Who Doesn’t Enjoy a Good Tech Bro Pissing Match?
There was a recent, er, exchange of words between that grandaddy of accelerators, Y Combinator, or rather CEO Garry Tan, and Ari Partovi, founder and CEO of relative upstart accelerator, Neo. During a keynote he gave at HackMIT, in “his 15-minute speech, Partovi says he mentioned YC once, saying: “The mentor ratio: we have as many mentors as Y Combinator, except they’re serving 20 startups rather than 250 startup,” TechCrunch reported.
“The comment seemingly infuriated (Tan), who took to X… to write: “Competition is good. What isn’t OK is when competitors like Neo slander Y Combinator by saying ‘YC does not offer personalized advice’… YC has 12 group partners including me: When we fund you you get 1:1 advice for the life of your startup.”
Boys, boys, boys!
Tan’s are fightin’ words – and Partovi’s, from Tan’s point of view, possibly tortuous, in the legal sense. Or, as the TechCrunch headline put it, Why is Y Combinator so defensive lately?