How is this ethical: YC funds Vote.org as part of YC S16. Vote.org is a voter registration platform broadly similar to VotePlz, but with fewer emojis.
Sam Altman spends his summer advising vote.org in his role as a YC Partner.
Soon after demo day, Sam Altman decides to launch what amounts to a clone knock off of vote.org. Paul Graham tweets about VotePlz at launch calling it the most important thing to happen today, after never mentioning the YC funded vote.org on his twitter all summer as far as I can tell.
Shouldn't YC be as friendly to not-for-profit startup founders as they claim to be to for-profit founders?
I'm all for there being lots of voter-registration organizations. YC should fund lots of startups in this space.
It seems though that the role that YC Partners play as trusted strategic advisors is incompatible with those partners going on to start directly competitive organizations, whatever their tax status might be.
Sam Altman spends his summer advising vote.org in his role as a YC Partner.
Soon after demo day, Sam Altman decides to launch what amounts to a clone knock off of vote.org. Paul Graham tweets about VotePlz at launch calling it the most important thing to happen today, after never mentioning the YC funded vote.org on his twitter all summer as far as I can tell.
Shouldn't YC be as friendly to not-for-profit startup founders as they claim to be to for-profit founders?
I'm all for there being lots of voter-registration organizations. YC should fund lots of startups in this space.
It seems though that the role that YC Partners play as trusted strategic advisors is incompatible with those partners going on to start directly competitive organizations, whatever their tax status might be.