They did very little with an extreme amount of advantages handed to them vis-a-vis A16Z's involvement. It's not intellectually honest to praise them for being able to raise money while simultaneous consider them immune from criticism for failing to do anything notable with that investment.

I staunchly disagree with the general ethos of accepting failure as if the mere effort of trying is somehow notable. Ryan may have made the best decision that was presented to him at the time, but that doesn't invalidate the fact that a whole host of poor preceding decisions placed him into that bind in the first place.

I also find myself extremely skeptical that you'd take the time to so vociferously defend the "tone" of this conversation had PH not been a YC company. Given that a large part of this acquisition looks and smells like a life preserver thrown by one of their existing investors, it makes me cringe even further at PH's inability to harness that emotional capital into anything more substantial and at the amount of which people will ignore the reality to defend their own biased interests.