I feel sorry for the unnamed YC founder who looks like Mark Zuckerberg and is now learning that he has been the subject of an ongoing joke for the past 4 years. Having a startup fail is hard enough even without having people make jokes about it.

Of course the YC founders can't be fooled by someone's resemblance to Zuckerberg - we all know how silly that would be!

However, there are certainly things they would be fooled by, especially given a) the relative shortness of YC applications/interviews, and b) that they are all very smart and experienced people and as such are very likely to succumb to cognitive biases.

In fact, given the number of "10 tricks to get into YC" posts we see around YC application season (I wish my mock title were an exaggeration), I would be very surprised if there weren't any traits that did in fact fool PG et al and that could be used advantageously if one's only goal were to get into YC for the sake of it (it's very silly, but I've met many such people during my years in the startup scene).

We know that there are attributes that are good signals to them - they have said so. Examples include being a self taught hacker (preferably programming since high school), being close friends/having worked in the past with the other founders, focusing on things that don't scale, talking to the customers, etc. I would be terribly surprised if there has never been a founder who has filled all these checkboxes, made PG say "whoa this person reminds me of our past founder X, and they were super successful, of course we want them in the batch", only to have them fail miserably during YC.

So what did PG get tricked by in the past? That would be an interesting essay.

Honestly this post is garbage and shouldn't be on the front page. Just because it's PG doesn't mean we should give the author a pass for such drivel.

    ... particularly his long neck.

That detail really could have been omitted. It adds nothing and comes across as disparaging.

If pg decides to edit it out. I'm fine with this comment referencing it being deleted as well. There's no reason for that observation to persist in an article that might be linked to again every time this meme comes up.

>Could anyone be so naive as to think that resembling Zuck would be enough to make a founder succeed? And is it plausible that we, of all people, who'd interviewed thousands of founders, would think such a thing?

I think it's quite plausible that people have biases. Venture capitalists are not exempt from bias. The thing about biases is that people don't realise they have them.

I have no doubt that PG was joking, but comparing those of us that believe that Pattern Matching by VCs is still a factor in suppressing diversity in Tech, with the idiotic Birther Movement, is a bit of a reach.

This post was killed by user flags. We're unkilling it because (if I know HN) it will be reposted ad nauseum if we don't.

Joking about someone's looks? Not like the person had much choice in the matter it seems. That's a level of superficiality I wouldn't have expected here.

I thought PG was building it into a joke.. the post sounds way too defensive.

It's sad that these sorts of responses are necessary. You'd think journalists would avoid such behavior, but you only start to notice it if you've been in the press.

Typically, resorting to misquoting and misconstruing only happens if a good counterargument to one's actual views can't be found. So I take it as an indicator of good (and possibly controversial) thinking if someone feels forced to respond in this manner.

Sam Harris has become quite experienced at handling this sort of attack, although he's had to spend significant time doing so.[1][2] Any victims of misconstruing might want to follow his style.

1. http://www.samharris.org/blog/item/on-the-mechanics-of-defam...

2. http://www.samharris.org/site/full_text/response-to-controve...

Note: I made a similar comment on the flagkilled version of this article, but I figured I'd respond here since it seems to be the canonical thread.

As Paul Graham points out, it is absurd to think that he or anybody at his firm would be swayed by someone's physical resemblance to Mark Zuckerberg. However, I have the sinking feeling that in this respect, Mr. Graham and his partners are the exception rather than the rule. That may well be one of the reasons why they are so successful. Not that I have hard data, and I'm not sure if reliable data could be obtained, but I have personally witnessed a frighteningly large number of incidents in which people were obviously influenced by the physical appearance of those whom they were tasked to judge.

I think this sort of meme doesn't require the people using it to believe that it was originally anything beyond a joke. As long as it sounds funny, that's enough.

To me it feels like he used the Obama Kenya thing as a way to keep people from quoting it. I'm not sure it will work because the birther debate hasn't gone away either.

This must be about something that is really important in certain circles. I guess.

Many more people read the headlines of hacker news than actually click the link so today they learned some sort of joke thing about Paul Graham being tricked by someone who looked like Murk Zuckerberg.

Stuck me as a really odd comparison, a "out of context" quote and a conspiracy theory.

Reminding people about something you purportedly want them to forget seems counterproductive.