[pc]

I don’t think some of the claims in this comment are true or in good faith. (We obviously don’t control HN or YC or journalists. If or when my comments on HN are ever ranked highly, it’s because they’re upvoted. The internal claims about Stripe are also inconsistent with the data around things like retention. Etc.)

All of that said, I’d appreciate hearing from any founders who feel mistreated as part of an acquisition process. We make a fairly significant number of acquisitions and have never heard this directly before.

[temp7536]

I'm sorry but no. Patrick, we met with you once, Gaybrick and Claire multiple times and opened up a data room to you all. I then emailed you (and the others) three followups over a couple weeks only to see them opened but never replied. Your team then sent targeted cold emails to multiple people on our team. I've validated this experience with multiple founders.

You also had Moritz and Sequoia renege on Finix's term sheet after they already had it signed and wired (I guess props to Sequoia for branding it as "giving it away")[1]. You've also had your team get diligence materials from Sequoia and nuke deals.

You've clearly crushed it in the business and developer brand space, hats off to you. You want feedback - I (and the broader founder community) just wish you stop the dance of pretending and just admit you all are sharks, and it works for you! Just own it.

But I will admit, the HN comment was a bit trolly and written in frustration. But you have to admit - you are documented as proofreading every one of PGs posts, are a huge LP in YC and are friends with a lot of people there. You can't believe that the conspiracy theories are purely in "bad faith"....

And yes - this is out of place in HN comments, I'm sorry. But sadly there aren't very many other options.

[1] - https://techcrunch.com/2020/03/09/sequoia-is-giving-away-21-...

[pc]

I genuinely have no idea what situation you’re talking about (not saying we didn’t screw up, though — I preemptively apologize assuming we did!), and a bunch of the narrow claims above aren’t true (we aren’t YC LPs, Sequoia made its own decisions without any suggestions from us on Finix, etc.), but I really would appreciate an email so I can figure out what happened.

[danr4]

From the TC article: "A spokesperson for Stripe who was asked whether Stripe and Sequoia discussed its investment in Finix at any point, also declined to comment."

Your comment about Finix seems deliberately crafted to convey you did not speak with Sequoia but at the same time not denying that you spoke (made decision without suggestions).

So to clarify, are you saying that Stripe did not speak with Sequoia about Finix?

Or that Sequoia "made their own decision", while they have spoken with Stripe about Finix?

[simonebrunozzi]

Irrespective of whether you behaved badly or not (not for me to say, and unlikely to clearly emerge on a simple HN thread), I have always lauded your search for transparency here on HN.

Also, we I like to always keep in mind that sometimes resentment dominates the desire to share a certain story, and without knowing anything about the transaction referred above, I'd say it's quite clear that temp7536 has at least some resentment or envy over Stripe's success.

Final thought (not referring to Stripe nor Sequoia in particular): yes, most companies, and most VCs, are sharks. I was recently reminded of that twice, and probably lost large sums of money in the process (again: nothing to do with Stripe nor with Sequoia). I think it's a rule that have always applied to life, in general, and it won't stop being applied just because we have the internet.

I simply hope that things like the Panama Papers, Wikileaks, and such, will eventually bring more financial transparency to the world, and make it harder for these sharks to keep feasting on their prey.

[BrianOnHN]

This seems like a good place to plug "The Billion Dollar Code ©"

Same SV story, different decade.

[bigzyg33k]

Also seems like a good place to plug two posts from insiders who say "the billion dollar code" was bullshit:

https://avibarzeev.medium.com/was-google-earth-stolen-7d1b82...

https://johnmccrea.medium.com/why-the-billion-dollar-code-is...

[austenallred]

> You also had Moritz and Sequoia renege on Finix's term sheet after they already had it signed and wired (I guess props to Sequoia for branding it as "giving it away")[1].

How is it reneging on a term sheet if they wire the money? That's fulfilling the terms of the term sheet (despite the fact that term sheets aren't binding), no?

[donkleberry]

When you’re in top position on a Stripe-related post, that has nothing to do with your karma score. It’s because dang has a pin button that he usually uses for himself, but very often is used for exactly the situation you describe when it comes to YC portfolio or celebrities showing up or something (without visual feedback of such a pin, as every single other website with the capability provides). It’s pretty obvious if you keep an eye out for it

This can undoubtedly be spun as “HN just trying to bring the right voice to the top of the discussion” but the alternative take is just as valid. It’s not bad faith feedback, it’s HN UX and practices confusing readers as usual

[dang]

You got me curious to look at the data. pc has had the top comment in 41 threads since Sept 2007 (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50377). Of those, one was pinned to the top: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25073749. I vaguely recall that had to do with wanting to correct the misleading impression left by an inaccurate headline. All the other cases got there via the usual ranking algorithm. I guess you guys can decide whether 1/41 is moderator overreach or not.

We mostly use that mechanism for tedious moderation announcements ("All: please don't bash each other with clubs, even if you feel strongly about $topic") and for cases where project creators/authors show up belatedly in threads to discuss their work—those are extremely high-value comments that would otherwise get overlooked. Occasionally I use it if a thread is mostly aflame about some controversy and some commenter points out how the whole thing is inaccurate. We don't use it to systematically privilege high-karma users or YC founders relative to other users—that wouldn't be in the spirit of the site guidelines at all, and we take those pretty seriously.

[eganist]

> You got me curious to look at the data. pc has had the top comment in 41 threads since Sept 2007 (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50377). Of those, one was pinned to the top: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25073749. I vaguely recall that had to do with wanting to correct the misleading impression left by an inaccurate headline. All the other cases got there via the usual ranking algorithm.

> We mostly use that mechanism for tedious moderation announcements ("All: please don't bash each other with clubs, even if you feel strongly about $topic") and for cases where project creators/authors show up belatedly in threads to discuss their work—those are extremely high-value comments that would otherwise get overlooked. We don't use it to privilege high-karma users or YC founders relative to other users.

Do you have the denominator (with root-level comments) for the 41 top comments by any chance?

Thanks for the edit with added context. Any chance of an indicator that a comment is pinned so that people can transparently see when this is done? It's predictable that your moderation comments would be pinned, but even pinning a founder's comment to apparently contextualize a potentially misleading headline adds substantial mass to the claim that certain moderation actions might be done for the benefit of the company or companies involved in the thread.

Framed another way: if PC's context for the article was relevant, it would've achieved critical mass on its own. Helping it with a pin could be perceived as moving the needle for gain.

A simple "pin" icon (or emoji, or however you feel is best) may not resolve whether this is a "proper" use of moderation tools, but it will at least make it transparent when it happens, which adds credibility to the HN platform.

[sp332]

Denominator: 638 comments https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=false&qu...

[eganist]

root-level?

[dang]

Looks like 102 root level comments.

[toyg]

> A simple "pin" icon

That would be theatre - they can then add a new secret-pinning feature, afaik HN code is not open anyway.

Trust is hard to achieve and very easy to lose.

[choppaface]

This is a great example of HN moderation fanning a flamewar.

[bovermyer]

It objectively is not. I'm baffled at how you arrive at that conclusion.

[choppaface]

It objectively is fanning the flames. dang is clearly entrenched in the pro-YC side of the argument and is continuing conversation in that vein. Real moderation is just shutting down the flamewar. Like for instance they could have moved the story off the front page as quickly as they do for everything else.

[Aeolun]

Chances are these founders are just permanently behind their computers and have an alert set up for whenever someone mentions the company/domain on HN.

That allows you to get in first on an awful amount of threads.

[dataflow]

Are you talking about posts, or comments? Do HN celebs get comment boosted by virtue of that fact too? I would've thought it's only for posts.

[dang]

They're talking about comments. I'm not sure what you mean by HN celebs but no, they don't get comment boosted.

[neom]

Technically, you're a HN celeb who gets their comments boosted Daniel!

[dang]

I downweight them sometimes too.

[vasco]

It's common to assume the masses are dumb and hiding moderation can make people do the right thing without being influenced by it. For example I imagine if the pin icon was visible there would be comments about it on every story it'd be used in, which you may want to avoid to focus on the topics at hand. With that put I think transparency beats this and a transparent system is more trustworthy and better understood by the users. Just 2c but keep doing the good work.

[onion2k]

I'm not sure what you mean by HN celebs

I hope he means me.

[dataflow]

> We make a fairly significant number of acquisitions and have never heard this directly before.

Isn't the comment about things you (purportedly) did personally? Have you "reached out about an acquisition, mined them for information playing along and then ghosted", or no? You clearly don't deny it but you object that you hadn't "heard" about bad things they claim... you did? For things you're the subject of, shouldn't it be easy to confirm or deny them just based on your own memory? It's not only a bizarre defense on its own, but it's an especially poor one when the claim is that you ghost people, and your reply is that they never tried to talk to you about it! Wouldn't it make more sense to just reject it and say you did not ghost people during acquisition talks, or fish for information under the guise of an acquisition, etc.?

Also:

> I don’t think some of the claims in this comment are true or in good faith.

"Some" leaves a lot to the reader's imagination. Which ones are the ones that are true?

[pc]

I’m trying to not overstate my certainty. I have no idea what situation OP could be describing, and I have no recollection of anything along those lines, but I don’t want to definitively state that nothing like it happened over our decade of operation without knowing more about what’s actually being alleged.

We obviously never intentionally ghost companies, “mine them for information”, etc. The ecosystem is small and we wouldn’t be able to invest in and acquire companies if we didn’t have a reputation for good behavior. (And we’ve invested in dozens.) But maybe some communication got dropped in some particular case or something? I don’t know.

[dataflow]

Ah okay thanks for clarifying. It's a strong anonymous accusation, so being clear about it on your end helps a lot. I imagine it'll be hard for anyone here to know what happened.

[bambax]

I don't know anything about anything and am one of the very few people here who never founded a $xB fintech, but this strikes me as weak:

> The ecosystem is small and we wouldn’t be able to invest in and acquire companies if we didn’t have a reputation for good behavior

If you're in a position of power (and money), people will return your calls, regardless of rumors. This is true in all fields, from recruiting to publishing to VC deals, etc.

This is also a line of defense used by serial abusers who always (always!) claim that because they have had successful consensual relationships, there can't be cases where they abused the other party.

> over our decade of operation

Also weak. "We've done so many things. Seen so many people. It's been a long time. I don't recall. Things were different back then."

- - -

That said -- weak defense is just that -- it doesn't mean offense.

[jimkleiber]

The challenge I see with some phrases like "mined them" and "ghosted" is that they can be very subjective statements. The person on the receiving end may perceive the actions as such, whereas the person on the giving end may seem them differently.

I don't know what happened, just trying to point out that it is possible that a person felt slighted by certain actions and the person doing them may have no idea the other felt slighted and the person hasn't told them directly. But maybe they did, I don't know in this specific case.

[dataflow]

But in that case he could just deny them and then mention that if it came across differently, he'd love for them to reach out. Not just skip to the second part!

Say if someone claims you stole their car (and the alternative could be that you borrowed it with someone else's permission, and they had no idea, so they felt it was stolen), would you reply with "I’d appreciate hearing from anyone who feels I stole their car", or would you first say "I never stole any car, please reach out to me if you know of any such incidents"? Wouldn't it be incredibly bizarre to ask them for a discussion session without first rejecting the premise?!

[jimkleiber]

I think in the example of stealing a car is more binary: stole it or did not steal it. Maybe it could have been borrowed the car or something, but there would probably still be a more objective person in car event.

Whereas with ghosting, it could be not replying an email, could be not replying a text, could be some other thing the person missed and doesn't even know they missed. So it's hard to deny if the person isn't even aware they did it.

With mining, it could have been asking questions either live or in an email and not knowing the other person felt tricked into sharing more than they had wanted to.

I've taught a class called Emotional Self-Defense and one of the things I see the most is that the "attacker" often doesn't know they're attacking and the "victim" assumes it should be obvious the person is attacking.

What I'm saying is that he may not have any idea that his actions caused that much pain to the person. I had an ex girlfriend who said to me once, "and you don't respect my boundaries!" And I said what? And she said "yeah, 3 weeks ago when you were juggling the soccer ball and you kicked it to me, I said I didn't wanna play, and then a few minutes later you kicked it to me anyway." I was dumbstruck. I had no idea that she felt so angry/violated by me kicking the soccer ball with her the second time. If I had known, I almost certainly would have stopped. I just didn't receive the signal that strongly.

So I'm saying that may be the case here, too. It's also hard sometimes to tell someone in power that what they're doing is hurting or angering oneself.

[cycomanic]

I don't think ghosting and mining is so vage in this contex. It means engage in acquisition talks without actual intent to acquire, but instead to gain information. If you are the person doing this you will very clearly know what you are doing. Viewing in this context the comment is quite correct it is an odd denial, it sounds a bit like PR speak to me.

[jimkleiber]

I'm imagining if this had been a comment from a spurned romantic partner. "He cheated on me and took advantage of me," posted anonymously to a web forum. If I were the person being accused, and assuming I had been romantically involved with many people, I may have no idea who is accusing me or which specific instance they meant. Maybe I'm aware that I cheated on one person, but I may not even know if that is the person making the accusation? If I've only been romantically involved with one, then it may be quite obvious to me who it is and maybe even the specific incident to which they are referring.

However, I imagine Stripe has interacted with many many companies regarding these things, but maybe not.

I think I've just been in too many conflicts where the other person thinks I intentionally hurt them and I didn't see it that way, or conversely, I think I did something to hurt someone, apologize, and they are confused because they didn't feel hurt at all.

[dataflow]

I get what you're saying about it being blurry but I don't buy that it affects the ability to reject it. He can quire simply reject it and then explain it might be a misunderstanding or something. Or say it might have happened unintentionally. Or whatever. There are several options here, and refusing to deny the claims doesn't bolster his case.

And that's all kinda beside the point - note that the bad part isn't even the ghosting itself for us to quibble over, it's fishing for information under the guise of an acquisition, with or without ghosting. That should be far less blurry and easy to deny head-on, whatever you think of the ghosting.

[jimkleiber]

One other story (I feel bad for blitzing with replies and in a weird order, I hope that's ok)...

I ran a workshop with abut 35 people in the audience. For about 15 mins, I had them sit quietly as I asked them "how do you feel when you think about this? How do you feel when you think about that?" And so on, and had them reply in their heads.

At the end of the session, I opened up group reflection. One woman shot her hand up and said "I feel like you manipulated us." And i asked if others felt this way, and maybe 5 others raised their hands and started talking about how my questions manipulated them. And then this other guy raised his hand and said how for the first time in months, these questions helped him stop thinking about politics and the chaos in the world and quieted his mind and thanked me. A few others agreed with a similar feeling.

So my one action caused (at least) two very different responses in the same group and I would likely have had no idea if they didn't tell me how they had received it.

[jimkleiber]

I wouldn't say "I never ghosted you" if I don't remember the interaction, because perhaps I did? Why would I make that bold claim without having more info about which situation it is?

> And note that the bad part isn't even the ghosting to quibble over, it's fishing for information under the guise of an acquisition.

Even "fishing for information under the guise of an acquisition" could be anything from sending one email with 3 questions to five intense 2-hr interviews over 3 months. One person who feels very secretive and protective of their business knowledge (even some people in startups who don't even have companies yet but just ideas) can feel very violated by one email with one question, whereas other people may not believe they were being fished for info after 3 months of interviews.

[jimkleiber]

Actually, if it were me, I wouldn't deny it first if I truly didn't know what I did. Perhaps I did do something that I feel guilty about doing but just am not currently aware of. I'd probably ask as he did to figure out how the person is feeling and what they think I did to contribute to that and then see whether I feel guilty about that or not. I may actually feel really bad, hard to know without knowing more specifics.

[bartread]

This is a valid point. I've observed or been involved in a number of acquisitions at various distances over many years. There are any number of reasons an acquisition might not go ahead and, of course, as the potential acquirer you obviously learn some things that are useful, but I've never known a situation where there has been a deliberate plan to simply mine for knowledge or whatever.

The reality is some acquisitions are opportunistic, some are strategic, and even the opportunistic ones often have a strategic element. For a strategic acquisition, if it doesn't go ahead (comes down to ROI isn't perceived as being as good as potential alternatives), the almost inevitable outcome will often be (i) a different acquisition is eventually made, or (ii) the acquiring company decides to make an investment in that area themselves.

One of the ways to avoid getting "screwed over" as an acquiree is to ensure you've done the work beforehand to maximise the chances of compatibility with the acquirer: things like compliance, data protection, having a poor grasp of your numbers and financials, and other mundane matters (or combinations of them) can easily trip up the process.

When an acquisition does fall through for almost any reason it's pretty natural for the potential acquirees to feel rather bruised by the process: they've wasted their time, they've been screwed over, etc. Often that won't be the case although, I've no doubt, there are instances where it will be.

(Btw, in case it's not obvious, I know nothing about the activities of Stripe or its founders, good or bad.)

[andrew_]

Say "Bloody Mary" ten times in the mirror at midnight and she will appear...

[choppaface]

I honestly do not see your participation in this thread as good faith. You apologized to the candidate in public—- good start, now do something of consequence in private. But any further involvement from you (especially trying to out the OP) is simply fanning the flamewar. Even HN moderation is helping fan the flames by adding stats and other commentary. This is why I find YC so utterly untrustworthy.