[echoangle]

I never interpreted these comments as mean-spirited, it’s just funny how the comment is completely wrong on hindsight. Kind of like the 640 kB of RAM thing or horses being better than cars.

I don’t think the point is that the people saying it at the time were stupid, it’s just interesting that people can come to completely wrong conclusions which seem reasonable at the time.

[tptacek]

It's not completely wrong in hindsight†. It's only "wrong" if you assume "app" means Dropbox itself, and if you ignore the context of the thread. Brandon was talking about an application that framed Dropbox as an alternative to USB drives, and critiquing the pitch.

There was a time on HN where it actually made sense to bat a YC application back and forth, and to talk about what might make a more or less compelling one. It's long gone, and the people dunking on this comment have completely lost touch with what the original community was. I'm not saying that community was better (it was much more insular), but it was certainly more collegial.

† In fact, I think we now know it was literally correct, and YC had the same qualms, accepting Drew Houston just to get access to him and apparently hoping he'd find something better to work on.

[echoangle]

At least point 1 and 3 were completely wrong (or technically not wrong but irrelevant to the point).

As you can see by the success of Dropbox, point 1 wasn’t a real issue. That’s also the funniest point, because „why would anyone pay for XYZ, as a software engineer I can just do A, B, C, and D myself“ is such a common counterpoint which completely neglects that most customers aren’t going to do ABCD themselves because they don’t want to deal with it and don’t have the know how.

And point 3 probably can also be classified as wrong, at least Dropbox seems to make some amount of money.

[tptacek]

No, couldn't possibly have been wrong, because YC agreed with them. Again: you're missing what Dan is saying. The thread isn't about Dropbox-the-product. It's about the YC application Drew Houston wrote to pitch Dropbox. I really don't think there's a way to rhetoric your way out of this one!

[echoangle]

But do you think the commenter meant „here are my issues with this YC application, you should make those points more clear: …“ or do you think he meant „here are my issues with this YC application, you should find something else to do!“?

Because to me it seems like he’s criticizing the product itself, not just the presentation.

[tptacek]

The former.