Recently, Y Combinator has found itself in a defensive position. Over the weekend, key figures from this renowned accelerator took to X (formerly Twitter) to respond to comments made by the CEO of another accelerator during an event.
Ali Partovi, the founder of Neo in 2017, delivered the keynote address at HackMIT on September 16. During his 15-minute speech, he briefly mentioned Y Combinator, stating, “The mentor ratio: we have as many mentors as Y Combinator, except they’re serving 20 startups rather than 250 startups.”
This remark appeared to upset Garry Tan, the CEO of YC, who took to X on the same day to express his displeasure, stating, “Competition is good. What isn’t OK is when competitors like Neo slander Y Combinator by saying ‘YC does not offer personalized advice’ as they did recently on stage at MIT. YC has 12 group partners, including me: When we fund you, you get 1:1 advice for the life of your startup.”
Partovi was taken aback by Tan’s reaction, stating, “I was surprised because I did not say what Garry accused me of. I felt threatened because Garry accused me of slander, which has legal ramifications. Comparing yourself to an industry leader isn’t slander… They haven’t experienced real competition in a long time, if ever — and it shows.”
Notably, Partovi was unaware at the time of his speech that YC was a sponsor of HackMIT, whereas Neo was not a sponsor. He had been invited to deliver the keynote address.
In response to Tan’s comments, Partovi initially posted a response but later took it down, replacing it with a statement urging people to judge the situation for themselves.
When asked for his honest opinion about YC, Partovi directed attention to another X post, where he expressed his admiration for YC founders and clarified that he didn’t intend to criticize YC. However, he maintained that Neo, his accelerator, offered a different and, in his view, superior program for early-career technical founders.
TechCrunch attempted to reach out to Tan and YC for comment on the public dispute, but they declined to respond.
To provide context, Neo is described by Partovi as “a mentorship community that supports the next generation of founders and tech leaders with a startup accelerator, recruiting platform, and VC fund.” Earlier this year, Neo raised $235 million across two new funds and is backed by prominent figures such as Bill Gates, Reid Hoffman, Sheryl Sandberg, Satya Nadella, and founders from Airbnb, DoorDash, and Dropbox, among others. Since its founding in 2017, Neo has funded 175 companies valued at over $33 billion.
In contrast, Y Combinator was established in 2005 and has funded over 4,000 startups with a combined valuation of $600 billion, according to its website. Notable YC-funded startups include Airbnb, Coinbase, Cruise, DoorDash, Dropbox, Instacart, PagerDuty, Reddit, Stripe, Zepto, and Twitch.
Partovi contends that Neo Accelerator offers advantages over other accelerators, including a more favorable mentor-to-founder ratio, and this perspective triggered Tan’s response.
In the midst of the heated exchanges on X regarding Neo, Y Combinator Managing Director Michael Seibel also weighed in on September 16, claiming to have heard negative information about Partovi from YC founders over the years. He cautioned anyone considering working with Partovi or Neo to exercise caution and conduct due diligence.
Partovi refuted these allegations, asserting that he has not engaged in the activities YC insinuated. He stated, “As they know, I’ve known exactly who made each of these false claims for years and just ignored them. I’ve never sued, threatened to sue, or been sued by anyone in the tech industry. I’ve never asked any founder to sign an NDA.”
This incident is not the first time YC has been on the defensive in recent weeks. An article on TechCrunch by Rebecca Szkutak, titled ‘Here’s why some investors are sitting out of YC Demo Day,’ quoted a venture capitalist who claimed that YC Demo Day was no longer valuable for pre-seed and seed investors because most of the companies were already funded. Garry Tan responded on LinkedIn, accusing VCs of spreading falsehoods about YC Demo Day.
TechCrunch reached out to Tan for comment on this matter but had not received a response at the time of publication.
