Since he says he was misrepresented in the USA Today article, I took out the paragraph that linked to it. That has the side effect of making this post mysterious, so in case anyone is confused, the deleted paragraph read:
"Usually people who say we're a bad deal, like Seth Levine in this
article, simply don't understand what we do. If all we did
was write checks, YC would be a bad deal. But in fact the money
is the least of what we do. No VC who has seen Demo Day first hand
has ever said YC took too much equity."
Especially upon re-reading the article, it looks to me as though the reporter (no doubt trying to present 'both sides of the story') began a paragraph with "But the limits of Y Combinator's model remain unclear" and then shoehorned in Seth Levine's comments without much regard to what he was really saying.
One of the weird things about doing something mostly benevolent is that you end up breaking the standard journalism algorithm. We've hit this on several occasions. They feel like they have to find something at least slightly bad to say about us, and they end up choosing something random. It seems like the same thing happens to Google.
I'm not sure if this happens because it's an axiom of journalism that every story has two sides, or because conflict makes stories interesting. Maybe both. But one sees it often on TV news. A city bans people from setting one another on fire, and the reporter diligently tracks down the president of the local chapter of Pyromaniacs of America to offer the other side of the story.
Being a huge sports fan, I am used to people apologizing after the fact and blaming the media for "misrepresentation" and taking their comments "out of context." However, I do applaud Seth Levine for at least addressing the issue. While the context of the comment in the USAToday article was addressed at YC, it did seem strange that Seth would blast the same model for which he contributes via TechStars.
I'll give him the benefit of the doubt, since to me it does seem reasonable that his comments were taken out of context.
Email interviews are boring, and worthless. Sorry folks, but if you don't want to be misrepresented, do a better job interviewing. What you THINK you said, and what you said are very different.
"... Email interviews are boring, and worthless ..."
... but more accurate. It's hard to mis-quote someone in writing (a good reason to use email). Maybe the boring bit your talking about is the lack of physical contact between the interviewer & interviewee giving the writer less chance to interpret and make insights that can lead to writing a more entertaining piece.
From the interviewee standpoint, fact is far more important than spin or fiction. From a reader point of view, facts mixed with entertainment (& possible spin) maybe what they expect. But I ask myself, "what do I want to get when I read about something, I really want to know "hard information" about?" - the facts? impressions or entertainment?
I'll settle for the dry facts & any entertainment in the way of humour or language is nice, but secondary.
Huh, that depends on what you're looking for, I guess. In a live interview, you can be asked a question you weren't prepared for, and if you lose composure even a little it doesn't matter what the truth is nor what your answer is, what people will remember is that you got flustered. With email, you can relax and take your time.
I was referring to the experience as a reader - emailed interviews and the stories that result from them are usually boring and formulaic, and don't differ much from a stock press release.
"Usually people who say we're a bad deal, like Seth Levine in this article, simply don't understand what we do. If all we did was write checks, YC would be a bad deal. But in fact the money is the least of what we do. No VC who has seen Demo Day first hand has ever said YC took too much equity."