[throwaway6497]

I am assuming the access to this list will be tightly guarded. So the only way to protect the women of the valley from these VCs is by having a partner friend at YC who will look up the list for you and give yay/nay answers?

[tptacek]

More likely, since pretty much every VC in the valley needs access to the YC dealflow, becoming persona non grata with YC will force VC firms to make personnel changes.

[throwaway6497]

This is only way VC firms can be motivated to actively punish the bad actors. Unless, it hurts their dealflow, they are not incentivized to act. Pledges and warnings' only go so far.

[mbesto]

> More likely, since pretty much every VC in the valley needs access to the YC dealflow

Dealflow is everything in the VC community, but this is pure hyperbole. Statistically speaking, there are way more companies that drive VC returns that come from outside of YC than the ones that come from it.

[tptacek]

I see clearly how reasonable people can disagree about how important access to YC deals are to a tech VC firm, and that it's useful to have the counterpoint here on the thread.

[BinaryIdiot]

> since pretty much every VC in the valley needs access to the YC dealflow

Do they though? It seems every demo day some VC posts up a blog about how they are not fans of demo day anymore for X, Y and Z reasons and that they're no longer attending.

Don't get me wrong YC is great and all but you make it sound like most of the VCs need YC but so many companies outside of YC get funding I'm not convinced that's even close to the truth.

[tptacek]

Yes, they do.

[cperciva]

I am assuming the access to this list will be tightly guarded.

This seems to be the case so far (YC has kept track of "problem VCs" for a long time), but I don't see why it should be. One of the few things more powerful than "if you sexually harass a YC founder, you'll be shunned by all future YC founders" is "if you sexually harass a YC founder, you'll be shunned by everybody".

[tptacek]

Because you get 90% of the public benefit by making a VC persona non grata with YC, but eliminate ~80% of the drama? This seems like an extraordinarily reasonable tradeoff.

[cperciva]

I've never thought of YC as being particularly averse to drama. And given that much of the drama would be news stories about how YC is trying to protect women from being sexually harassed, I really don't see the downside for them.

[tptacek]

As you can clearly see from this thread, that's not what most of the drama will be about.