to cover all vets, regardless of whether it's a service-connected health issue or not, without insurance. This is politically possibly the easiest step because its hard for a politician to stand up and say they aren't an advocate for better care for the troops. However, the VA is entwined with medical schools and you'd have ensure you expand the funding proportionately to avoid pissing off that constituency.

2) Gradually ratchet down the age for medicare, over decades.

(I'd also argue you'd have to get money out of politics first for any really change to have a chance)

luma3• 2 years ago

3) Medicare for all, starting today.

Stroke of a pen I just fixed everything.

existing hospital infrastructure

Hospitals already deal with medicare.

insurance companies

Oh no the vultures in the system will go hungry whatever shall we do

citizens who don't want a single-payer system

Buy premium insurance above and beyond the public option, same as every other modern industrialized country. If you don't like the offering for free, the market can cover whatever gap exists.

candiddevmike5• 2 years ago

Remove employer healthcare plans and allow everyone to enroll in Medicare or private insurance directly.

BrenBarn2• 2 years ago

There are many heavy-handed, dictatorial decisions I could imagine which would be immensely superior to the current situation.

philwelch3• 2 years ago

Not every modern industrialized country has a single payer system.

robertlagrant5• 2 years ago

institute a national, single-payer plan that covers everyone, like every other modern industrialized country

The two (real, non-politicians are corrupt) downsides to contend with:

- countries do this by limiting what they will spend; in the US you have access to unlimited treatment. E.g. in the UK the NHS will spend £30k for each good year it buys you

- this one isn't fair, but the US is where health innovation happens. Companies sell into it to make money to survive. They then sell into the other countries to make much less margin, and if those countries were all they had as customers, they wouldn't exist. The US is why we have the advancements we have, and all us non-US countries have silly smug citizens who think our countries are better at negotiating deals. If the US didn't do what it did, we'd be a lot worse off.

ceejayoz3• 2 years ago

in the US you have access to unlimited treatment

This is a ludicrous claim.

dghlsakjg3• 2 years ago

I live in Canada and there isn’t a spending limit. The decision of how to treat is made by the doctor. The doctor is then paid. In my experience living on both sides of the border, you get far more care up here since there is no bullshit with finding a facility that accepts your insurance, and cost isn’t a consideration for doctors or patients.

People will occasionally travel to the states for drug/therapy trials not available in Canada, or for treatments that are not proven effective. These people will then loudly bitch about Canadian healthcare.

If you want the proof of it, remember that a huge majority of Canadians live close enough to drive to the US for health care, but don’t.

tsimionescu• 2 years ago

About how many people in the USA do you think are on an insurance plan that doesn't limit what procedures they can get, and/or can afford to pay out pocket for whatever other procedure?

Also, Healthcare companies are wildly profitable. If they were negotiating prices in the USA just like they do everywhere else, they would only be profitable. Woe is me.

rayiner2• 2 years ago

Most developed countries don’t have single payer healthcare. Obamacare is actually modeled on the system used in the Netherlands.

And why is “national” a criteria? California doesn’t get single payer unless Montana also gets it? Neither Californians nor Montanans want that. It’s just political games.

stackskipton8• 2 years ago

Most developed countries don’t have single payer healthcare. Obamacare is actually modeled on the system used in the Netherlands.

No it's not. Most European countries that run private health insurance keep pretty strong regulatory regime where pricing and coverage is tightly controlled. In America, there is some basic regulatory scheme but pricing, coverage, limits and such is extremely open.

hollerith• 2 years ago

Before Obamacare, if California's taxpayers became the single payer behind medical care in California, then millions of poor chronically ill people would have moved to California from the other 49 states for the free medical care

--unless I am wrong in my belief that there is nothing California voters can do to prevent US citizens from moving to California.

CalChris2• 2 years ago

No, Obamacare was modeled after the Heritage Foundation market based proposal, Assuring Affordable Health Care for All Americans, which was trialed in Massachusetts by Mitt Romney.

https://www.heritage.org/social-security/report/assuring-aff...

dang2• 2 years ago

Please don't take HN threads on tedious generic flamewar tangents, let alone nationalistic ones. They're repetitive and nasty and we're trying for something else here.

We detached this subthread from https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40566761.

rurp2• 2 years ago

I'm not sure what I was expecting, but I had a surprisingly positive reaction to this piece. It will be hard to avoid, but I think that preventing GenAI from turning into yet another tech oligopoly is hugely important.

For one, it absolutely will stifle innovation if one or a few companies can control the market. Just look at what Google has done with their money printing monopoly money over the past decade.

Competition will be doubly important if modern AI can fullfill much of the current hype. That kind of power in the hands of a sophisticated used car salesman like Sam Altman will be bad in so many ways.

xyst4• 2 years ago

This country is built on the idea of rugged individualism, ingenuity, and grit.
It’s also built on the idea of equal opportunity

Anybody else get “out of touch” vibes from this post?

SOLAR_FIELDS• 2 years ago

I didn’t even get to that point, I got that when Tan referred to himself as a representative of “little tech”

JohnFen3• 2 years ago

Yeah, that was where I got off the PR train, too.

xyst4• 2 years ago

yea, definitely some narcissism in the post. Very off putting.

Have very little confidence this is going to do anything. But I really hope I’m wrong and we get it right, this time.

dbmikus• 2 years ago

I would consider YC a pretty clear representative of "little tech", albeit little tech with startup/hyperscale ambitions. So, IMO it's not out of touch, it's very on-point.

Affric• 2 years ago

Great call out. Who can claim with a straight face the USA was built on the idea of equal opportunity.

Who would say that country that sprang from the metropolises of the east were built on individualism?

This kind of capital-C conservative appeal to the past is a political signal to light a fire under the Dems and court Republicans.

Not that you’d expect such a statement to turn into a truth telling commission or a treatise on the evolution of the United States but it’s interesting it was brought up.

preinheimer• 2 years ago

What about prioritizing paying the people who made the content these models are using without consent?

reducesuffering3• 2 years ago

Remember when YC leadership yelled on Twitter about how DC should have more regulation and should guarantee FDIC funds past 250k for wealthy VC's and startups when their Silicon Valley Bank collapsed? This obviously had the effect of entrenching large banks, because people now know that big banks are too-big-to-fail and have infinite FDIC insurance, while the little guys can kick rocks because they're not systemic enough. So they effectively lobbied for big financial business.

Now they want to lobby for less regulation of their own industry in favor of the little guy? Personally, I'm a more principled libertarian-leaning type than "government for me, free market for thee."

austin-cheney• 2 years ago

I call bullshit.

YC is not interested in fixing any of these problem despite their words and actions. Real solutions are bitter pills to this industry, poison pills to investors and venture capitalists.

The two universal solutions that work for every other industry:

* Liability

* Licensing

When I say liability and I mean both personal liability, as in suing the developer(s) for harms of the software, as well as business liability. When I say licensing I do not mean product licensing. I mean human professional licensing. There is an astonishing lack of professionalism and ethics in software. None of this is fixed with band-aids or wishful thinking. Go directly to the problem: the money funnel and the often absurd absence of competence.

Yes, this is scary. Get over it. You cannot both be an entitled child free from the harms of the world and simultaneously be absent from the harms that result. The upside, though, is that increased risk and liability, in financial and compensatory terms, means fewer people doing the work each owning a fair share of the rewards that otherwise just go to investors and not even as dividends.

AlbertCory2• 2 years ago

This article is light on organizational and financial details. You don't just go to DC once, have some meetings, and announce what has to be done, if you're serious.

You open a permanent office, meet with people on the Hill regularly, and spread campaign contributions around liberally. DC is crawling with people whose life it is to help you do that. Just drive around Chevy Chase and see all the luxury shops catering to those people.

Is that slimy and disgusting? You bet it is.

kemitchell2• 2 years ago

There's a not entirely rigorous, but empirically weighty analogy here to Silicon Valley. Why don't startups just fly into SFO, rent an AirBnB for a few days, hit Sand Hill Road, and split back to wherever overhead is cheaper?

AlbertCory2• 2 years ago

empirically weighty analogy

"Empirically" how?

in SV, the idea is that you can hire people to do almost anything a growing company needs. That's true in DC as well, but it's also that the important people who can decide your future are there and continually meeting with your enemies.

"If you're not at the table, you're on the menu." they like to say.

1vuio0pswjnm7• 2 years ago

This PR blurb does not make any sense; YC is not interested in "little tech" that wants to stay little. YC are the ones that promoted the idea of "unicorns". YC needs these "little tech" companies to execute on ridiculous levels of non-linear "growth" to deliver a grossly inflated expected return on meagre investment. This led to the "growth hacking" nonsense that everyone was complaining about.

It is absurd to pretend that YC is on the side of "little tech". YC is only interested in companies that will grow large and deliver an enormous return. PG loves people like Zuckerberg and basically stated he wished all founders were similarly sociopathic^Wambitious.

"Lifestyle" software/web companies that stay small can be a good thing. Perhaps they could deliver much better than "Big Tech" if they had the chance; thanks to Silicon Valley VC greed and "Big Tech" anti-competitive practices we are prevented from knowing. YC is after "unicorns" not lifestyle or other small companies. The "success stories" YC pitches are companies like Dropbox and AirBnB. This is the furthest thing from "little tech".

jrflowers• 2 years ago

The e/acc guy that drunkenly posts about how he wants his political enemies to die slow has decided that he’s needed in national politics? Color me astounded!

https://missionlocal.org/2024/01/garry-tan-death-wish-sf-sup...

https://missionlocal.org/2024/01/y-combinator-ceo-garry-tans...

https://www.sfchronicle.com/sf/article/sf-garry-tan-x-threat...

EGreg• 2 years ago

Big Tech has been allowed to operate with little scrutiny or oversight — to disastrous effects, in the form of social media harms, anti competitive practices, and more. Despite recent efforts to rein them in, a small handful of mega companies continue to wield enormous power in our economy and in Washington

Garry, I’m a bit confused. I totally agree with the sentiment, but isn’t YC part of the whole machine? Seed funding to VC to Wall Street IPO exit to big billion dollar corporation? Sam Altman is a product of YC culture, he ran the place, same as you do now.

I wanted to join YC in the past 12 years and applied multiple times. We never made it to the interview, but I have gotten an outsider’s perspective on the industry and the root causes of the problems you currently really want to solve with government. Instead what if I told you YC under YOUR leadership can solve them worldwide and far better? Hear me out…

Peter Thiel who invested the first $500K into Facebook famously taught that “competition is for losers, build a monopoly”, and I imagine the lessons to capture and extract maximum value from the ecosystem for shareholders has affected many founders, including Mark Z: https://www.wsj.com/articles/peter-thiel-competition-is-for-...

Mark Zuckerberg was an open source guy on the east coast. He open sourced Synapse instead of selling it to Microsoft. He wanted to make Wirehog, a peer to peer file sharing system, but Sean Parker and the VCs “put a bullet in that thing”. I was there at TC Disrupt in NY where Parker proudly told the story: https://techcrunch.com/2010/05/26/wirehog/

Sean Parker himself learned that lesson bitterly when his company disrupted a different but similar industry that was about owning and monetizing intellectual property - RIAA, MPAA, etc. After Napster was defeated he opened Plaxo and learned to play the “correct game”. He wanted to make sure Mark didn’t follow his open sensibilities too far, letting the public share stuff too freely, because shareholders need profit!

We are LUCKY that Mark Z still retains some of his original open source sensibilities because his company has been the only one giving away models trained for large amounts of money, to the community. Ok maybe Llama research edition leaked but they OWNED that thing, and became to openness what Apple is to privacy.

I mean when Silicon Valley Bank collapsed (set off by the same Peter Thiel), we found out that most VCs even banked at the same bank! There has been a LOT of centralization.

https://www.laweekly.com/restoring-healthy-communities/

This article goes into more depth than my post can, about how the incentives to enrich shareholders leads not just to enshittification of their own ecosystem but surveillance capitalism, and generally externalizing cost to society. Across the board! Teen girls have highest rates of depression. Adult men are on opiates and 20% of middle-aged women are on antidepressants. Elderly are in nursing homes and kids are in public schools (which pg once compared to prisons) and medicated for ADHD to sit still while their parents work long hours with less and less job certainty. Some even just do the gig economy, while Instacart ir Uber collects HALF of every driver’s fare for its shareholders!

Our society is perpetually angry now because algorithms select for more engagement, and it turns out clickbait and outrage maximizes it even more than sex. So the market selects for one sided stories that evoke outrage, and publishers pick an audience to pander to. While social network algorithms produce echo chambers and radicalization. And this is before we get to any AI bot swarms.

I believe there is ONE WEIRD TRICK that YC can do to help society at large A LOT over the next decade. I would like to see a way to transition shareholders organically to utility tokenholders before the public offering. Kind of like the differenc between Disney Dollars and shares of Disney Corp. Disney’s shareholders don’t live in Disneyworld and thus dont have the incentives that customers and workers do. They become an everpresent landlord class extracting rents forever, holding earnings calls even after the original investors had sold their shares. Same with other ecosystems.

The founders don’t need THAT machine necessarily, to be handsomely rewarded to the tune of billions of dollars and have the startups become worldwide movements that serve humanity. YC and VCs could still have their exits while preventing the parasitic rent extraction from getting out of control post-IPO. YC being upstream of most VCs could operate a HUGE lever, and like Archimedes, could move the world towards a better system, as you once did with SAFE notes! That’s would solve a lot of the incentive problems without the need for heavy-handed government regulation!

Two years ago, a different very ambitious and politically connected Sam — Sam Bankman Fried - also went around begging for his space to be regulated. But the incentives inherent in shareholder profits (instead of stakeholder accounting) and competition (instead of cooperation) are what leads to negative externalities, in many ways, and that includes pollution, ecosystem collapse, factory farms and much more. You guys can consider introducing that one SMALL change — transitioning shares to utility tokens gradually.

I would be very happy to come meet and explain more if it is of any interest. Just reply to my message and let me know how to reach out if you see potential here.

PS: In addition to utility tokens, open source and protocols help create maximum value for the world, through collaboration over competition. For decades, the US government wielded its mighty antitrust regulations over Ma Bell and the phone companies it split them into. And yet long distance calls were still $3 a minute. Then, VOIP open protocols democratized the pipes and turned the telcos into dumb replaceable infrastructure. It was open protocols that brought the cost of not just calls but video and broadcasting down to near-zero, something government couldn’t do. Wikipedia beat Britannica. The Web beat AOL and all closed systems. I could go on, but open and free beats closed in the end, AND each open platform (Linux, the Web, etc) leads to far more wealth creation than when gatekeepers extract rents. That’s another aspect. And meanwhile, since 2014 people have discovered that utility tokens can help to monetize open source and digital content including journalism, in healthier ways than ads and surveillance capitalism. As my VC friend Albert Wenger from Union Square ventures wrote a book along the same lines: https://worldaftercapital.org

OoTheNigerian• 2 years ago

"5,000 startups from nearly every state in the US"

I am curious to know which States in the US still do not have any companies in YC.

zoobab2• 2 years ago

"let’s prioritize open source models"

Without published open source data, it will be hard to call those models open source.

zoobab2• 2 years ago

s/open source data/open source training data/

temp202406043• 2 years ago

To lobby for things good for YC :-) which happen to also be good things in general.

ThinkBeat• 2 years ago

I would think that the biggest obstacles for small startups in the AI space is the expense and availability of suitable hardware.

Then the expense of the electricity itself.

Big Cloud companies, who are also AI companies, with huge wallets have a huge advantage to start with.

The regular answer is of course go to the cloud, which is by far the easiest approach. I would think the cost of intense "AI compute" over a long timespan in the cloud is really expensive as well. And you are paying your competitors for your work.

If any of that is correct, which it might not be, then building the initial models would cost more than a startup couldl afford.

You can also go to the cloud and used "AI APIs" usually proprietary in one way or another to the cloud vendors themselves and limiting the scope of what can be accomplished. (Plus paying the competing in order to compete)

greekanalyst• 2 years ago

Very eager to see the same happening in the EU.

nuz• 2 years ago

Hacker culture was already on its deathbed and this is the final nail

farco12• 2 years ago

I'm grateful Gary and YC are doing this.

From a communication strategy standpoint, I'm just curious what the thinking was to go with 'Little Tech' to refer to new tech startups? I understand the purpose is to succinctly stand in contrast to 'Big Tech', but the word 'Little' somehow feels a bit more cutesy or infantilizing to me than saying 'Small Tech.'

iamleppert• 2 years ago

Capture those regulators and get the bag!

keepamovin• 2 years ago

Oh, come on: you went because you were called.

Big tech don't like to admit the regulatory powers they exist at the grace of.

Tech bros, got to learn you some respec. Hahaha! :)

Why YC went to DC

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