We knew when we decided to offer this item for auction that people would give us grief about it. But we're happy to take the heat to give more kids the opportunity to attend Bing.

Obviously, any donation to Bing is better than no donation to Bing, and the reality is that it probably is a net win for the parents with less money, but it seems like it could be even better refined and ensure that there are fewer cheap-shots like in the thread below.

Yes, frankly, I feel like the concerns expressed here are a kind of moral bikeshedding. What harm does it do if one rich kid gets to come to a YC dinner?

It's too much trouble to armor oneself against cheap shots. People who want to misunderstand you have an almost endless ability to do so, so you'd have to devote correspondingly endless energy to replying.

As to what harm it does, the answer is none at all. In fact, it is an awesome opportunity for that person and I would have loved to have been in that position myself.

However, the rub for me is not so much what harm does it do, but what good does it do to have one more rich kid at the dinner? Obviously, Bing gets a big ol' donation, so that is most certainly a huge benefit. I don't know, it just feels weird to me.

How about sponsoring a programming puzzle (or series of puzzles) or something like that next time and the first person to solve it gets to go to the dinner? I would put $1,000 into that (as the Bing donation). Bing gets the money, the person who solved the problem is obviously interested in going, it takes care of the "rich parents" debate, and the overhead for managing such a contest is limited to the upfront creation of the question and parsing of the results.

Truthfully, my personal feelings here are primarily rooted in envy. I did not have parents who had the ability to pay for such an opportunity, so had this auction applied to me, I would have been looking for a way to work my way in somehow.

Correct. I don't think anyone here thinks Paul Graham is a bad man. I've never met him, but he seems like a good person who didn't intend to become a lightning rod. However, this was a dick move.

If they're going to give away spots at a YC dinner to teenagers-- and I think that's a good idea-- then they should give them to winners of a computing, math, or science competition. Or young people in the computing field who overcame some disadvantage.

This just proves that Silicon Valley has nothing left that can't be sold. Even the purr of a cat will eventually be metered and priced if these people can find a way.

Let's assume that most people in YCombinator are among the best and the brightest. Well, now the time of top talent is a just another resource to be sold off to rich, entitled Joffreys. Speaking for top talent here, I'm fucking offended.

Because parental resources don't have extreme effects on these competitions as well? Or is it just an easy-to-propose feel-good alternative?

Sheesh. pg obviously foresaw negative reactions, but this entire thread is simply ridiculous. Please just step back and ask yourselves how your comments affect yourselves. Is it really healthy to view access to YC as some kind of golden ticket? The YC application must basically be a free-to-enter lottery! (I must be pretty foolish for not playing all these years.)

To the extent that silly valley is currently a bubble-fueled casino, complaining isn't going to put a stop to that, and dinner for a not-fully-formed teenager fulfilling their parents' expectations does little to augment that. And to the extent that there are still real companies being built on technological merit, some inspiration and accelerated social connections will do little to further disrupt that.

I took part in those competitions. There were plenty of winners from humble backgrounds and non-coastal regions. Plenty of years, the winner would be from some no-name town in the Midwest. Sure, being privileged helped, but there was real diversity, and most people with the talent had a chance.

Sheesh. pg obviously foresaw negative reactions, but this entire thread is simply ridiculous.

Does someone foreseeing negative reactions to something, and then doing it anyway, mean those negative reactions should not occur? If I steal something, I'm pretty sure I'll get negative reactions (social disapproval, risk of physical harm, jail time, etc.) because, as it were, it's actually the wrong thing to do. If I do it, I can't dismiss people's hatred for that action as somehow invalid by saying, "yeah, I knew that would piss you off." The fact that I knew beforehand that people would find the action offensive doesn't mitigate it's general wrongness.

You (and everyone else on this thread) can be pissed off. That doesn't change the fact that one lucky rich kid is going to learn quite a bit for an evening, or that a couple of lucky poor kids are going to be able to attend an elite pre-school that they wouldn't otherwise be able to go to. Just because you (well, "we", I ain't going either) aren't that lucky kid doesn't mean it's not a good thing.

It's quite possible for an act to be the right thing to do and still hated.

Is that supposed to be the pinnacle of unprivilege? I'd bet the sheer majority of these winners had parents who had time to be very proactive in their education. Or is considering that privilege inconvenient for this conversation?

For negative reactions, you'll invariably get concern trolls who take issue just to feel like they're helping some plight (unless you're already pandering to concern trolls), so no, it's not the same type of expectation as "stealing". But my point there was only to contrast that expected noise with the overwhelming actual reaction.

Feel free to engage my main point - to the extent that YC/SV is still meritocratic, then this dinner is not a guaranteed acceptance to that meritocracy.. and to the extent that SV has become an insider network for flipping Instagrams, access to bubblicious capital is necessarily facilitated by social connections and fueling outrage toward a small time charitable event because it can be pigeonholed as a symptom is a great way to ignore the actual cause of the decay.

In my observation, here in India (I am from India) that a child born in a poor family remains poor for whole of his life . There are exceptions, but this is true for most of the cases. In my opinion, the reason behind is that the society and culture makes feel a child of poor family that he/she is poor in all aspect of life. This goes to un-conscious mind of children that they are poor and they never come out this thought when they grow up and even if they are very very talented.

Please do make such kind of culture where kids feel bad simply because their parent can't afford something for them. Please do not make kids feel that they belong to a poor family. I can see the current bid is $20K which is a big amount even for a middle class family.

I know that world is not perfect, but we can try making it better at least by not playing the money games in kids matter. If you think further, this kind of culture is a way to society where only children of rich people will get proper healthcare, education etc.

Hey, isn't that the Uber kittens thing?

A place for some more deserving poor kid would be nice.

The New 1%, the out of touch types, look at things like this and think they are somehow progressive, based on an Econ-101 understanding of "efficiency" (which is not well-defined for sociological problems). The rest of us, who've actually had struggle in our lives, find it disgusting and perverse, because it makes a mockery of the hard work of such a massive number of people out there.

Also, that scholarship is probably going to go to some middle-income-but-highly-connected child of a Stanford professor or a diplomat, and not an actual poor person. Just sayin'.

What was done was easy to do. Simple decision "yes or no" here is the benefit. [1]

What you are asking would require meetings, details and more thought amongst people who don't really have the time for that.

[1] Keep that in mind when you are doing business with people. Make it simple for them to agree and require no effort on their part (or at least as little as possible). If you want to delay decision making do the opposite. If you want to delay it even more give them an assignment to complete (like a 3 page list of questions that they need to answer before you will take their money). Friction kills deals just like time does.

In my opinion, you are comparing apples to oranges. This is not like putting up a 12 field registration/payment form for your web app, it is asking people who are interested in getting access to one of these dinners to express why they think they are worthy of attending. The perceived value is high enough such that you should theoretically only be reading essays from people who took the time and made the effort to apply.

You are absolutely right, this is the easiest way, and it is by no means a bad idea. Donating to charity in anyway is a great idea. However, the virtue of that fact does not automatically mean that the method for raising the money to be donated was intrinsically great.

I must note that my opinion is colored by the fact that I would have loved to attend one of these dinners myself during my teen years, but my parents (nor myself) could absolutely not afford to have paid for it, but I would have been happy to compete for the spot on other criteria.

I’m glad I went on DDG before assuming Microsoft paid to name a nursery school after its advertising business.

At the very least, couldn't you auction off a seat to adults? At least that would be people using their own money to buy themselves advantages rather than yet another example of parents buying significant advantages for their children.

Maybe I'm just bitter because I'm 20 and my parents could never afford to pay $20,000. I don't see why you should purposefully give someone else whose parents could yet another advantage in life.

PS. To put my money where my mouth is, I'd donate $1,000 of my own money to Watsi or another charity of your choice if it buys a seat.

Do you have something in mind? An invite to a YC dinner is free and, much more importantly, costs nobody at YC very much time.

The catering isn't.

Besides, my point wasn't about suggesting something else, it was just remarking that the whole intent of auctioning access to a business dinner is to sell some kind of percieved power to those who can afford it.

If there wasn't percieved power there, then the prize wouldn't raise much money.

Now it could also be that this prize was chosen precisely because it counterpoints the eventual use of the money, which would be as good a reason as any.

At the end of the day there are many ways of getting rich people to pay into charity and this is just one of them, is also probably quite effective as it taps into the whole dynasty thing.

But, you might also consider an occasional raffle'd spot, or a spot otherwise drawn from an eligibility pool with a lower economic barrier-to-entry.

You might raise as much or more, and it would be easier to mix in things like donated-tickets or third-party-sponsored-tickets.

And, the pool of losing-entries would itself be valuable, as a community with expressed interest in YC. Perhaps the drawing-winner(s) and some volunteer YCers could throw a followup separate, larger-audience event for them: passing on the good wisdom and fortune, in the YC style.

I know the amount of places is limited, but would it be possible for the next time to offer a differential attendance? For example, donators get front-seats and the non-resourceful can participate farther-back or standing up, a la kickstarter.

First, this is basically the most valuable thing YC can give away (without selling slots into its batches). What else would be a reasonable thing to offer? Second, this is access to a YC dinner, but it doesn't ruin the meritocracy aspect -- just because you met a partner at a dinner doesn't mean you can get into YC with a crappy idea or without a lot of work. Third, it makes sense to target wealthy people and offer them a valuable reward for their contributions. They have the most to contribute, and a reward makes them more likely to contribute, and to contribute more.

The negative responses really bum me out.

Bingo.

Now, it's a huge topological stretch to argue that attending the YC dinner is really going to set a kid for life. More likely, he'll make a jackass of himself and that will be the end of that. However, it's the statement, the impression, and the direction that's getting everyone riled up.

The reason people dislike VCs is that they give resources to people who need them the least. They'd be more respected if they were pouring their efforts (at least in terms of time and mentorship; as they are businesses, they shouldn't be funding nonviable candidates) into projects and people who could actually use the help. No one likes a fairweather friend.

This seems to implicitly support the 'poor' in a rather patronising way. Rich person pays for kid to come to dinner. Poor person gets gift of education.

Wonder who would bid if it was rich person gets to pay for poor person's kid to go to dinner and rich kid gets 0?

The Poors are dangerous.

I will add: I grew up relatively poor in Michigan. My parents income was less than $60k, so I couldn't really afford college. I moved into my own apartment when I was 18, and supported myself except for around $130/mo in cell phone and car insurance bills. The only remaining financial support from my parents is a $19/mo cell phone bill.

This year I moved to Silicon Valley with less than $3000 in pocket, and I now work at a startup.

Most aren't this black and white, of course, but the point is that a fixed amount of any asset can mean vastly different things to people in different circumstances.

I suspect that a resourceful kid could get a meeting with PG for free if they thought hard enough.

So I see this as 100% Donation. In some traditions, the value value of a donation is from the heart of the donor. In others it's from the benefit to the recipient. I am in the latter camp. I hope there is a bidding war and some rich self righteous jerk pays 500k to it. I think the charity would do a lot of good with that money.

The fact of the matter is that connections, luck, etc. rule pretty much everywhere. It's useless and unproductive to cast this blame to specific, ultimately small entities. If I had been born about 5 miles north of where I was born -- in the ghettos, vs. to a household that valued education, I would have been living a very different life. And I'm grateful that didn't happen, I'm grateful for all the opportunities I got, that my dad had friends in high places and were willing to hire me as an intern. I'm grateful that I had the social support to seek therapy when I had depression, a place to live when I was unemployed and penniless, friends that respected me, etc. I would not have had a lot of this if I was living in the third world, where opportunity is scarce.

That is the way it is. You could chide YC and all the VC world, and I'm not sure if you'd get anywhere. As far as VC firms and incubators go, it's clear to see YC is something else: they're funding nonprofits like Watsi, their partners seem to have some sense of social good, so I think snark here is misplaced.

This is it, isn't it. The scale of the problem is so vast that it's easy for everyone to shrug off their share of the responsibility. This seems to be the case with all civilization-scale problems and one of the deepest flaws of our species.

It is the scale of the problem that's the problem, but not in the "everybody just shrugs their shoulders way". People are working on it. The problem is that nobody can fix the problem all at once, and so in the process of creating new winners, they also create new losers.

Think about it this way: YC did not exist 8 years ago. There was no way for someone like the Reddit founders or Brian Chesky of AirBnB to create their companies; after all, they lacked connections too. There was no way for people to gain income by renting out their spare rooms (I have at least one friend who is financially kept afloat by this).

But when you solve that problem, you leave behind all the other folks who think they could also found a billion-dollar company, if only given the chance, but for whatever reason don't make it into YC. And so they get bitter and complain about how unfair the world is. Which is true; their number didn't come up on the dice, but complaining about it is not doing themselves any favors.

Keep in mind that people are upset because one rich kid will get to pay $20K to go to a YC dinner, while a couple poor kids get scholarships to attend an elite private school they wouldn't otherwise be able to go to. This is about as close to a strictly-positive-for-everyone deal as possible.

I think that one of the deepest flaws of our species is that we measure ourselves by relative accomplishment instead of absolute accomplishment. If you are reading Hacker News, you are probably in the top 1% by opportunities available worldwide. But we compare ourselves to the lucky sops who cash out for billions (even though there are only a handful of them), rather than the people around us.

I do think that Silicon Valley's arrogance and general out-of-touch attitude-- and unashamedly handing out VC connections to children who already benefit from a massive private welfare system is pretty damn out of touch-- poses a threat to the reputation of technologists in general (including people like me) and I'm going to fight the tide by making fun of this sort of shit. When the country stops liking "the techies" I would at least hope that some of them would recognize that we're not all the same, and that lifelong engineers are of a different (and better) character than the reigning VC-halo/TechCrunch leadership.

In what way? That's not a disagreement or a challenge but I'm curious what you mean by "better".

In any case isn't this exactly what happens when things become to popular and money is made? (Reminds me of that Paul Simon song where he refers to Joe Dimaggio.)

I'm simply curious, did you mean to imply that this is something of the past?

The use of past tense was more to reflect deficiencies in my knowledge. I was a huge fan of PG and YC circa 2006-7 because of what the original mission seemed to be: to make funding possible for less established or connected people. I have no reason to doubt that he has deviated from his mission; however, I avoided the present tense because I do not know that he stayed the course. I can speak with more confidence on the past, hence the use of that tense.

Their connections comprise a welfare system that keeps them from really failing.

I still think Silicon Valley is meritocracy since it's actually very difficult to succeed without any kind of value/merit, but meritocracy does not imply it's always going to be a fair playground for everyone.

I also find selling connection-potential to be as anti-meritocratic as you can be.

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