Story
I got into YC Startup School by hacking it
1 report
1 website
1 discussion
Latest report
Overview
Y Combinator was scoring over 100,000 founders globally through Paxel, which had a vulnerability allowing score forgery due to an unvalidated HMAC. After disclosing the issue, Y Combinator quickly patched it and invited the hacker to attend Startup School in San Francisco.
Summary from obaid.wtf.
Reports
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Community reactions
Each reaction summarizes sampled comments from the linked discussion.
Hacker News · obaid.wtf
Hacker News discussion ↗
Historical count: 5 · 5 saved in sample · Historical sample
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Read this discussion’s reaction
Based on 5 sampled comments from this thread. Analyzed 2026-07-25.
- Praise: Paxel could be a fun tool for developers to analyze their LLM-assisted code, sparking curiosity about AI's role in coding.
- Praise: YC's inclination towards applicants who think outside the box aligns with the hacking culture, which can foster innovative thinking.
- Concern: The idea of running a script that uploads code analysis to an untrusted third party raises major ethical concerns about IP security.
- Concern: Using an AI tool like Paxel to score applicants based on their coding habits feels like a recipe for penalizing creative workflows and diverse approaches.
- Concern: The potential for security vulnerabilities in Paxel's operation suggests a disaster waiting to happen, particularly regarding the handling of sensitive data.