[fakedang]

> Regardless of what you think of Pear, making the claim that they have damaged Y Combinator's reputation is pretty dramatic.

YC's main value is in subsequent fundraising, wherein companies are pre-vetted by YC before being invested in by VCs. If they lose the confidence of VCs as being a reliable arbiter of preseed startups, the better startups will just go elsewhere (already happening) and soon the VCs will too. Thus harming YC's reputation massively.