[tptacek]

YC has funded over 5000 companies, and this page catalogs 39 that failed, many of which, on the sites own terms, are simply business failures, with no additional drama. I don't think the authors of the site realize the case they're actually making here.

[dadrian]

There's something ironic about vibe-coding an anti-YC site. They're why OpenAI exists!

[wheelerwj]

Ooof. Thats a statement.

[bigyabai]

OpenAI has their own fair share of critiques, I'd be careful lifting them up as a shining example.

[2ndorderthought]

Wait you mean the open ai nonprofit company that doesn't offer open models and is now for profit isn't a good example of a trustworthy company? What?

[TiredOfLife]

https://developers.openai.com/api/docs/models/gpt-oss-120b

[2ndorderthought]

August 2025.

[notahacker]

it mostly seems to be targeting Garry Tan by suggesting that there are vastly more under his leadership.

But yeah, if you're going to consider startups that just never made enough money as a scandal, then Garry and his predecessors presided over rather a lot more (as would be expected from any accelerator). And if you're not, some harmless AI startup that never made much money or some entity that didn't do anything except sue someone else for their bad behaviour isn't really in the same ballpark as Zenefits or the consumer investment scams YC funded.

Especially if you're going to call this data analysis https://ycombinator.fyi/timeline

I think a FuckedCompany style overview of everything Ycombinator would be fun (and probably not overly flattering to Garry Tan) but I guess that would take more effort.

[ksec]

>it mostly seems to be targeting Garry Tan

He is rather unpopular in some circles due to his political opinions. So I am not surprised.

[culi]

He used to work at Palantir. You pretty much have to have shit moral views to be okay with that

[NoGravitas]

I didn't read all of them, but none of the ones I read were simply business failures; most of them were selling snake oil or non-existent software as a service, or were productizing someone else's open source project while violating their license. That is to say, they were committing various kinds of fraud. Now, it's arguable whether YC could have detected all of these frauds or had a duty to do so, but the page is, to me, extremely valuable for providing examples of the ways in which the tech economy is basically a grift nowadays.

[gchamonlive]

Which is why these critical pieces are important, so that this proportion doesn't increase. YC should stand these criticisms lest it become a religion of sorts.

[benoau]

If YC had a chance of being a "religion of sorts" it would have been about Paul Graham, that ship sailed a decade ago.

[gchamonlive]

It apparently already is, just trying to say something marginally critical about YC will enrage the zealots of social mobility with their metaphorical pitchforks. But yeah, thinking back, it's not a religion, it's already a cult.