I agree, and the entire thing leaves a poor taste in my mouth too. Techcrunch screwed up in not mentioning VWO, but only because it is the real innovative company in this space, and its product has been out there for a while. If this new one is newsworthy they should have at least linked to VWO in the review.
That said, I think the real fault here is with PG and YCombinator, who should know better than to fund teams to compete with single-founder bootstrapped startups that congregate on these boards. I mean... what's next Paul, a YC funded play at online bingo?
I have a policy about not criticizing people in their house, and this is definitely not my house.
That said, there are some markets large enough to sustain many companies. Bingo cards probably won't support a company on the trajectory that YC would like. A/B testing, though, already supports many companies, from several big-freaking-consultingware companies down to VWO. There is room for more, and I'd suggest people remember that the biggest competitor isn't a just-launched startup or even Google. It is "Customer decides not to A/B test." This competitor is very popular, and has 99% share in the A/B testing space. Heck, it probably has 90% share among HN readers!
There's a difference between being critical and being disrespectful or rude.
And the size of the market is irrelevant. To run with your analogy, the question is whether it is ethical to invite someone into your home to join a support group for small entrepreneurs and then fund a much larger team to chase their ideas once you learn about them. For an organization that aims to support entrepreneurs, this just looks bad. There is nothing wrong with competition, but they should have passed the proposal to someone else to fund.
Similar argument could be made about the 99% of people who don't play Bingo - yet :) I agree with you otherwise that the two markets are of different potential sizes..
Hope you enjoyed that ad hominem attack. Because regardless of how you slice it, there's a conflict of interest between presenting this forum as a neutral and supportive environment for entrepreneurs and actively competing with its members.
I don't have any illusions about competition and am inclined to believe if not YC then someone else, but at a minimum this tarnishes the image of YC as an organization which supports underdogs, kicks dirt in the face of any independent Indian hackers hanging out here, and discourages anyone not looking for funding from participating. That's a lot of bad karma to exchange for a token investment of a few thousand USD.
Yes there is a conflict. It doesn't matter who is first. Thats worth nothing in itself.
It matters who is the best at pulling the levers that get exults.
VWO obviously failed at that. Optimizely, at least in this case, won. Play to your strengths, realize the world isn't fair, and move on with it already.
If I were an LP in YC and they held back because of a post on HN I'd (rightly) be pissed as hell. Who expected them to behave differently?
Btw, I'd bet this "scandal" has no effect on either HN or YCs reputation. I also think people are overestimating ghe values of a mention on TechCrunch.
That said, I think the real fault here is with PG and YCombinator, who should know better than to fund teams to compete with single-founder bootstrapped startups that congregate on these boards. I mean... what's next Paul, a YC funded play at online bingo?