The product started out as an invite-only platform for "product people" who Ryan Hoover "knows and admires" so it was a voting ring for a valley in-group since day one.
That it's managed to get so much traffic and now seed funding says a lot about how the Valley works, and probably not in a good way. It's literally a platform for someone's friends to upvote each other - "conflict of interest for YC" doesn't even scratch the surface.
I do think the platform has value, but only insofar as that it helps those who are playing the VC game by showing them what a certain "in crowd" thinks is cool.
You're correct, we did seed the community with people I knew in startups that I thought would (1) be interested in this type of community and (2) have interesting discoveries/thoughts on tech products.
I won't pretend there aren't voting rings but they're not limited to the "valley in group" at all. We see people across the world trying to game the site, as people do on Hacker News, reddit, and other crowd-curation sites. As I mentioned earlier on this HN thread, we have systems that help combat these rings and in part thank to YC/HN's guidance, we'll improve this.
I also want to point out just a few examples of products that reached the top of the day's board from non-valley, "famous" startup people. E.g.
- Instanerd (http://www.producthunt.com/posts/instanerd) was made by Alex in Skopje, Macedonia as a small side project. It received over 160 upvotes and ~5x the number of comments than the average submission.
That people outside of the "voting ring" or "in-crowd" get voted up by a "voting ring" or "in-crowd" sometimes does not obviate the central criticism - insiders exclusively decide which outsiders are selected.
Ryan, you mentioned in the past that you were taking steps to broaden the PH community and finding ways to invite more people into the fold.
Do you think involvement with YC will accelerate that step and is it still a (very?) high priority--I say "very" because the fact that it seems to be an exclusive list that's not open seems to be one of the biggest criticisms.
This is a problem with Silicon Valley, not Product Hunt. Ryan identified a way to grow his website and get funding. Smart on his part. Now he has the resources to make the site better and more open.
That it's managed to get so much traffic and now seed funding says a lot about how the Valley works, and probably not in a good way. It's literally a platform for someone's friends to upvote each other - "conflict of interest for YC" doesn't even scratch the surface.
I do think the platform has value, but only insofar as that it helps those who are playing the VC game by showing them what a certain "in crowd" thinks is cool.