The topic before was "Should YC disassociate from Thiel from YC?"
The argument from YC was (more or less) "businesses shouldn't let political differences stop people from working together."
Here's my question to the YC community: At what point does the activities of an employee / partner bring potentially unwanted attention to a business?
Yes, I wouldn't fire an employee for having different political opinions from me. BUT I would fire an employee for going around publicly campaigning and publicly donating vast sums of money to a political agenda.
Again, it's about bringing potentially divisive attention to the business - not about political differences.
What fraction of YC companies, would you say, depend on, or plan to depend on, a wide cross section of the US population? Go by age, start with high schoolers (pro-Trump, curiously enough) to the elderly, and from coast to coast?
And would you apply this same principle to figures like Sam Altman, and Paul Graham, the latter having been reported to have compared Trump to Stalin?
The thing I like about Thiel is that he recognizes that there exist people outside of the dozen or so bubbles of prosperity, and that they aren't doing so hot, by and large.
The argument from YC was (more or less) "businesses shouldn't let political differences stop people from working together."
Here's my question to the YC community: At what point does the activities of an employee / partner bring potentially unwanted attention to a business?
Yes, I wouldn't fire an employee for having different political opinions from me. BUT I would fire an employee for going around publicly campaigning and publicly donating vast sums of money to a political agenda.
Again, it's about bringing potentially divisive attention to the business - not about political differences.