(Protocol) Twitter was abuzz Tuesday over a long thread written on Monday by Bolt CEO Ryan Breslow, who claimed that Stripe and Y Combinator are “mob bosses,” using “every power move imaginable” to block competitors from becoming successful. In other words: Silicon Valley is cutthroat. Who knew?
Or at least, that summarizes most of the replies on Twitter. Few deny that there’s a powerful hierarchy in Silicon Valley. Most agreed with Breslow’s assertions about Y Combinator’s influential stature and Stripe’s impressive cap table. But given that Bolt was initially rejected from Y Combinator, and competes directly with Stripe in payments, most onlookers are taking the tweetstorm as a pretty low blow.
“I hold no interest in Stripe, Initialized is not an investor … but this take by a Stripe competitor is just dishonest,” tweeted Initialized Capital co-founder Garry Tan, a former Y Combinator partner. Joe Benjamin, the founder of Profs, called it a “marketing stunt.”
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