Please don't get nasty, as in your last paragraph, when commenting here. It literally adds nothing except bile, and we need less of that.
Edit: your several comments in this thread smack of a vendetta. Schadenfreude is human, but I think it's fair to ask people not to go hog wild with it.
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.
I don't care about what you're arguing for or against, or who owns it. What I care about is trying to stave off the toxicity that poisons this community. It really is that simple, as you'd realize if you looked into how much effort we put into doing that all day, every day. There is no energy left for anything else.
Dark insinuations ("I also find myself extremely skeptical") are sure fun, but from my very weary point of view, a little pompous and a lot tedious. I wish I could share with you how this stuff feels on the 10,000th iteration.
Also, just because you prefer to read fluff replies of support and cheerleading and just because you are tired of people calling out editorial and financial conflict, it doesn't make the point of the replies you find bothersome moot. But it's your igloo and not mine; by virtue of me being here I am ultimately a guest at the discretion of you, and thus am bound by your rules in order to stay. I can also appreciate that your specific role can feel like shoveling shit against the tide, and that it's a thankless, rote task that can be at times extremely unpleasant. So, fair enough.
You've imagined this. Nobody wants that, certainly not us. The day that HN shows signs of it becoming a top risk, we'll adapt accordingly.
Meanwhile, the risk that I'm talking about (and that you've been worsening) is the one that keeps us up at night. So yes, please follow the rules when commenting here from now on.
