Apply HN for YCombinator S16F3
About ten years, Y Combinator attempted to have the Hacker News community pick a startup for them to fund for one of that summer's Fellowship Three. Some users warned that the thing would be gamed, moderators decided to proceed knowing that because it would be too hard to anti-game, the winner was one of the top users on the website causing a few days of drama on the website as he was not awarded and other top users either opposed or supported him. Finally, Apply HN was abandoned entirely as an experiment along with the Fellowship program.
Background
Y Combinator is a famous startup accelerator in the Bay Area. They run a website called Hacker News which is a single-subreddit Reddit-clone but with /r/programming and /r/technology as the primary focuses.
The Attempt
On April 6, 2016 the forum moderator, a Y Combinator employee, posted on the accelerator's behalf describing the terms of the agreement. The funding would be to YC's Fellowship program which is the lite version of the accelerator and comes with a very small investment. It was intentionally unstructured.
Here at HN HQ we've been wondering: if Hacker News could fund startups, what startups would it fund?
Hacker News users have many diverse perspectives on technology and business. Perhaps if HN picked startups, it would pick differently than YC. Maybe different startups would be motivated to apply, if they knew that the interviewing and deciding would be done by the HN community. Interesting things might happen, or they might not. We'd have to try it and see.I ran this by Sam and he ran it by Kevin and we all got excited, so we're going to try this as an experiment. Starting today, there's a new track for YC applications: applying directly to the Hacker News community. We'll call it "Apply HN". Note that word experiment! We'll start small and figure it out as we go. But here are the initial conditions.
YC’s Fellowship program will fund a minimum of 2 startups selected by the HN community for this summer's F3 batch. (They name their batches sequentially.) The Fellowship is the YC program that fits best here since it’s designed to be experimental and inclusive and doesn’t require people to move to the Bay Area.
All the interviewing and evaluating will be done in regular HN threads, and everyone is welcome to participate. For this summer's batch, Apply HN will accept applications starting now and ending April 27.
If you'd like to apply to the HN community for YCF funding, simply post a submission whose title begins with "Apply HN" and explain what your startup does. Hopefully community members will ask you questions and good discussion will ensue.
If you'd like to help pick which startups to fund, simply jump into any Apply HN thread that interests you. Ask questions and post comments that you think will help the community make the best decisions. These will be regular threads, with all the same voting and so on, but with one additional rule: Be Nice.
Be Nice is a stronger version of our usual rule, Be Civil. Anybody who applies to HN in public this way is putting both themselves and their baby in a super vulnerable position. We're going to rise to the occasion by being not only civil, but nice. When interviewing startups, by all means be curious and probing—but only if you can also be nice. The word "nice" originally meant "not knowing". Then later it meant "precise and careful". And now it means "kind and thoughtful". Let's put all those qualities together.
At the end of the month, we'll rank the startups and YC will fund two. The ranking will depend both on upvotes and on the quality of discussion, similar to how the ranking of stories works. 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. 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.
That's what we're thinking so far. If it seems unstructured, that's on purpose: we don't want to bias it along the lines of how YC already operates. We want to see what the community comes up with.
Questions or suggestions? Let's discuss and refine this together.
Edit: As discussed below, we'll add a top link for these a la /ask and /show. I won't get to that till later, though, so in the meantime, use the following link to find Apply HN discussions: https://hn.algolia.com/?query=%22apply%20hn%22&sort=byDate&dateRange=all&type=story&storyText=false&prefix=false&page=0
Edit 2: Here's the link describing how YCF works: https://fellowship.ycombinator.com/faq/. Read it to make sure you're eligible. It's a lot more flexible than YC Core, but there are still some restrictions.
Edit 3: There's now a ranked page of applications at https://news.ycombinator.com/applyhn, a complete list at https://news.ycombinator.com/applynew, and a random sample at https://news.ycombinator.com/applyrand.
The Warnings
Some Hacker News users were not fans of the idea because gaming the described system was easy. One risk presented was that popular founders would get more votes.
I am not very sure about this for a few reasons:
1. There is possibly several ways to game the upvote system. HN community is not anonymous, and there are people who have more friends here than others. A lot of very good founders would probably not have enough friends here. That might create bias once an Apply HN post reaches first page vs. another...
Or that it would cause people to try to timing-optimize and get sock-puppets involved.
Ranking by upvotes/comments seems highly problematic, even with HN's antibrigade features.
A) There are many external factors that can implicitly cap the number of upvotes/comments. (time submitted, amount of competition, etc.) HN has repost rules to alleviate this problem: would Apply HN posts be able to repost too?B) Not to mention that it encourages sockpuppet voting/commenting, especially since there is a high reward for doing so.
Product Hunt, for example, thrives on "how can I get exposure for my startup submission outside of the intrinsic quality of the startup itself?" and it would be an improper fit for HN.
Others were worried that ideas would be stolen by putting them in front of the kind of crack programmers that they believed Hacker News was populated by.
The Perhaps Satirical Participant
Among the listings was a seemingly satirical submission to the Fellowship by famous entrepreneur Maciej Cegłowski
A tremendous, huge opportunity to fund the Bay Area's slowest-growing unicorn.
Many people considered this submission satirical because M. Cegłowski is famously critical of YC (and sometimes its participants).
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.
As far as HN proper, I don't dislike this community at all, particularly since dang took the reins. It's an interesting place and I've tried to contribute in good faith for many years now, besides just making fun of it.
Pinboard @Pinboard YC: for when you want your first foray into the real world cushioned by hundreds of thousands of dollars in other people’s money
Aug 19, 2015[6]
Pinboard @Pinboard YC funding a mom+dad emulator: “one phone number that you can send a text message to 24/7 and get anything you want, whenever you want it”
Jul 20, 2015[7]
Other such tweets may be seen here on Twitter.
The top comment, by one of Hacker News's top users tptacek, a friend of M. Cegłowski, remarked that while funny he found Pinboard very useful.
This is a funny thread, but if any of you are amused and hopeful about the idea of Pinboard becoming a YC company, and you don't already have a Pinboard account, go get one!
I was a bookmarking skeptic before I signed up for Pinboard. In fact, I think I got my Pinboard account as repayment for a favor Erin and I did for Maciej. But now, I have no idea what I would do without it. Pinboard has more or less become a search engine for my life.Part of what makes Pinboard great is knowing it isn't going to break; it's going to keep doing what it says on the label, pretty much the way it does, and I'm never going to have to switch to some crazy iOS app or download an Electron shell or really even click or scroll on anything.
If you're not already using something like Pinboard, I think you should consider starting, right away, and probably the thing like Pinboard you should use is Pinboard.
The Votes
At some point, M. Cegłowski posted on the Twitter account he uses asking his followers to vote for his submission.
Pinboard @Pinboard Thanks to everyone who has made Pinboard the Boaty McBoatface of the Hacker News funding experiment. Keep voting! https://hn.algolia.com/?query=apply%20hn&sort=byPopularity&prefix&page=0&dateRange=pastMonth&type=story
Apr 11, 2016[9]
After the initial set of voting was completed, A second post was made where the top 20 submissions were listed. M. Cegłowski posted on Twitter informing his followers of this:
Pinboard @Pinboard So apparently if you voted for Pinboard for Apply HN, you have to vote for it again in a runoff: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11615639
May 2, 2016[10]
By the time voting ended, Pinboard was decidedly ahead at 750 points vs. the other startups on the list.
The Results
About a month later, Kevin Hale (the YC Partner running this particular thing) announced the winners. Notably, Pinboard was not selected despite getting the most votes.
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...Of course, the application that got the most votes isn’t on the final list and we’ll discuss that in the thread below.
This caused a kerfluffle in the community, with other famous entrepreneur Colin Percival arguing that not giving M. Cegłowski a slot was justified while the latter insisted that he should be given "[his] twenty grand". Other top users defended Cegłowski.
I met the stated criteria and dominated the voting. I want my twenty grand.
Accusing me of trolling is not just dismissive, but implies I'm acting in bad faith. That's a pretty serious thing to say about someone.
He then mentioned this on his Twitter account a few times:
Pinboard @Pinboard Of course Pinboard was disqualified from ApplyHN after winning. The tortured grounds for it, and my response, here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11633278…
May 4, 2016[13]
Pinboard @Pinboard Online contest offers $20,000, heaps scorn on winner for demanding $20,000.
May 4, 2016[14]
Eventually, YC relented and gave M. Cegłowski the $20k that he asked for in the way he wanted: donated to the Coalition on Homelessness.
Final Conclusions
Most Hacker News users seemed happy with moderator dang's apology and suggested improvements for a future such event in response to the apology soliciting such. This was the last time Apply HN was run, the fellowship was soon after ended, and Apply HN was never referred to again on Hacker News.
The various startups selected for the fellowship seem to not have had much success, though Pinboard is likely functioning well enough.
- AutoMicroFarm still exists by the same founder but there doesn't appear to be a product
- CasePad is dead
- Feynman Nano still exists but only on plaintext http and there are no online references to it after 2017. The founder still lists on LinkedIn that he is working there
Notes
- ↑ dang on Permalink: HN • news.ycombinator.com • 11440627
- ↑ arihant on Permalink: HN • news.ycombinator.com • 11441320
- ↑ minimaxir on Permalink: HN • news.ycombinator.com • 11440711
- ↑ idlewords on Permalink: HN • news.ycombinator.com • 11441480
- ↑ idlewords on Permalink: HN • news.ycombinator.com • 11441720
- ↑ Pinboard [@Pinboard] (Aug 19, 2015). "YC: for when you want your first foray into the re..." (Tweet) – via Twitter.
- ↑ Pinboard [@Pinboard] (Jul 20, 2015). "YC funding a mom+dad emulator: "one phone number t..." (Tweet) – via Twitter.
- ↑ tptacek on Permalink: HN • news.ycombinator.com • 11442595
- ↑ Pinboard [@Pinboard] (Apr 11, 2016). "Thanks to everyone who has made Pinboard the Boaty..." (Tweet) – via Twitter.
- ↑ Pinboard [@Pinboard] (May 2, 2016). "So apparently if you voted for Pinboard for Apply ..." (Tweet) – via Twitter.
- ↑ kevin on Permalink: HN • news.ycombinator.com • 11633270
- ↑ idlewords on Permalink: HN • news.ycombinator.com • 11590315
- ↑ Pinboard [@Pinboard] (May 4, 2016). "Of course Pinboard was disqualified from ApplyHN a..." (Tweet) – via Twitter.
- ↑ Pinboard [@Pinboard] (May 4, 2016). "Online contest offers $20,000, heaps scorn on winn..." (Tweet) – via Twitter.
