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Tell HN: Winners of Apply HN for YC Fellowship 3

196 points kevin | 2 comments | 05 May 16 01:16 UTC | HN request time: 0.42s | source

Last month, we decided to reserve a few spots in the next Fellowship batch (F3) for the Hacker News community to decide who they’d like to fund. Startups applied publicly via HN and the community “interviewed” and voted for their favorites.

Context: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11440627

We ran a poll for the top applications and the voting was so close that we decided to fund one extra startup. Here are the winners:

AutoMicroFarm (264 points): https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11454342

Feynman Nano (208 points): https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11443122

Casepad (200 points): https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11452884

I’ve talked to the founders of these three startups on the phone already and I’m really excited about working with all of them. We’ve disclosed all the vote totals in the original poll thread (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11615639). Of course, the application that got the most votes isn’t on the final list and we’ll discuss that in the thread below.

We received 343 applications via Apply HN and over 1700 comments were generated across those posts. I was quite impressed by the quality and depth of the discussions on these applications and really loved the moments when HNers would take the time to provide quality feedback to the founders on their applications.

Thank you to everyone for participating in our little experiment. It takes a lot of bravery put your passion out there to be judged publicly and it takes a remarkable community to treat that courage with kindness and respect. It makes me very proud to be part of HN.

While we haven’t definitively decided whether we’ll do this again at this point (we’ll want to see how the companies do in the batch), I’m delighted and optimistic about what the community accomplished here.

We’ve already received a lot of great feedback from many of you on how to do this better, but please feel free to share more below.

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OoTheNigerian ◴[05 May 16 08:22 UTC] No.11634640[source]▶
I've thought about this a bit and see where both parties are coming from.

For Kevin, due to the "trollish" behavior of Maciej during this competition, Kevin was (validly) very suspicious of Maciej's intention for participating in the program. Of course previous history of Maciej rallying against all YC stands for did not help assuage the fears :)

For Maciej, the rules are the rules. he (fairly) believes you do not have to like someone to keep your end of an agreement.

Here's my position. As this is an EXPERIMENT, YC should have taken the risk. Worst case, they would have had to kick him out of the program. But everyone will see they have been fair. Seen to be fair is a quite important.

I have "clashed" with Maciej before [1] however, i see him as some one who only has a hard bark and will be quite cook in person or once you know him. Dont't be too worried Kevin.

Of course, your house your rules. But still..

I hope YC can rescind and take Pinboard in (I know... I know..:).

[1] http://oonwoye.com/2011/03/09/maciej-of-pinboard-in-nigerian...

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cperciva ◴[05 May 16 08:28 UTC] No.11634652[source]▶
For Maciej, the rules are the rules. he (fairly) believes you do not have to like someone to keep your end of an agreement.

Except that he's inventing rules ("whoever gets the most votes wins $20,000!") which were explicitly not there, while ignoring other rules ("Can I ask people to upvote my submission? No.").

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OoTheNigerian ◴[05 May 16 08:41 UTC] No.11634688[source]▶
Fair enough.

But like someone said re: raising money from VC (was it PG?) don't listen to the reason, listen to the answer.

Kevin is uncomfortable with Maciej and took his decision based on that. As it would not seem politically connect to give that as his reason, he began looking for "good reasons" to justify it.

Is this conflict that can keep dividing us worth the 20k to YC? I would guess no.

They could and should sort this out. Kevin should understand that these HN YCF coys "belong to the community". If Maciej goes in and try to mess it up the community will (as my people say) "treat his fuck up".

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cperciva ◴[05 May 16 08:53 UTC] No.11634720[source]▶
Kevin is uncomfortable with Maciej and took his decision based on that. As it would not seem politically connect to give that as his reason, he began looking for "good reasons" to justify it.

My interpretation of events is rather different: Maciej cheated and got caught, but Dan and/or Kevin were concerned about the reaction if the submission which received the most votes was excluded based on the vote-rigging alone; so they went out of their way to try to find a way to include him anyway.

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tptacek ◴[05 May 16 14:26 UTC] No.11636353[source]▶
Even on tilt the way you are right now, you know this isn't true, and that this was a very slimy comment to have written. I'm surprised.
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cperciva ◴[05 May 16 15:20 UTC] No.11636868[source]▶
on tilt the way you are right now

I got increasingly irritated with his faux innocence as the evening progressed. I should probably have stopped around midnight.

you know this isn't true

My turn to be surprised. Which part isn't true? It seemed true to me when I wrote it at 2 AM, and it seems true to me when I'm reading it again now at 8 AM (curse these early morning meetings!).

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1. tptacek ◴[05 May 16 15:24 UTC] No.11636897[source]▶
Is there a way for us to have this conversation without each of your comments adding to the list of specious accusations you're making? There's nothing "faux" about his innocence.
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2. cperciva ◴[05 May 16 15:31 UTC] No.11636962[source]▶
Ok, you win. As the evening progressed, I got increasingly annoyed with the way that he gave every outward appearance of acting like a dishonest troll, despite the fact that he is actually as pure as the driven snow and never had anything but the best interests of YC at heart. Happy?