[zellyn]

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

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

[staunch]

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

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

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

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

[AlexandrB]

It also flies in the face of the "meritocracy" narrative that's so often brought up when talking about tech culture.