Y Combinator chief government Garry Tan says faculty entrepreneurs who undertake a “fake-it-till-you-make-it” playbook danger following Theranos founder Elizabeth Holmes and FTX creator Sam Bankman-Fried “straight to jail.”
What Occurred: Talking throughout a dwell taping of the accelerator’s Lightcone podcast at YC’s AI Startup College, Tan blasted unnamed college packages that he says encourage college students to decorate traction and “misinform buyers.”
“I am very frightened about them as a result of what we’re coming to know is they’re instructing you to lie,” he informed an viewers of undergrads and Ph.D. candidates. “Software program is probably the most empowering factor on the earth. Why do it’s important to lie?”
Tan, whose seed fund has backed Airbnb, Reddit and DoorDash , warned that fraud scandals have already tarnished tech’s picture. “That is a waste of time, and you are going to go to jail,” he mentioned, invoking Holmes’ 11-year sentence and Bankman-Fried’s 25-year time period. “They do not symbolize us!” he added to applause.
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Why It Issues: YC managing director Jared Friedman echoed the critique, arguing that classroom formulation produce a “low-cost facsimile” of actual startups as a result of “anytime you attempt to bottle up entrepreneurship and train it as a school course, what you find yourself with is a technique, not an organization.”
Tan additionally faulted campuses for barring next-generation instruments similar to AI code editors. Group companion Diana Hu requested what number of college students may use Cursor and solely a handful raised their palms. “They’re fairly actually prohibiting the scholars from studying the instruments that they will want,” Friedman mentioned.
The controversy lands as regulators tighten scrutiny of startup disclosures after high-profile collapses. Holmes was convicted in 2022 of defrauding buyers in her blood-testing agency, in response to Reuters and started serving an 11-year time period final Might. Bankman-Fried was sentenced in March to 25 years for an $8 billion crypto fraud.
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