from Hacker News

YC China and Qi Lu

by sama on 8/15/18, 2:46 AM with 345 comments

  • by ulfw on 8/15/18, 4:09 AM

    I find it funny how YC is focusing only on places where the majority of the world won’t or can’t easily work (US visa policy is atrocious and getting worse every year + raising xenophobia in recent times) and China isn’t an easy country to navigate if you don’t speak Mandarin, let alone succeed in as a foreigner (for a variety of reasons). Asia and Europe are big places as are Canada and Australia. Time to think broader than just US+China!

  • by kaptain on 8/15/18, 5:49 AM

    The political concerns are real. It's too cynical to say that YC just cares about money, though. There would be better ways to create an incubator than to do it like this, if that were the case. One obvious question that hasn't been raised is: "Why not base it in Taiwan?" It's still "China" (for some definition of China), you can still get access to the talent that you want (you just have to try a little harder), and you could still get access to the market you're targeting.

    It's not going to be easy, but it would better address the political and humanitarian issues raised.

  • by jn1234 on 8/15/18, 2:55 AM

  • by vadym909 on 8/15/18, 3:26 AM

    Nice move YC. I know Qi is highly regarded by Chinese students. He seems like a corporate vs startup guy though, so while I trust he has great access to talent and connections in industry and Govt, I'm not sure he's the best person to mentor a scrappy startup. Hope he has a good support cast.

  • by jumelles on 8/15/18, 3:32 AM

    YC's got a very, very fine line to tread if they're serious about China - with its limits on human rights and authoritarian tendencies, the Chinese government is absolutely not to be trusted. I worry about what sort of concessions tech companies have made and will make to gain access to the Chinese market.

  • by seanmcdirmid on 8/15/18, 3:23 AM

    Ah, this is the same Qi Lu who was basically responsible for the creation of Bing, then got Office and AI in a reorg, and then somehow got pushed out by Satya and went on to be CTO of Baidu for awhile.

    The YCR connection makes sense, since he has a lot of experience in AI where much of YCR is now at, but it will be interesting to see how he will interact with Bret Victor's group. Are they going to start a YC-like incubator in China? It will be interesting to see how this compares to Kai Fu's Innovation Works.

  • by gdsdfe on 8/15/18, 4:01 AM

    Hahaha people talking about ethics are silly ... This is business in a market, potentially, at least 3x bigger than the current biggest market! Are you nuts? Everybody's gonna do business in China! Everybody! In some form or shape.

  • by tomglynch on 8/15/18, 3:03 AM

    Very exciting to have such a huge presence opening YC China. Keen to see what comes out of this!

  • by europeanperson on 8/15/18, 6:32 PM

    I assume that most of the people that commented on this article live in the U.S. The majority of the world sees the U.S. as the world's biggest threat to world peace, yet I don't see anybody on Hacker News claiming companies shouldn't do business with the U.S. Since the war in Iraq, can we think of something that the Chinese government has done that is worse? I disagree strongly with the notion that the Chinese government's influence on the world is somehow worse than the influence of the U.S. I do think there is something to be said about boycotting governments that abuse human rights, but I think it is hypocritical to think that somehow that doesn't apply to the U.S.

  • by vorg on 8/15/18, 11:26 AM

    > YC has been very successful in the world by believing that hackers – not businesspeople – can build the biggest companies.

    Virtually every non-technologist businessperson who becomes a manager in the IT industry will present themselves as a technologist. They will usually have some real technical people at their beck and call to help with the stuff they can't fake.

  • by kazinator on 8/15/18, 3:17 AM

    > Hand-held devices allow police to quickly check the content of phones on the street.

    That's amazing to anyone who has struggled to connect an Android device to Windows via USB just to access a file or two.

  • by ksec on 8/15/18, 9:22 AM

    I guess that pretty much leaves out Hong Kong, Macau then?

    The interview [1] by 36kr does a much better job of introduction and vision he has for YC China. Unfortunately it is in Chinese only.

    [1] https://36kr.com/p/5148299.html

  • by koolba on 8/15/18, 9:28 AM

    Is this going to follow the same investment structure as YC “Classic” or will that be changing as well? The amount of cash thrown at a YC company could go a long way in China.

    Will YC be taking a stand on China’s rampant theft of intellectual property or tacitly encouraging it as part of “being a start up”?

  • by ForrestN on 8/15/18, 6:40 AM

    It’s troubling that this statement is so overtly unserious. Has YC and its surrounding culture become so insulated that they cannot see the obviously self-defeating through-line in this statement?

    “Our mission at YC is to enable more innovation than any other company in the world, and to ensure that the benefits of that are fairly spread throughout humanity.”

    Do you really think it’s possible to ensure that the benefits of innovation are spread fairly while simultaneously partnering with an oppressive, cruel government in order to create vast pools of wealth controlled by a tiny subset of individuals allied with that government?

    I can understand why someone would try to get as rich as possible and would turn a blind eye toward obvious moral compromise. I can also understand the utilitarian impulse to “ensure that the benefits of [innovation] are fairly spread throughout humanity.” But I can’t understand ignorance of the wild contradictions between those two “missions.”

    If you want to spread innovation equally, you should be working to support dissident voices in China and you should be putting 95% of you and your associates’ vast personal wealth behind the political project of reversing Republican-engineered inequality here at home.

    Helping people in China who you deem most likely to succeed (working in harmony with the government, of course) to become even more successful is not, in fact, helping to make the distribution of benefits among humanity more fair.

    TL:DR — Choose only one: fairness among humans or the accumulation of vast personal wealth by collaborating with governments that brutally oppress their own citizens.

  • by maxwin on 8/15/18, 4:03 AM

    Looking forward to YC South East Asia or YC Asia. Don't forget us.

  • by mattigames on 8/15/18, 3:05 AM

    I assume companies with websites censored by the great firewall won't have access to YC China funding?

  • by vinceyuan on 8/16/18, 6:02 AM

    Not sure Qi Lu is the best person for this position.

    Though Qi was born in China, he almost spent his all career time in the US. Probably the time he worked in China is less than one year. You can't expect this person knows China market, Chinese young people, Chinese companies well, and has connections with people in China gov.

    And he worked for big companies only (Yahoo, Microsoft, Baidu). He never worked in startups. Can he find and invest good startups? I don't know.

    Anyway, YC entering China is a good thing. Hope Google search will come back to China soon.

  • by contingencies on 8/15/18, 3:31 AM

  • by j8hn on 8/15/18, 6:11 AM

    Someone told me that a webpage with the following would get your internet access cut off in China: June 4th Tiananmen Square Massacre. Can someone translate to Mandarin please.

  • by microdrum on 8/15/18, 4:49 AM

    Will this be located in the independent sovereign nation of Taiwan so as to have the benefit of freedom of thought, religion, the rule of law, and private property?

  • by echan00 on 8/15/18, 3:34 AM

    Key question: will Chinese startups be required to register as US companies :)

  • by helloguys021 on 8/15/18, 2:58 AM

    I'm currently living in Shanghai and I want to work for YC China. Will YC China or Qi Lu post any job openings somewhere?

  • by pnathan on 8/15/18, 4:47 PM

    This is a recognition that the Chinese world is a rising superpower, both in innovation and in politics. Reminds me to study Mandarin!

    I wish them all the best, and I hope that the interactions with the great qualities of YC produces an excellent step forward for China and its technologists.

  • by joshu on 8/15/18, 2:53 AM

    Congrats Qi!

  • by philip1209 on 8/15/18, 7:39 AM

    What effect does switching from Baidu to YC have on Qi's social credit system rating?

  • by echevil on 8/15/18, 3:31 AM

    Really excited to see how YC model would work out in China!

  • by bing_dai on 8/15/18, 4:02 AM

    I'm wondering which city will the YC China be based in? Certainly one of Beijing/Shenzhen/Shanghai I would guess.

  • by carapace on 8/15/18, 6:30 PM

    Not a word, not a breath, of concern in that press release for the ethical aspects of doing business with the Chinese Communists.

    I think I'm gonna have to close my HN account. I don't even want to be this close to YC anymore.

    (They practice organlegging over there. Your wait time for a new kidney is so low because there are prisoners kept as involuntary donors. Most of the prisoners are incarcerated due to practicing something called Falun-Gong. They are not violent criminals.)

  • by fhe on 8/15/18, 9:14 AM

    this is a very interesting move by YC. I can't wait to see if the "YC methodology" will work in China's startup scene. China's startup culture is notably different from Silicon Valley.

  • by sealon on 8/15/18, 5:33 AM

    赞

  • by auganov on 8/15/18, 4:53 PM

    Encourage everyone to boycott YC. I certainly won't be applying again.

    It's funny to watch YC do this, the one time I was actually invited to interview with YC was when our Chinese co-founder submitted a rather fraudulent[0] application. Angry that we wouldn't participate in his fraud he disappeared and filed a frivolous lawsuit against us (which after many years we won).

    China's tech growth is built on IP theft and protection by a murderous regime. It's a total antithesis of what made the Valley great. Big numbers put out by some people in China don't change that.

    If YC plans to invest in local Mainland startups:

    - ownership is going to tough, likely through dubious trickery

    - these uncertain legal rights expose YC to strong political pressures, anybody that has vested interest in China knows it - if you want to have a chance at cashing out your better be in good graces with the CCP

    - unethical behavior of YC pupils is inevitable, a PR nightmare in the making. "it's not the real YC, it's YC China, don't blame us!"

    You've destroyed your brand, now good luck getting a dollar out of China.

    And again, a necessary reminder I like to tell everyone: China is actively imprisoning and killing thousands of people for their religious beliefs. Censorship is nothing. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Organ_harvesting_from_Falun_Go... Few people know it, I certainly didn't, I wish I have. Like many I've heard something about the Falun Gong, I've seen the signs but never bothered to looked into it. It's all real, it's big, almost Nazi scale persecution. Please share it with anybody that does business with China.

    [0] because in China I guess that'd only be normal-fraudulent, right?

  • by angersock on 8/15/18, 5:59 AM

    So, how much money is there in PRC contracts for surveillance and social credit software?

    For reference, this is the market they're excited about joining:

    http://time.com/5366225/china-uighurs-detention-report/

    https://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2018/02/ch...

    https://techcrunch.com/2017/12/13/china-cctv-bbc-reporter/

  • by erdosnew on 8/15/18, 1:43 PM

    is this the guy that served as former senior VP of Microsoft and later CEO of Baidu?

  • by notbeevil on 8/15/18, 5:58 PM

    look at the comments. What a fucking greedy world!!!

  • by telltruth on 8/15/18, 3:51 AM

    Sam, this exec BS doesn't look good on you. If Qi Lu is the "one of the most impressive technologiest" you have known then I would say you can be impressed pretty easily. Qi Lu is the guy who couldn't do a squat with Yahoo so he jumped ship to Microsoft. His main achievement there was to rename their product to "Bing". Finally not getting anywhere for almost a decade, he finally got pushed out and so he jumped on the Baidu train to get dip in to Chinese internet boom. Again no special achievements whatsoever at Baidu and virtually everything he touched was half assed and pure PR vaporware. You also have to remember this guy is not technologist. He doesn't write code, do design or understand modern software architecture. He is a suit which big multinationals need for a public face, sales and marketing purposes.

    So let's be honest here. YC needs to tap in to Chinese market's booming startup scene. You can't do that without having native Chinese guy leading these effort. You ideally need a suit who has network and hopefully also understands the little details, you know, like code. But you got only the suit who has network. You will try to do best with what you got. That we get it.

  • by PaulHoule on 8/15/18, 11:40 AM

    Of all places they could go.

    China appearing to succeed at a time when democracy is on the ropes is a dangerous trend for democracy.

    When you import goods from China, you import repression.

    Short-termed capitalists might think the repression applies just to workers, but China is a country with no human rights, no property rights, no rule of law. The Chinese government reserves the right to take anything you "own" there. Somehow it is a capitalist and communist hell at the same time.

  • by lawnchair_larry on 8/15/18, 7:28 AM

    YC China? Why would you even consider this?

    Sam has lost his mind.

  • by nullifidian on 8/15/18, 6:38 AM

    >to ensure that the benefits of that are fairly spread throughout humanity.

    What about Uighur internment camps YC money will finance through taxes?

  • by jmspring on 8/15/18, 7:49 AM

    Interesting to see YC embrace someone who went on leave at MSFT due to injuries of a bike accident... or so the news claimed. Yet popped up at Baidu/etc.

    Next up YC will hire the Amazon Exec that puffed himself up and was fired before he joined Uber?

  • by knuththetruth on 8/15/18, 1:59 PM

    Is HackerNews accessible from mainland China? There’s been a lot of discussion here recently about Google working with the CCP’s censorship regime, kidnapped dissidents, and the interment of Muslims in Xinjiang. What impact will this move have on the featuring and discussion of these stories?

  • by google_censors on 8/15/18, 9:10 AM

    It's amazing that a company that Paul Graham co-founded is getting into bed with an authoritarian government notorious for its human rights abuses. To succeed in China you can't go against the government. So is he going to be pushing as hard for political change in China as he is in the US, or will he remain silent as his company reaps the profits?

  • by claydavisss on 8/15/18, 4:01 AM

    Another me-too move by YC. Does anyone actually expect anything to come of this?