Does what happens at YC stay at YC?
Community has never felt louder in startupland. Bringing people together over a shared interest is innate to human nature. And, coming out of a lonely, draining pandemic, every startup wants to find a way to cultivate community, conversation and camaraderie as part of its value proposition.
Last week, though, the outside world got a look at how Y Combinator, one of Silicon Valley’s most famed and feared accelerators, deals with the intricacy and nuance of a scaled, yet still ultra-exclusive, community after the accelerator kicked out two founders from its internal messaging board, Bookface.
The two founders, Dark CEO Paul Biggar and Prolific CEO and co-founder Katia Damer , say they were removed from YC after publicly critiquing YC — for very different reasons. Biggar had noted on social media back in March that another YC founder was tipping off people on how to cut the vaccine lines to get an early jab, while Damer expressed worry and frustration more recently about the alumni community’s support of a now-controversial alum, Antonio García Martínez.
Y Combinator says that the two founders were removed from Bookface because they broke community guidelines, namely the rule to never externally post any internal information from Bookface.
