Ever since Paul Graham stepped down from Y Combinator, the Stanford of startup accelerators has been trying to give off a more welcoming vibe. The attempts thus far have seemed awkward, half-hearted, and therefore insincere. As though Sam Altman got PR advice on crisis control from a YC bro-founder: Just tell 'em what they want to hear.

Industry obsessives talk about Product Hunt—a leaderboard that lets members vote on new apps, devices, and other assorted technologies—with a sense of gratefulness. Venture capitalists use its hand-picked daily list to find a diamond in the deluge. Founders use Product Hunt as an alternative launching pad: TechCrunch without the noise; Hacker News without the hate.

On stage at the Launch festival this afternoon, Y Combinator cofounder Paul Graham explained his decision to step down from Silicon Valley's ur-accelerator. He wanted to "get his brain back."

The Information just proved that it's worth the $400 price of admission. On display in an interview with Y Combinator cofounder Paul Graham is the clearest picture of Silicon Valley's unacknowledged sexism to ever find its way in print.

This weekend, Bing Nursery School, an elite institution for precocious little 2-to-5-year-olds, is holding its 25th Annual Harvest Moon Auction with all proceeds going toward student scholarships. As you might expect from a nursery school where Stanford University connections count so heavily, a handful of the items from the online auction are awfully startup-oriented.

After the discussion of a blog post about rape went south in typical Hacker News fashion, Y Combinator chief Paul Graham admitted it's a wreck: "I apologize to the world for this thread."

I'm very sorry to report that Y Combinator founder Paul Graham has decided to dig in his heels about the correlation "between founders having very strong foreign accents and their companies doing badly."

Paul Graham, the brains and investment personality cult leader behind Y Combinator, is very vocal about what he doesn't like. Foreign accents are a no-no—but as a buried blog post from 2005 shows, the great part about running a startup is that you can let your prejudices run wild.

Y Combinator founder Paul Graham is listed as a "major contributor" to FWD.us, Mark Zuckerberg's powerful lobbying firm whose primary focus has been immigration reform. But just because Graham wants to bring foreign workers to the U.S., doesn't mean he'd let them into his fabled Silicon Valley accelerator.

If you're part of the elite Y Combinator startup cabal, you recently received this list—"57 startup lessons"—in your inbox. There are a few bits of decent, generic advice. It's also a tidy explanation of why startup creators are making terrible mistakes over, and over again.

If you read Nathaniel Rich's half-skeptical orbit around Y Combinator—one of tech's trendier cash camps—there's one important takeaway: the guy in charge really doesn't like foreign accents.