“Got into YC” is being used a bit loosely here. They got invited to startup school, which is a two-day event hosted by YC.
Aurornis 1 hours ago [-]
> Based on Paxel’s own site, 1.2 million+ coders have so far uploaded their reports to YC.
I checked the Paxel website and it says this:
> So far, 1,543,553 sessions have been uploaded and analyzed.
The count is for sessions, not coders. I assume the tool uploads a lot of sessions from each person who uses it.
That’s a large number, but it’s not a million different people. I am surprised that so many people think it’s a good idea to download a run a program which gathers up their coding sessions and submits information about them.
smcnc 2 hours ago [-]
I could be mistaken, but isn't Paxel a tool that YC *itself* built to understand how founders/applicants apply AI? If so, this feels less scary than some of the comments (i.e. not 3rd party).
Also, not trying to take shots, but should the title be "I got into YC Startup School by hacking it" instead? Isn't that different than the main YC program?
All in all, you did them a solid by finding and responsibly disclosing. Nice job.
jedberg 1 hours ago [-]
For the longest time, the YC application included the question "What was your greatest (non-computer) hack?". They have always liked people who think of ways to work around existing systems. So it's no surprise that their response was positive. Also, all the principals are ex-founders, mostly engineers, who totally understand hacking culture.
Sadly, it looks like they took that question off the application though.
a_t48 22 minutes ago [-]
That question is still there, it lives in the founder profile.
nhumrich 50 minutes ago [-]
Except this was a computer hack. So technically wouldn't qualify.
jedberg 47 minutes ago [-]
Sure, I wasn't saying it would. I was saying that the question on the application demonstrates YC's acceptance of this type of creativity.
rationalist 2 hours ago [-]
> YC wanted me to use something called Paxel on my computer as part of the application.
> I should run a script, a very easy-to-use cURL one-liner that installed something on my computer and analyzed every line of code I’ve written with a coding agent, compile a report, and upload it to YC’s servers.
Yikes! I hope this is NOT the future of hiring.
zem 1 hours ago [-]
the sad thing is that paxel sounds like it would be a pretty fun tool to run locally and see what my LLM assisted code gets classified as. instead, to borrow cory doctorow's framing, it is designed to do something to me rather than for me.
RGamma 2 hours ago [-]
Everytime you think this it will be. Let's go back to analog.
baby_souffle 2 hours ago [-]
It can't possibly be an inevitable future. Something this would be super easy to game.
From their perspective, it's code running on an untrusted third person/adversary's computer... If only last 40 years of computer history could be any guide as to what might go wrong here
..
moomoo11 1 hours ago [-]
most VCs aren’t founders and those who are ex-founders usually made pretty terrible companies. very few exceptions. actually i can think of only one.
but once you have some money (like >5m which is achievable), you can throw it around a bit and you just need a handful of success stories built by someone actually talented.
then you take credit for it and craft a narrative instead, which is easier just like collecting management fees instead of building something yourself.
Am I misreading this, or is ycombinator running a tool that transfers IP from an applicant’s machine to OpenAI and then transfers the generated summaries into their own servers. And that tool has some “webapp security 101” level vulnerability in it.
Feels like a disaster waiting to happen.
tomhow 55 minutes ago [-]
It doesn’t upload code (it’s not meant to, anyway); it uploads coding agent transcripts. It’s meant to be a fun app like Spotify wrapped - that’s how it was described when presented internally.
throwa356262 1 minutes ago [-]
But to generate those transcripts the tool does upload your code to an LLM of its choosing
;)
minimaxir 53 minutes ago [-]
Those transcripts generally contain code edit diffs.
tomhow 47 minutes ago [-]
Sure - though that’s all generated by the coding agents. So it shouldn’t be uploading original hand-written code (unless the coding agent is running on a legacy codebase).
Obviously it’s not something everyone is going to be comfortable sharing, but YC is transparent about what is shared and how it’s used.
TZubiri 49 minutes ago [-]
It's very common nowadays to claim that something doesn't have access to X when it does in fact have system level access to X, but the application code just doesn't use X (or a prompt is being asked not to use X).
Trustworthy people will ask you to give them the right amount of access, they won't ask you for infinite access and ask you to trust them that they won't use it. Would you trust a contractor that asks for root, and your master password when they could have requested a specific user or some specific files?
tomhow 44 minutes ago [-]
Sure - and people are able to audit what the software is doing and call it out if it’s operating in a way that’s unintended or inappropriate, just as has happened here.
Edit:
I’ll add this point as people always seem to want to raise the spectre of YC or the AI platforms stealing people’s code or ideas via these sorts of tools.
The value of any code or ideas is immaterial compared to the value of identifying talented people who can then be offered opportunities such as attending Startup School, being funded by YC, getting jobs at YC-funded companies or YC itself. It’s one of pg’s oldest dictums, that ideas alone are worthless, and only working products and the people that build them are worth anything. Nobody at YC thinks any differently about that these days.
boomskats 55 minutes ago [-]
Maybe this is another one of Garry's 30k LOC/day vibecode specials that he's so proud of
siva7 2 hours ago [-]
> I uncovered Y Combinator was scoring 100k+ founders around the world through Paxel
Alright, my ears are wide open. Tell us more, how did YC use the private submission data from thousands of founders to score them? They fed some 3rd-Party AI all personal data to score who should get an interview? I can't be the only one here seeing a bad news story unfolding in real time...
TZubiri 39 minutes ago [-]
YC is currently polarizing against companies that are rejecting the philosophy of giving (a single user) AI full read access to company data. They find that resistance frustrating and the complain publicly about it, calling such an attitude outdated "so 2024".
I understand that YC and startups in general have less incentive to worry about security because they don't have much to lose. But I think the big winners will care about security from the start, because it's a bottleneck at the top, what would whatsapp be if they vibecoded security from day 1? It would never have been able to fix its reputation after the fact.
They then switch the topic and talk about token spend and how one can spend millions or billions of dollars in tokens, so it's a bit clearer what their incentives are.
I don't want to be negative and personal, but this is business, I listen to CEOs like Garry Tan and Satya Nadella, and I feel that I'm on an opposing team, my personal bet is to skip this cycle and wait for the next cycle of CEOs. I'm focusing a lot on security on this cycle, hopefully that will pay off.
pixiemaster 1 hours ago [-]
sure….
qphe95 1 hours ago [-]
This is how you end up with gstack. When you believe too hard in secret metrics because when people know about metrics it stops working you inflict psychosis chasing correlations that don't mean anything.
pudgywalsh 45 minutes ago [-]
We live in a world now where piping strange unknown executables to bash is "incredible UX". I'm in disbelief.
Keep in mind people who regularly do this were complaining about Windows' machine ID.
25 minutes ago [-]
speedgoose 56 minutes ago [-]
Don't read this horror story before bed time if you care about information security.
Perhaps running the script outside a heavily sandboxed system should trigger an automatic rejection.
JCharante 52 minutes ago [-]
surprised running paxel doesn't disqualify you, the program sounds sus
TZubiri 53 minutes ago [-]
Oh, I remember that thing, it wanted to see my prompt and my code in exchange for telling me my horoscope.
Some hands you have to fold, and I'm folding this one. Patiently waiting for the "let's give all our data to a single AI user" bubble to bust with some massive exploits.
moomoo11 2 hours ago [-]
paxel and how it works sounds so dumb.
so i’m not at all surprised at how it is used and by whom.
cleverpotato479 58 minutes ago [-]
Paxel seems like a tool that would cause brand damage to YC if it were better known.
marioegie 11 minutes ago [-]
[flagged]
Rendered at 20:17:20 GMT+0000 (Coordinated Universal Time) with Vercel.
I checked the Paxel website and it says this:
> So far, 1,543,553 sessions have been uploaded and analyzed.
The count is for sessions, not coders. I assume the tool uploads a lot of sessions from each person who uses it.
That’s a large number, but it’s not a million different people. I am surprised that so many people think it’s a good idea to download a run a program which gathers up their coding sessions and submits information about them.
Also, not trying to take shots, but should the title be "I got into YC Startup School by hacking it" instead? Isn't that different than the main YC program?
All in all, you did them a solid by finding and responsibly disclosing. Nice job.
Sadly, it looks like they took that question off the application though.
> I should run a script, a very easy-to-use cURL one-liner that installed something on my computer and analyzed every line of code I’ve written with a coding agent, compile a report, and upload it to YC’s servers.
Yikes! I hope this is NOT the future of hiring.
From their perspective, it's code running on an untrusted third person/adversary's computer... If only last 40 years of computer history could be any guide as to what might go wrong here ..
but once you have some money (like >5m which is achievable), you can throw it around a bit and you just need a handful of success stories built by someone actually talented.
then you take credit for it and craft a narrative instead, which is easier just like collecting management fees instead of building something yourself.
you wouldn’t understand
what do you think it says if you don't use AI
Feels like a disaster waiting to happen.
;)
Obviously it’s not something everyone is going to be comfortable sharing, but YC is transparent about what is shared and how it’s used.
>curl -fsSL https://paxel.ycombinator.com/upload.sh | bash
Point in case.
Trustworthy people will ask you to give them the right amount of access, they won't ask you for infinite access and ask you to trust them that they won't use it. Would you trust a contractor that asks for root, and your master password when they could have requested a specific user or some specific files?
Edit:
I’ll add this point as people always seem to want to raise the spectre of YC or the AI platforms stealing people’s code or ideas via these sorts of tools.
The value of any code or ideas is immaterial compared to the value of identifying talented people who can then be offered opportunities such as attending Startup School, being funded by YC, getting jobs at YC-funded companies or YC itself. It’s one of pg’s oldest dictums, that ideas alone are worthless, and only working products and the people that build them are worth anything. Nobody at YC thinks any differently about that these days.
Alright, my ears are wide open. Tell us more, how did YC use the private submission data from thousands of founders to score them? They fed some 3rd-Party AI all personal data to score who should get an interview? I can't be the only one here seeing a bad news story unfolding in real time...
https://youtu.be/B246K_G7mHU?si=UVJei9Jpk7ZvREnH&t=1483
https://youtu.be/B246K_G7mHU?si=ikHZD4MwxA5JtXLj&t=1716
I understand that YC and startups in general have less incentive to worry about security because they don't have much to lose. But I think the big winners will care about security from the start, because it's a bottleneck at the top, what would whatsapp be if they vibecoded security from day 1? It would never have been able to fix its reputation after the fact.
They then switch the topic and talk about token spend and how one can spend millions or billions of dollars in tokens, so it's a bit clearer what their incentives are.
I don't want to be negative and personal, but this is business, I listen to CEOs like Garry Tan and Satya Nadella, and I feel that I'm on an opposing team, my personal bet is to skip this cycle and wait for the next cycle of CEOs. I'm focusing a lot on security on this cycle, hopefully that will pay off.
Keep in mind people who regularly do this were complaining about Windows' machine ID.
Perhaps running the script outside a heavily sandboxed system should trigger an automatic rejection.
Some hands you have to fold, and I'm folding this one. Patiently waiting for the "let's give all our data to a single AI user" bubble to bust with some massive exploits.
so i’m not at all surprised at how it is used and by whom.